One Last Hurrah

I'm perched once again within an arm-rest infested cluster of airport departure chairs. I'm still sane, but barely. I leave for Blighty this evening, not to return to Tucson until August, and likely not to frequent this page in a manner befitting my audience. I apologize in advance. My mind numbs with the pleasures of home and there are far too many distractions on holiday to piece together a coherent strain of thought. I'll use the opportunity to vocalize my opinions rather than change them. Indeed, I've never been so sad to leave the States, even during a period of unseasonably cool weather here in Arizona: good preparation, no doubt, for the unpredictability of England. As the climate warms here so do I toward the notion of calling America home, at least for the foreseeable future. It was Orwell who highlighted the wealth of names we ascribe to Britain, not to mention its divisions: the British Isles, the United Kingdom, the UK, Britain, Great Britain, and I'm positive I've missed a couple. It indicates a nation unsure of itself, disjointed and fractured. As individuals, the people of Britain are educated and tolerant, but as a collective they're cynical, introvert, and intolerant. Watching scandal after scandal unfold in British politics over the last few weeks (not to mention the greatest travesty of them all - Brown remains PM) has left me remarkably grateful not to be a recipient of all the media guff that comes with it, and grateful to be blogging at a fairly safe distance. So, I shall take up the reins again in August, dear reader. I wish I had a protege to hand over to for the time being but, so far, no one has volunteered (I admit, the bar is set pretty high). Wish me a safe and pleasant crossing. I pass on my sincerest good-will for the Summer months. Enjoy yourself, as I shall be. Before I go, a sweet little girl of five or six, barely three arm-rests away from me, has just exclaimed to her oafish mother, "Mum, that man looks like my Dad!", and accompanied her assertion with an outstretched finger. Absolutely fantastic.

Iran and Revolution

My silence surrounding the situation in Iran is not for want of trying, dear reader. Every time I broach an opinion or formulate an exposition, I'm outdone by the print media and my online contemporaries. If you have been a good bloggist you will undoubtedly already have discovered Michael Totten's specialized blog over at Commentary magazine. His knowledge of the Middle East and its intricacies is astounding, while his devotion to the area and its politics makes me feel like I shouldn't even attempt to comment. Don't neglect his regular blog either, as he's posted a wealth of images and video alongside a salad of the latest journalism, all of which are devoted to the protests and developments as they unfold. It would be irresponsible to condense his coverage into a single soundbite, but he did offer us this in jest:

In case you just woke up from a week-long nap, there is an uprising in Iran that may change the country forever.

What's more, Christopher Hitchens appeared on CNBC earlier today during The Kudlow Report to discuss the issues at present. He lamented President Obama's silence and apparent lack of support with the Iranian protesters, many of whom take severe risks in doing so (far beyond what may cause you or me to stay at home), and clarified his own position, one of solidarity with the demonstrators.

They should know that we are on their side, unconditionally.

This is a position I share. It's fairly clear for all to see that, whether you watch the videos posted on YouTube by the protesters, or delve into the details of how the 1979 revolution shaped the country that has since decayed under Khomeini's theocracy, Iran tinkers on a knife-edge. One heroic surge could topple the regime; all evidence suggests that it's already on its knees. Hitchens quotes Lenin's definition of a revolution and suggests that "both conditions of that definition have more or less been fulfilled". In fact, Lenin eloquently remarked earlier that a revolution involves:

A crisis in the policy of the ruling class which causes fissures through which the discontent and the indignation of the oppressed classes burst forth.

The reaction of Ahmadinejad and his cronies is indicative of a ruling class in crisis ("The situation in the country is in a very good condition") and the cracks are surfacing.

Ad Hominem

Hating a band by default is completely acceptable in the case of Coldplay, Kasabian, and the Killers. As if further proof were needed in the case of the latter, I offer the following:

Only U2 and Radiohead rank higher in the pantheon of globe-conquering rock bands. But now the Killers' time has come, says singer Brandon Flowers.

As if U2 should even be mentioned in the same breath as Radiohead. And what about Floyd or the Stones? You're an idiot, Flowers, with sordid pretensions above your lowly station of teenage pop-rock. Wanker. Further, I've just noticed the inexcusable employment of the term 'rock band' in the above. I'd like to see Flowers go up to Yorke and say that to his face.

YouTube Wednesday

Damien Rice popped into Nigel Godrich's basement some time after Radiohead performed their set there, post-In Rainbows, to good effect. See this sublime solo version of 9 Crimes, a song I never took to like some people, but now I feel strangely converted. The tempo is much slower and the lyrics are sung with emphasis. He seems to have adopted a Thom Yorke-ism as well, singing "no no no" repeatedly over the piano to finish the song. Meanwhile, Blur reunited on stage as a four-piece for the first time in almost ten years in East London's Rough Trade record store a couple of days ago. Here's a short, and yet brilliant clip of the song, This Is A Low. Radiohead fans: feel free to gloat about the fact that when Radiohead announced they'd play a secret gig there in late 2007, there was such a ruckus that they had to move the performance to a larger venue down the road in order to accommodate all the veterans who journeyed in with less than twelve hours notice.

P.S. Now that YouTube have the High Quality button (which I strongly recommend you click), why is there not a function to toggle it on or off indefinitely, rather than click on it every time I open a new video, thus interrupting the flow and causing distortion? Idiots.

