California Bullfights 2006

As Easter approaches, I went to the California bullfighting schedule. I was saddened to read that the Madera bullfight is cancelled and that the ring is going to be closed. Anyway, the first bullfight of the season is going to be in Stevinson on the 1st of May. Another one to make a point of going to is the 30th Anniversary of the Turlock Forcados on the 28th of May, also in Stevinson. The 15th of May looks promising, too. I like the matador.

Remember, if you are interested in going to any of these, check the schedule within a week of the event, as these things are notorious for changing at the last minute.

Calder and the Surrealists

We went to SFMOMA on Monday to look at the show of Calder that tries to link him with the Parisian Surrealists. It was a fun show, working for me more like a pleasant highlights of the Calder retrospective a few years back, but they completely failed to make the connection between Calder and Breton stick. I mentioned this to a fellow art lover at the North Beach Lectura Dantis, and she agreed, as do The Chronicle's Kenneth Baker and Tyler Green.

Anyway, if you are in the area, it is a good show, with a mesmerizing Picasso and lots of fun Calder works, certainly worth the time (as is the permanent collection, currently displaying a lovely Diebenkorn cityscape).

By the way, speaking of the Bay Area and one of my favorite artists, be sure to read this post about Wayne Thiebaud works and this one of a peculiar Thiebaud, totally out of the ordinary for this artist (although not out of the ordinary in terms of the painting techniques that Thiebaud was using in the fifties. He was still under the sway of Abstract Expressionist paint handling, and had not found his voice in the works that have come to characterize him).

Conservatives in the Arts

Of all the living art critics there are two that I regularly find worth reading: Robert Hughes and Tyler Green. I have not been reading Modern Art Notes as often as I should, so I took a gander over there.

My biggest complaint about both of these critics is when they spill ink or pixels over the cost of works of art and the administrivia of museum governance. I will let them in on a secret: museums are not all that important for the world of living art. At least they shouldn't be. As much as I believe that people should see contemporary art, I don't find the museum the ideal setting. For one thing, the strength in a museum comes from collecting great works, and curators are notoriously inept at picking works that will stand beyond the faddishness of the times. Some do it better than others, but I am going to be more inclined to go to a museum to see what a curator, given the benefit of a few decades or centuries, makes of art that has not flashed in the pan and gone into sweet oblivion.

My second least favorite thing to read about is the politics of artists. Some artists were and are well-read and have thought about politics considerably. Most are not and tend to repeat whatever the chattering classes find fashionable at the moment. A painting just doesn't work in terms of arguing a political viewpoint. It might serve to inspire those who are already in the camp of the artist, but to enslave art to cheerleading is depressing.

However, Mr. Green brings up an interesting topic on politics and the arts here. Why is most art so leftist?

The answer is simple: a conservative artist does not see art as being a good vehicle for political debate, especially one that is reduced to a few loaded images to inspire the troops. The transformative nature of art is going to be in the realm of inspiring contemplation and reflection, something that runs contrary to the notion of art as a call to action.

Socially there is also the problem of the lack of interest in the arts among so-called conservatives who persist in seeing Beauty as superfluous, secondary to the material goals of the free market. Just as the left gives lip service to supporting the arts (so long as the arts are seen as good team players), the American right gives lip service to a few complaints that there are no conservatives involved in the arts.

If the American right wants a conservative voice in the arts, it will have to provide one. It doesn't really care that much, so it won't happen, and this is a good thing. While the arts don't need the silly agitprop of Kara Walker, they will receive equally useless service from a neo-Thomas Hart Benton.

The best approach for conservatives to take is Teddy Rooseveltian: speak softly and carry a big stick. Support artists who do what the arts do best, and let that art stand out in glorious contrast to the insipid crap that Judy Chicago and her ilk plop out on the art world.

Also, the most important thing for our culture is to see that our children get instruction in drawing. Even if the child does not go into any art-related field, the ability to draw is one of the most powerful ways that our great art traditions can be upheld. It is also the best way to, in the words of John Ruskin, "learn to love Nature...." and to "know how to appreciate the art of others."

In Ruskin's notice to his class he says it best:

"The teacher of landscape painting wishes it ot be generally understood by all his pupils, that the instruction given in his classes is not intented to fit them for becoming artists, or in any direct manner, to advance their skill in the occupations that they follow. They are taught drawing, primarily in order to direct their attnetion accurately to the beauty of God's work in the material universe; and secondly, that they may be enabled to record with some degree of truth, the forms and colour of objects, when such recording is is likely to be useful."

Now, obviously I believe that using many of Ruskin's methods can and will produce some artists capable of greatness, but drawing must also be seen as part of one's general education. If conservatives really care about the culture, drawing will have an integral part in the child's curriculum. Then we can talk about reclaiming our culture. Otherwise so-called conservative crankiness about the world of art is all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The Kitchen Meme (from Julie)

I meant to do this one a few days ago, but did not have time.

