CHARRIDY

I hate it when charites send you those crappy pens that are sent to make you feel guilty if you use them and dont give or even if you throw them away and dont give. I don't like being bombarded with appeals for money that I dont have. But I do think I should do something.

Well, Dr Pants and I have come up with something. It is a charity which works on a scale that I can understand, called Vetaid. They are small scale, they manage a high donation to actual end user ratio and are, a lot of fun.

The money from the sale of our chickens' eggs goes to them. It is not a lot in the scheme of things, but the advantage is, I can connect with Vetaid in a way I could not with others.

Among other things, Vetaid provides chickens to no-income families in Africa, particularly those families that have been ravaged by AIDS. Once installed, the chickens provide a low-maintenance form of daily nutrition. It is therefore nicely fitting that our hens help provide chickens for somebody else.

click on the link on the left for more info

Paulo Freire

I didn’t understand anything because of my hunger. I wasn’t dumb. It wasn’t lack of interest. My social condition didn’t allow me to have an education. Experience showed me once again the relationship between social class and knowledge

This is the third time i have tried to publish this thread and it keeps disappearing. I do hope i am not being paranoid about it.

This nice old bloke is Paulo Freire. He wrote a book called,

The Pedagogy of the Opressed

which changed the way I think about things.

To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it

The Curse of the Weasel

Since the Weasel is notoriusly adept at predicting the demise of public figures, we come to the thorny case of Charles Kennedy. He is apparently leader of the Lib Dems, but you wouldn't necessarily know that cos he keeps a low profile.

Words like, "lazy" and "boozer" have been used quite freely of late and the rebellion amongst the republican guard can be likened to a seething miasma of compressed bogies, hissing on a boiling radiator. (obnoxious, tacky and mostly unattributable.)

Yesterday, I would not have given the story much credence, but now, we are talking weeks. Charles Kennedy will throw in the towel sometime in January, certainly by the end of January. Watch this space. The Weasel has spoken.

The Top Totty List

It's mad, it's bad but i can't help it.
Favourite Women. Why? Because they are famous? How very shallow. But you would, wouldn't you? And so in no particular order:

• Judi Dench
• Bjork
• Rhona Cameron (yes, yes I know)
• Gina Mckee
• Shirley Henderson
• Franka Potente (above)
• Martha Kearney
• Alison Goldfrapp
• Darcy Bussell
• Dr Pants
  

(to be added to as the whim takes me)

If forced to, my Spice Girl would be Sporty aka Mel C
Carol Thatcher is clearly available, and strangely attractive,in the same way that lack of underarm deoderant can be, but would you like her weeing in your swimming pool?

The week this week

what a week it has been, culminating in the attemped destruction of Hemel Hempstead.

The 25th Anniversary of John Lennon's death.

The election of yet another leader of the Conservative Party... rather like electing a new Captain of the Titanic, I would have thought...not just a poisoned chalice, a stinky rotten one too.

But most of all, (sobs uncontrollably) the passing of the routemaster bus.

Night of the Demon - Movie of the week

One of my all time, favourite films. Directed by Jacques Tourneur, (Cat People, Berlin Express etc.) It is a 1950's supernatural thriller loved, also it transpires, by Kate Bush, whose Hounds of Love samples the film at the outset "It's in the trees".

It is never shown on British TV these days and the DVD version is a USA region in NTSC format, so it is not a lot of use to me. I do have an old copy on video, which is nearly worn out.

Dana Andrews plays a sceptical scientist caught up in the machinations of a devil cult. Niall MacGinnis plays its leader, Julian Karswell, possibly modelled on real life wicked man Aleister Crowley.
It is a cracker of a plot, spoiled only by the appearance of the rather naff demon, which was allegedly included in the cut against the director's wishes.
Tourneur, like me, likes trains, and the final scenes are played out on one.
This is a must see film, so it gets *****

The Violin Girl c1994

Another one of mine. Click on pic to enlarge

Folk Night at the Robin Hood c1994

I love this picture, even though i drew it myself. I have fond memories of many healing nights in the place when I had not much else to do and nowhere else to go. I never got drunk, I couldn't afford it, but yes, it was the sort of place where you went in and the landlord was already pouring your drink, and most people nodded as you went you your favourite spot.

The Robin Hood has long been tarted up and everyone has moved on. As for the picture, I like the ethereal look.

