4 posts tagged “obama”
Can you believe it?
What a night!
Obama finally wins and America re-emerges from the despotic regime of Dick Dastardly and his henchmen.
Finally we can enjoy being friends with America again.
He has a heap of trouble to deal with but for now, let's celebrate.
Just to keep the party going here is a reminder of what imbeciles have been in charge for the past 8 years.
Happy days will return!
This credit crisis is really winding me up! I am working twice as hard as before for zero money. I mean zero.
The thing is, I have decided that I have just about had enough of chasing round after Simon Cowell and his cohorts in the never ending battle between good and evil. The music business has sucked me dry and I want out.
Well, actually I don't want out but I am too long in the tooth and too bored by yet another boy / girl / rehashed 1979 punk / be bop / metal / B&R (sic) band to get excited by much anymore.
I know I have heard a heap of stuff in my many years on this planet but I still want more. I want excitement and frankly with a few exceptions I haven't heard a major label release that has any merit since the White Stripes. Even that is a bit old hat in some ways. Indie labels are doing great things but no one cares or hear them and the world if filled with wannabe bands who can't wake up and get out there and help themselves. So as the Dragons say, I'm out!
Time for a change.
As an alternative I am in the middle of setting up a new venture. A travel company. A specialist travel company.
No.
Before you ask we don't do bespoke trips for billionaires.
This is indie travel with a twist.
I am doing el cheapo deals to some of the places I have visited and loved.
I am going to take as many people as I can to parties across Europe.
Fun for its own sake. No excuses. Life is for living. Those of you who have read what kind of a year 08 has been for me will understand why.
I have already lined up some killer trips to exotic venues like Munich, Dublin, Terschelling, Pamplona, Reyjavik and Pamplona. Plus as many Formula 1 Grand Prix as I can manage. Why not?
Crack a tube guys.
Stop cracking the sads.
Time to get away from all this paranoid misery.
Be contra cyclical.
Glass half full?
Fill it up!
I am calling the new venture PUMPKIN TOURS!
There.
You heard it here first.
We launch in a major way in January but if you would like to have a look and maybe tell me where I have gone wrong please link through.
Love it or hate it. I'd be happy to hear your comments.
Thanks
and keep the faith
Just a few days until we get rid of the Great Satan for a while!!
VOTE OBAMA
I thought I would copy a post from Bob Lefsetz again today, along with my reply.
The guy makes some good points but he is forever revealing how limited his knowledge of the world outside America is. I hope it is worth a few seconds of your time. If music business guys feel like this then the penny has really dropped. Normally the only thing they know is who is No on Billboard.
On 6 Mar 2008, at 03:22, Bob Lefsetz wrote:
What kind of fucked up world do we live in where a U.S. dollar fetches 94 cents Canadian?
Sure, I exchanged cash in the hotel...what, did you want me to do it at the airport? Or did you want me to burn up $4 a gallon gas driving to a bank in L.A. to get Canadian currency. And sure, you can use a credit card, but not EVERYWHERE!
How could it be that the greatest country in the world got into this hole? Who was asleep at the switch? Was it the richest? Did you read that story in today's "Wall Street Journal" about the top 400 taxpayers? You had to make $100.3 million to make the cut (There's Rich, and There's the 'Fortunate 400'", http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120468366051012473.html?mod=todays_us_personal_journal). But don't tax 'em, they might not have enough money for their children's children's children. Or the politicians paid off by these fat cats, who looked the other way as mortgages were resecuritized so many times that the people who actually bought them had no idea what they held? Ain't that America. Fuck somebody, just as long as it's not you (hey, where's my WorldCom pension!)
So I'm here in Toronto for CMW, i.e. Canadian Music Week. Tomorrow Bruce Allen and I are going to go at it. We actually agree on so much, primarily that management should be PERSONAL! And that a manager should not be responsible for managing the act's money. But we disagree on some big issues, so we're going to get into it. (Check Bruce out here: http://www.artistshousemusic.org/videos/bruce+allen, watch the whole video and see how a REAL manager does it.)
I love Canada. It's America without the attitude. And the American attitude is doing us no good.