Another Ridiculous Conundrum

Here's another one for my philosophically minded friends. On the basis that the image you see in a mirror is the reflection of your former self, due to the time it takes the light to travel from your person to the mirror and back again, if you were to line up a sufficient number of mirrors, so as to be reflecting one another back and forth, would you eventually see yourself as a foetus?

For Tim Dutton

"Goddammit," Doc Daneeka expostulated politely in an uncommon excess of exasperation, "what's the matter with you two men anyway? It just isn't right for a person to have a low temperature all the time and walk around with a stuffed nose. Just look how cold I am right now. You're sure you're not holding anything back?"

"You're dead, sir," one of his two enlisted men explained.

Doc Daneeka jerked his head up quickly with resentful distrust. "What's that?"

"You're dead, sir," repeated the other. "That's probably the reason you always feel so cold."

"That's right, sir. You've probably been dead all this time and we just didn't detect it."

"What the hell are you both talking about?"

"It's true, sir," said one of the enlisted men. "The records show that you went up in McWatt's plane to collect some flight time. You didn't come down in a parachute, so you must have been killed in the crash."

"That's right, sir," said the other. "You ought to be glad you've got any temperature at all."

Doc Daneeka's mind was reeling in confusion. "Have you both gone crazy?" he demanded. "I'm going to report this whole insubordinate incident to Sergeant Towser."

"Sergeant Towser's the one who told us about it," said either Gus or Wes. "The War Department's even going to notify your wife."

Hitchens v. Craig

Only a few moment ago high quality footage was uploaded of the recent debate between our mentor and guide, Christopher Hitchens, and the media-friendly Christian apologist, William Lane Craig. The Hitchens world has gone quiet recently, with little television coverage since his appearance on The Hour, due very possibly to the penning of his memoir, but this encounter, staged at the Biola University in Southern California (a constitutionally Christian institution) was, indeed, extraordinary. Hitchens' arguments have evolved somewhat since the rigour of his book tours and I see him trying to shake things up a little bit and go for the jugular, so to speak, rather than fall back on the lay arguments that have a tendency to lead to regressions when posed to an audience predisposed towards 'faith'. I shan't expand on his arguments here, as I'll leave them for you to fully indulge in, and neither shall I try and tear down Craig's arguments as I don't have a spare 24 hours. Craig has quite a methodical way of speaking that I imagine will appeal to a student audience. That's not to say his points were methodical, but rather, he talks like an essay and adopts this strange excitable mode of oration that I suspect results from years of watching priests and pastors do exactly the same. He was, at times, laughable, and at others, infuriating. His mercilessly repeated claim that atheism has not been proved to be true, for example, was painstaking in the extreme. Atheism cannot be true; it is instead the very claim that something is not true. Likewise, his fervency in his assertion that Christ rose from the dead, which he foolishly tied inextricably to his overlying argument that God, therefore, exists, presented a fundamentalism that lost him the debate. Also, is it just me, or does he appear to claim that atheists consider rape acceptable? I mean, please.

UPDATE: The YouTube clips have been removed due to a request from Biola University. Don't let them get away with it - download the whole video free at the Pirate Bay here.

More on Masa

Masa recommended that I post the video of his victory in the 100m Fly at Santa Clara to go some way towards neutralizing the tremendous humiliation he suffered as a result of being exposed losing to your good author. He came up against some stiff competition in that race, including a full-suited Ryan Lochte and a former world-record holder, and, to be fair, he pulled it out of the bag. However, I'm not so good natured as to post these kind of acknowledgments for no reason other than my innate generosity, so I suggest you wait until after the race and witness the best interview you've ever heard. Classic.

Masa and Me

My cohort Masayuki Kishida, a Japanese Olympian, has relentlessly pursued me over the last year to include his name on this blog in some form or another, so at last I have the perfect opportunity to do so. To conclude a year-long war of competition, I supremely trounced him in last night's 100m Freestyle at the Santa Clara Grand Prix by 4 one-hundredths of a second. Notice how we both go out far too fast and come back in a body bag. We both died harder than Bruce Willis. I'm in lane 2 at the far side of your picture and he's in lane eight, one lane up from the bottom. For novelty value, check Jean Basson's 55 after speed-changing on deck.

Parachutes

Ah, the great American delay. You read me, dear reader, as I sit stranded in San Jose awaiting my flight home to Phoenix. I look forward to a revamp of the whole sky-travel system. One small break in the chain and the whole operation collapses; a few minutes extra here can cost hours, if not days, there. Fortunately, Burger King is no stranger to the local food court and I'm testing the new "Angry Whopper", as opposed to the original, calm whopper. It's only angry, so far as I can see, because of the addition of bacon and jalapenos, which I promptly removed, making, I suppose, a subdued whopper, but a whopper none the less. It's strange that my last two posts should come from airports on either end of my journey. Airports have the tendency to dull the synapses somewhat, so I've no idea whether my prose is at all discernible. I'll have to wait until I've reached a more pleasurable and assiduous setting to review, at which time I'll delve deeper into what I have to say (the whole whopper thing was a bit forced, don't you think?). Prepare yourself for notes from the underground of world swimming, including the defeat of Micheal Phelps following those weird cigarettes.