Journal of an Urbane Gorilla

Magnetic Yellow Ribbon

Okay. This is for Pat because he liked it. It’s sung to the tune of “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree.” The SUV is real, the magnetic yellow ribbon is real, everything else is courtesy of Photoshop.

I think the way we can really support our troops would be to draft every one of these folks with their magnetic yellow ribbons on their big honkin' gas-guzzlin' SUVs.

I'm staying home
won't go to war.
You can fight
for my right
to guzzle gas some more.

There ain't no rhyme or reason
to put my butt at risk.

In the dollar we trust
you'll never see us
across the deep blue sea
Magnetic yellow ribbon on my S-U-V

Magnetic yellow ribbon on my SUV
Means you go to war
But no, not me.

Magnetic yellow ribbon on my SUV
you can stay on the bus
Forget about us
I won’t be an amputee
Magnetic yellow ribbon on my S-U-V

A dopo e Moochas smoochas,

Please give what you can to Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders).

The day of glory has arrived! Liberty, sweet Liberty!*

Happy Birthday, France! Wow, I wish I could be there. Bet you’re going to have fireworks off the Eiffel Tower or, at least, at the Place de la Concorde. The French know how to party.

By the way, on a wall at the Place de la Concorde is a plaque. It’s a very simple plaque and it says (in so many words), “Thank you, America for saving our bacon and for the Marshall Plan. It was a close thing, but you were great! Nous vous aimons!”

Yes, the French do owe us a lot, but we owe them a lot too. The precepts that this country was founded on we got from the great French philosophers. The financing for our revolution came from France and of course there was General Lafayette (did you know that he was only 19 years old when came to America to fight for our revolution?). Lady Liberty in New York harbour was a gift from the French. Well, the list goes on and on.

Now lately you’ve probably been hearing that there’s difference between weather and climate: the former being a short term thing and the latter being the long term thing that’s really important. Well, our ‘weather’ with the French may be tempestuous at times, but our ‘climate’ was will always be les cieux bleus.

The photo at the top I took a few years back. I had never realized that the Eiffel Tower had a curve to it. The second photo is from the Google Earth site. Isn’t it the coolest?

Vive la France et beaucoup de retours heureux!

A dopo e Moochas smoochas,

Please give what you can to Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders).

Okay, let’s all sing "La Marseillaise" together:

*Allons enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arriv
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L'tendard sanglant est lev
Entendez vous dans les campagnes,
Mugir ces froces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Egorger nos fils, nos compagnes!

Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
Marchons! Marchons!
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!

Amour sacr de la patrie,
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs!
Libert, Libert cherie,
Combats avec tes defenseurs!
Sous nos drapeaux, que la victoire
Accoure tes males accents!
Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!

Nous entrerons dans la carrire
Quand nos ains n'y seront plus;
Nous y trouverons leur poussire
Et la trace de leurs vertus.
Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre
Que de partager leur cercueil,
Nous aurons le sublime orgueil
De les venger ou de les suivre!

Humanity is an ocean*

There is a very compelling account in The Guardian today:

Sergeant Steve Betts of the British Transport police was one of the first rescuers to reach the Piccadilly line train between King's Cross and Russell Square on Thursday. This is his harrowing account:
It was pitch black and we had torches. The tunnel where the train was was about 150 metres down the track round a corner and there were still a few wounded coming towards us as we approached. As I walked down the track, I heard someone cry out for help but I could not see them. I called out back and looked around but it was very smoky and dusty and they did not answer.

I got into the train and it was quite obvious that this was something horrendous. There were people with limbs missing, huge open wounds with their organs showing and people were crying out and moaning and asking for help.
I thought, this is the worst thing I have ever seen. I am not very good in enclosed spaces at the best of times and we had to climb over bodies and body parts to try to help people and see who was still alive. I thought this is the end of the world, right here in this carriage, but you have to do your job.

I found a man and his leg had been blown off below the knee, there was another body next to him. There was also what I thought was a pile of clothes but as I passed to try and get to the man, it moaned and asked me for help. It was a woman. She had all her limbs blown off. I think she died on the concourse.

We had not yet got into the carriage where the bomb had exploded but we had to get in there to make sure no one else was alive. That was a scene I cannot describe.

The roof had collapsed and we had to almost crawl in. There were body parts everywhere, there was not one bit as far as I could see that was not covered with organs or blood or bits of body. I was squashed in by chairs and dead bodies as we searched for anyone alive. I could not help standing on things but I had to carry on and do my job. It was like collecting a lot of shop dummies and then cutting them up, pouring black paint over them, and filling the carriage.