Barack Obama speaks of olive leaves to our enemies, to bridge the gap of the hatred that the Administration has wrought around the world, but the cronies just pooh-pooh him for not wearing an American flag lapel pin.
Hillary takes a page out of the Republicans' book and runs on fear. What's worse, IT WORKS!
Who knows what the fuck is going on with our country anymore. The mainstream press constantly gets it wrong and the public is anesthetized by television. Maybe John Lennon had it right when he said it was only about Yoko and him. Oops, he's dead. Can't take away anybody's GUN!
I was reading a fascinating book on the plane, Frank Rich's "The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth in Bush's America". Truth, that was what Tolstoy believed in, that was the key to "War and Peace". But we get obfuscation and endless wars. With nobody willing to cough up taxes to pay for this folly.
I'm mad as hell and...I guess I'm going to have to continue to take it. I mean what kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where a guy running for President is more of a rock star than any musician? That's why people rally around Obama. He appears unsullied, he speaks truth, they can relate to him, he gives them hope that things can be better.
I want to have hope. That's why I switched teams. I'm sick of the usual suspects. I'm willing to take a chance on someone new. But whether Obama wins or not, we've got to take responsibility in this country. You can't have services and pay no taxes. We shouldn't be tolerating gang warfare. We should be standing up as citizens and taking our country BACK!
Bob
the world wants Obama to win.
Why?
Because America isn't the greatest country on Earth.
The country you are born in claims that right and not all of us were born in America.
The USA is a great country but not the greatest. Why not give the rest of us a little credit. Be patriotic, love your place of birth but don't forget you are only one of many.
We are all sick being railroaded by American foreign policy and now that it isn't working America expects the rest of us to take the blame. Sorry mate but we aren't going to do that anymore. The same way we Brits lost our Empire in a couple of generations you are going to have to face up to the reality of the new century. Russia has the oil and gas and China has the manpower. As for $4 a gallon, try $20+ which is what it cost us in Europe. You guys don't know when you are well off.
The US dollar is tanking because there is a new option - the Euro.
Ask yourself this. If you had a billion bucks to invest would you put it in a stable, friendly collection of countries who aren't going around the globe blowing up your citizens in the name of "democracy" or would you invest it in a group of countries with open borders and access to the richest markets?
It is a no brainer.
America had better start to pay attention to things outside its borders or things are going to get a whole lot worse. WE need you but the missing part of the equation is YOU NEED US.
I am delighted you are voting Obama. He may be as bad as the rest of them but at least he will allow us all a chance to become friends again. God knows we all need a bit more cooperation and a bit less bombing.
Give us our countries back and you will get yours as a bonus. Guaranteed.
cheers
you can read more here: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
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There are matter of great importance surrounding us, demanding answers. Sometime we know what to do and at other times we are stumped. In my world, today was a day when the bails came off and the great umpire in the sky sent me back to the pavilion.
I often delve into the political depths and on occasion I meet others who are more persuasive, erudite and intellectual than me. When that happens I try to stop and listen.
However, more often than not I think I have worked out the questions and most of the answers and so I can't hear a word anyone says to me. I don't think I am alone in that. Most of us are guilty of having cloth ears when it suits us. However today was different. I really couldn't hear a thing and it gave me an unexpected pause in my internal dialogue. You see I have had a cold recently and the result is that my eustacian tubes are clogged with something hideous and so I am temporarily rendered deaf.
I can't speak on the phone or hold a decent conversation. I have no idea of how far away things I cannot see are and if there was a nuclear explosion nearby I would probably say 'Pardon?" I have no sense of balance so my eyes are perpetually wobbling in my head like a demented Baby Born and worst of all I can't hear myself think. so I am a bit of liability to all and sundry right now.
Mrs B is delighted. She has spent the day shopping and has managed to avoid the daily battles of the infants which I am temporarily well equipped to deal with. In a vacuum no one can hear you scream - thankfully you can't hear them either so when the inevitable "DADDY!" rings out around the house hold I make no response. It drives the girls mad but it also makes things a bit more even than normal. I will have to remember what to do when I finally can hear again.
With such a sudden and unexpected disability I have been forced to make the best of what faculties I have left and so in a fit of creativity, this morning, I decided to replace the garden gate. I thought it would be easy. After all I had an identical replacement in the garage that has been waiting to be fitted for the best part of 4 months and today was destined to be its first day in the sun.