1. How many meals does most of your family eat at home each week? How many are in your family?
Almost all of them, except for Thursdays, when Amalia and I eat over at my parents' house, and when I review restaurants (some weeks that means eating out three or four times, other weeks, just once).

2. How many cookbooks do you own?
A lot. It's a professional hazard.

3. How often do you refer to a cookbook each week?
Maybe once or twice. I read them through when I get them, then I might look back at them once in awhile, particularly if I am baking or want something to come out in a particular way.

4. Do you collect recipes from other sources?
Yes

5. How do you store those recipes?
Haphazardly. I might be wanting to cook some Italian cake, but cannot find the recipe. Then, a month later, I will stumble on five, cut out and tucked in a cookbook.

6. When you cook, do you follow the recipe pretty closely, or do you use recipes primarily to give you ideas?
I generally modify, improvise, change and adapt to seasonal ingredients.

7. Is there a particular ethnic style or flavor that predominates in your cooking? If so, what is it?
Italiano.

8. What's your favorite kitchen task related to meal planning and preparation?
Planning the week's menus.

9. What's your least favorite part?
Cleaning up.

10. Do you plan menus before you shop?
Yes, but I always am flexible in case I see something that strikes my fancy.

11. What are your three favorite kitchen tools or appliances?
Ten inch chef's knife. Espresso machine. Blender.

12. If you could buy one new thing for your kitchen, money was no object, and space not an issue, what would you most like to have?
A gigantic, eight burner professional range with gargantuan hood.

13. Since money and space probably are objects, what are you most likely to buy next?
A new coffee grinder.

14. Do you have a separate freezer for storage?
No, but I would love one.

15. Grocery shop alone or with others?
Usually with Amalia or Melanie. Of course when I have a cart full of cardoni, salsify and sunchokes, I generally have about four people asking me what they are and what I do with them.

16. How many meatless main dish meals do you fix in a week?
One.

17. If you have a decorating theme in your kitchen, what is it? Favorite kitchen colors?
I hate our kitchen, but if I had my way (and budget, space, etc.), it would be rustic industrial, with lots of unpainted metal, concrete, and a gigantic kitchen fireplace with a spit.

18. What's the first thing you ever learned to cook, and how old were you?
I grew up making pasta, which served me well as troop cook for my Boy Scout Troop. My first big solo project was making croissants (from scratch) and cheese souffle for a brunch when I was twelve, but by then I was already making minestrone, pesto, sugo finto, etc.

19. How did you learn to cook?
From my family. A lot of it came from my grandmother (an under five-footer who was not afraid to use corporal punishment on her six-footer grandson if he failed to handle pasta correctly. Toss, not stir. Whack.). I learned some stuff from my mother. Some from books, some from experiment, some from friends (particularly Asian food), even from cooking shows. A lot of what I learn now comes from analyzing dishes that I taste in restaurants. Culinary deconstruction, if you will. And you probably won't. I don't blame you a bitl;

Puritans on Pyres

The problem with modern day puritanism is that it is mostly free from any religious connection, beyond the same anemic spiritual poison that motivates most hedonists. In fact, many hedonists tend to attempt some sort of balance by being puritans in some way, so they might hump anything that moves, but make their atonement by vegetarianism or jogging.

In the old days a puritan was a puritan through and through. Now, we can't just go around grabbing folks with buckles on their hats and loading them into the boxcars. I wish it were so easy, but, alas...this modern age.

One can even encounter a puritan in a Catholic church these days.

This separation of the puritans from any particular creed is not only an inconvenience for the day when we can actually prosecute these weenies, but a danger that lets puritans pretend that their puritanism is beyond simple creed, that it is SCIENCE or HEALTH or whatever crap they are peddling at the time.

Take creeps like these people. What motivates someone to be active in some initiative like this? What mental illness is at work here?

This is one of the symptoms of a land where everything is framed in the binary: one is either a teetotaler or an alcoholic, a nonsmoker or a three pack a day addict. One is either among the Elect or the Damned. Since it is difficult to draw exact and meaningful lines between use and abuse, lines that will fit every individual in every circumstance, to hell with it. We'll just go with binary categories and get to work cleaning.

Since there is an obvious resonance with simple people here (look at the recurring problems of Cathari, Calvinists, Mormons, etc.), once the viewpoint is tarted up with some junk science, to the average Joe, lacking in wit, reason, and armed only with a few sayings and deeply held emotions, it seems like something pretty normal. As it is incrementally increased (remember the folks who assured us back in the eighties that it was paranoid to think that requiring non-smoking sections would eventually lead to a complete prohibition, even in bars? Probably not, because it just seems so weird to think that smoking was ever allowed anywhere, right?), a direction is given, and if you believe in progress (which you do, right, because otherwise we would all be in the dark ages again), you want to get on board with that trajectory.