After a couple of hours, I came up. The station was pretty quiet by now but someone asked me for directions which made me smile and that made me feel more human. But, as I stood there I felt lonelier than I thought was possible, I just wanted to see a friend or somebody new and give them a hug.

Okay, Gweeds here: hug the person next to you. Didn't that feel good? That's why you're called human beings.

A dopo e Moochas smoochas,

Please give what you can to Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders).

*You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. - Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

All you need is love

I was going to do a post on Ringo Starr’s birthday today, but we awoke to something horrific. When I turned on my laptop, there was an email from our friends, Emilia and Dom, who live very near a couple of the blasts. Emilia assured us that they were okay and that Dom had not gone to work. Since he works near Russell Square, this was a relief.

Then I tried to reach our friends Marian and Emlyn. They live in Wales, but I knew that Marian and her auntie were going be visiting London. The phones weren’t functioning for a while. By the time we touched base, I was more than little frantic. It turns out that they were planning on going next week. Emlyn’s determined to go now: no miserable git of a terrorist is going get him down.

Now, I don’t usually talk about this sort of stuff; but this calls for few thoughts. I know that there will always be people who will put their theology or ideology before humanity. Somehow, they convince themselves that they can kill in the vain hope that it will advance their cause. Of course it does no such thing. It might momentarily scare some folks, but I think that most people react as Emlyn did today: they aren’t going to destroy me, my beliefs or my liberty.
After the initial chaos, people find their humanity and reach out to one another. Then, we become something more, something better than we were before. The human spirit can soar above any obstacle that hate puts before it.

I don’t know what it takes to make a person become filled with so much hate, and I don’t want to know. The rest of us will go on, we will persevere and we will prevail as long as we don’t allow their hate to permeate our souls.

So my message to the bombers is this: sod off you hate-filled wankers!

As for you, faithful readers: remember, all you need is love.
Hey, Ringo, Happy Birthday! Keep it real.

A dopo e Moochas smoochas,

Please give what you can to Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders).

Nasty, Brutish, and Short *

No, that’s not a description of my Uncle Louie. Grams says that’s what life would be like outside of the Leviathan. The big ‘L’ is, of course, any sovereign state. Well, I know how that can be, back in The Small Banana Republic, we were next door to a lawless country. Ooooh, it was nasty and all that other stuff.

What brings me to this subject? We met with my CPA today: the taxman. Very nice fellow. Grams always makes me come along to see the taxman, in case there were any questions about my ledger. She says that she doesn’t want anything questionable in there and she always checks it out first in case, she says, there’s any entry that “doesn’t pass the sniff test.” Whatever that means. It all went well. Showed him my blog (he loved it).

So, that’s over with for another year. But, it reminded me of something. When we returned from Paris we had to change planes in Detroit. This was an experiment: we usually fly non-stop. It was an unmitigated disaster. I won’t go into the delays or the wee plane from Michigan to California. The worst part was having to go through immigration/customs in Detroit.

We were directed to a line that turned out to be the slow one. The line next to us was moving apace, while we were standing still. Grams had to use her unpleasant voice because we were going to miss our connecting flight. Then we had to run to catch our plane. Not good, not good.

When we got to LAX, we waited until midnight before we realized that the coast road was closed due to landslides everywhere and the only way we were getting home was to fly. But, there were no more flights at that time. We had to go to a hotel for the night and fly out the next morning. That short flight cost what it cost just one of us to fly to France. Ouch!

So, imagine my surprise when I opened my suitcase and found this notice.
I showed it to Grams. “My, my Gweeds. Look, our tax dollars at work. This does reassure me. See, they do check the bags. And, they didn’t even mess your knickers about.” Well, I suppose she’s right, this time. Life is good inside the Leviathan when you consider the alternative.

A la prochaine. Moochas smoochas,

Please give what you can to Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders).

Actually the quote is: "The life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." when he's outside the Leviathan, according to Thomas Hobbes

With a shine on my shoes, and a melody in my heart!

I’m packed. I’m ready. I’m tapping my toes and waiting. We leave for Paris

tomorrow morning.

We have to start off in the middle of the night because we live so far away from anything resembling an international airport.

We’ve been watching the TV and thinking about all those people in the earthquake and tsunami. I feel guilty because we’re so safe. You just never know. Grams takes this all to heart.

I’m going to go make her a cuppa.

A la prochaine. Moochas smoochas,

Bean is in the building

Yes, the day is finally here.
After months (9 to be exact) of designing, waiting, planning,
Forrest Grant Huff arrived at 12:37 PM on the 22nd of October.
He weighed in at 7 lbs 15 oz. and is 21” long.
According to the Grams he is perfect in every way.
The mold is therefore broken.
Well, you can tell by the picture.