It began well enough - I offered it up to the space where it was to go and marked out the hinges. I made sure there was sufficient clearance for the bottom to swing freely and I made certain that the bolts I was using were suitably strong and of the correct dimensions to avoid lethal protruberences. It all looked easy.
And then the truth dawned. The old gates had changed shape and over time the warp and weft of the wood had bent them into parallel and strange dimensions. Much like the leaning tower of Pisa but without the drama, my old gate had five different planes and the only way I could get my new, and dimensionally unchallenged, replacement to fit would be by cutting bits off it.
Well, so be it. Nothing is ever easy and so, bereft of any other counsel (remember I couldn't hear it if it was offered anyway) I took the gate off and began to cut, saw, chisel and hack at the pristine moulded wood.
The new gate is made of some tropical hardwood so that it does not need to be replaced more than once every millennia. You might think that is a useful attribute for a piece of outdoor furniture but unless you have the same tool kit as Norm from Discovery Channels "This ol' house", you are in for a rough ride I can tell you. That gate is made from the hardest damn wood I have ever seen.
I am deeply grateful that I couldn't hear the noise my jigsaw made as it bit into the fibres. For all I know I now have white finger and permanent brain damage thanks to the efforts made by that might 200w motor but the thing is it simply wasn't man enough for the job. Deaf I may be but I have retained my sense of smell and it certainly came in useful when the motor on the appliance burnt out. First there was the shaking, then the slipping and following an incandescent flash of sparks, a smell of burning and that was it. $150 gone. My brilliant manly Bosch jigsaw was now a useless piece of hand candy. I'd like to think that is how all the lonely power tools, sitting in garages across the globe would wish to go to that workshop in the sky - hammering away at some exotic hardwood that finally overcomes their resistance before they expire in a flurry of sparks and incantations!
I had lost a friend but in the best traditions of English idiocy, I was not to be defeated and thankfully I knew that have a set of chisels left over from another project that I never completed and so, sobing like a baby at the loss of my German soul mate, I spent the rest of the day in purposeful whittleing. A bit here, a bit there, and lo and behold three hours later the gate was ready.
It was my masterpiece.
A veritable Chippendale of gate carving.
Bloody Hell I was chuffed!
I am sure that you have felt that emotion. It is a feeling of deep satisfaction when you have made something good. It could be a cake or a postcard, an embroidery or a house, no matter the sense is the same. "I DID THAT!" sings from your pores and you can settle in front of the TV that night warm in the glow of your own brilliance.
I felt that same frison as I drilled the holes and banged the fixings into the ironwood. My gate was excellent. It was the perfect fit. A masterpiece.
Except it wasn't.
I hadn't banked on the weight of the wood making the hinges settle in their slots and once it was fixed I realised that the damn thing was still about 10mm to big! Bugger!! Bugger!! Bugger!!!
The rain began to fall and as it is early January it was cold and less than inviting. And so I have a perfect gate with failed hinges at the end of my drive.
I can make it fit in about 10 minutes, but that is hardly the point is it?
The point is that there is always some unforeseen bugger up that can ruin even the most meticulous of plans. You can struggle through adversity and overcome unsurmountable odds only to find that you forgot to switch the gas off and your house has blown up whilst you were climbing Everest. We all have our bete noire's. Today mine was a slightly weak hinge. ( I never said they had to be dramatic.)
Other people are experiencing the same thing this week and no doubt observers are enjoying a little schadenfreude. But beware. Next time it could be you......
For Hillary Clinton it is a bloke called Barack Obama.
For Barak Obama it is a bloke called John Cain.
For Gordon Brown it is David Cameron
For Rafa Benitez it is a man named after a razor
For Kevin Rudd it is God
For Ehud Olmet it is Erhudt Barak. ( any relation to Obama?)
For you it is ........?
Whatever your fly in the ointment is don't fret.
Either you can fix it or you can't. There is no point worrying about it.
Sooner or later you will end up deaf, in the rain with a dodgy hinge and a one way ticket through Heavens Gate.
You might as well enjoy the insanity whilst you can.
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