Is it stretching credibility to suggest a resemblance to the style of Edvard Munch?

Album of the Week...a regular spot, probably,

Laurel Canyon. A place in the Hollywood Hills, so hip even the trees wear Ray Bans. John Mayall. the Ubermeister of Electric Blues. Put them together and you get John Mayall's Blues from Laurel Canyon, a piece of quintessential sixties cool. This gets five stars from me.
*****
l

John Lennon 25 years ago

I can't remember where I was yesterday, let alone 25 years ago. Anyway, some saddo shot Lennon and we must (apparently) consider the legacy.

What I can remember is thinking "Well, that really is the end of the Beatles", as clearly the only reunion was going to be in the afterlife.

No more Beatles? My feeling about the Fabs has not changed. They were four very clever people plus a very clever producer who, collectively created work far better than they ever did as solo artists. And of course they were, and are still, way ahead of anybody else in creativity and artistry. If there is such a thing as collective genius, they were it. Of course the egos took over and Lennon began to think he was Jesus Christ. And then went on to beat his wife and ignore his children. And then wrote an appalling piece of drivel called, "Imagine", which just showed how morally and artistically bankrupt he had become. Perhaps his time had come.

Fallingwater "when I run dry, I stop a while and think of you"

I have been intrigued by this building for some time; I have a print of it on my wall. The House is called "Fallingwater", designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, for E.J.Kaufmann.

It is a fine example of the triumph of form over function (it nearly collapsed and would have if the engineers had not altered FLW's design) and in spite of being constructed with concrete is a masterpiece of organic architecture, straddling, as it does, a waterfall in dense woodland.

FLW is a complex figure; he seemed to lurch from the status of genius to abject failure in the sight of his peers, appearing at times timid and at others arrogant.

The Calm White Brow

The novella languishes in its box. I am at a regular point with it in the cycle of getting it published; somewhere between lethargy and disgust. Here for the curious is a synopsis. (click on the pic to enlarge).

I can remember the day we left for Italy. Oh what a splendid moment that was! We got all dressed up and drank Gin and It at the Mayfair. Sam Browne was performing with the Ambrose orchestra and he sang “Day by Day” during a teatime broadcast for the BBC. It was terribly gay and we rather regretted leaving for the Train.

One day it will happen. One day.

Everything that can only be said with silence

This is the Ile de la Cité, a wonderful photograph by Henri Cartier Bresson. (click to enlarge) The title comes from Louis-René Des Forêts who also wrote,

‘to impose silence on yourself through devotion to language is to imply that words are factors of betrayal’.

and I have to agree, or I probably wouldn't be doing this blog.
The picture is one of my favourites, because it is grounded and calmed by the early morning fog, rather like when you are smoking the first cigarette of the day.

Human Rights

Let us just make sure that "human rights" does not become synonymous with the tyranny of the weak

Boxing

Nobody seems to talk about this:

I think that the "sport" of boxing is brutal, barbaric, exploitative and degrades humanity.

I do not, as a rule, go in for banning things, but when i am ruler of the universe it will disappear from coverage on television, the Olympic Games and all publically owned venues.

How sick do you have to be to enjoy watching people beat the shit out of each other?

Channel Four News

Tempting as it is to default to the BBC for all things newsy, I find that when I want to know what is really going on I have to turn to Channel Four News. I refer to it as "The Truth" in our house, and that just about sums it up.

I have put a permanent link to their web page under "a truthfull approximation of what's going on in the world" if you want to check out their web site.

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The Man from del Monte he say, "I need a nice sit down"

It was a new day yesterday...

Welcome, whoever you are, to Wrinkled Weasel's Blog. Wrinkled Weasel is not my real name. My real name is far too untidy to use in a blog, and besides, WW just about sums me up. FYI I am a fifty-one year old male, living in the UK. I have a wife, Dr Pants, and two reasonably grown up children, Biggles and Sparkie, all of whom I currently love and cherish.

Dr Pants is busy pushing forward the boundaries of science, (virology, I think) and Biggles and Sparkie are students (ugh!) I sit at home and fume about the world and everything in it.

The latter point is why this blog was born. Although in the past, some of my rants have been heard on public platforms, many just get heard by the weary and patient Dr Pants, who frankly, deserves better at the end of a hard day's pontificating.