Now we add to the mix the notion that to support something means that one is obviously making money at that thing. So if someone does research that shows that second hand smoke is hardly the public health menace that is repeated over and over by the same people, all the puritans have to do is find a financial connection, however slight, between the research and the thing being defended, and the presumption is on corruption. Never mind that research done with predetermined results in support of ideology gets a pass on a regular basis.

And the other thing going against the proper views on alcohol, tobacco, and the like, is that there is no way to sanely balance lunacy, and we have a society that views balance as the goal. So you have puritan nuts out there, and there are no equally monomaniacal pro-alcohol people (except for perhaps a few that can be proven as having a financial stake in the industry), and the feeling of consensus is hammered in: see, join the bandwagon, the new Mayflower, like everyone else. Science and health are on our side.

So, what is to be done?

The obvious allies on this issue are the libertarians, but they are right on these issues for the wrong reason.

What we need is a militant anti-Puritan stream. One that keeps its hands free from any financial benefit (although the puritans are certainly not practicing poverty, it's just that their filthy lucre is sanitized by foundations), but hammers with the same insistance as the enemy.

As the obvious leader of this movement, yet lacking the time to do so, I will deputize one of you, my dear readers, to take the helm of Project Anti-Plymouth. Or maybe we can create a network of cells, thwarting these bastards whenever they rear their ugly, pointy, little heads.

Immigration

Right now, as the federal government tries to outdo itself in idiocy, there are far too many Catholics, of immigrant origin, hollering for strict controls of the border.

Bosh. I say. Modernist silliness at best, anti-Catholic bigotry embraced by folks who should know better at worst.

Now, I never denied that I am a bigot, and it is based on this bigotry that I demand a heavily fortified border surrounding Canada (with gates to allow raiding parties in to help themselves to natural resources, which, if left to the Canadians, will just end up as part of some experiment in allowing the Indians to worship trees and rocks and all of the hockum that should have been exorcised out years ago). However it would be absurd to claim that my desire for a fortified border with Canada is a matter of "just wanting to see laws enforced." It is about a deep seated Anglophobia and a mistrust of anyone who thinks that Moosehead should count as beer, eh? Oot with you then.

Please note that I exempt Oscar Peterson and Diana Krall from my anti-Canadian vitriol. There are probably others, but I can't think of them now. Certainly not Margaret Atwood. Yuck.

Get rid of the "illegal" immigrants and you know what will happen? Our economy will crumble. Do you like to eat? Live in buildings? Not have to take out the garbage?

The problem is that we are working with unworkable notions of citizenship. What we need is a policy of exile in which any Mohammedan, regardless of ethnicity, place of birth, family name, income, etc., is immediately deported to Arabia (or Mormons to Utah, or Puritans to Massachussetts, I could get behind any of those initiatives). This will do more for the security of the West than keeping out the hard-working Catholics who are willing to pick strawberries for pennies, to live ten to a shack, sacrificing to save money for their families.

Perhaps I was being a bit hasty...

I admit that it is all a big blur on the other side of the Sierra Nevada. Red State, Blue State, Old State, New State. Whatever. If it pleases you to think that there is a significant difference between your state and Nevada, well, be my guest, but once you are done with that silliness, and you want to humbly submit to the grandeur and superiority of California, then you will understand what it is to see the Good, the True and the Beautiful.

Of course we have our share of fruits, nuts and flakes, but this is where Californian generosity comes in: we would gladly share them with you. You want Tom Ammiano? Perhaps to repatriate him? Be my guest. I will throw in Barbara Boxer as a bonus. And Barbara Streisand. A special on Barbara's? Sure. Take Lee and we'll call it a deal.

Of course I identify the greatest threat to Truth and Goodness to be Canada. I am all in favor of immediate invasion of Canada, provided we always keep them as a subservient state (c'mon, they are already used to that anyway). And the influence of Canada is so pernicious, that I have to be suspicious of people from states that border Canada.

However, in the comments to the post about the good Dominicans (a thinly veiled rant against the Maple Playground, if you ask me), someone from Maine expresses his own regions mistrust of the Canadians.

Wow. I thought that Mainers were a bunch of liberal wusses, like over in Connecticut. It turns out that there might be more to the state than lobster.

Three Days of Mourning. Buck Owens, RIP

I just heard the sad news that Buck Owens passed away this morning.

He was a favorite of our household and will be missed.

iPod Meme

Now that we have an iPod, I can play this sort of game (from Fr. Jim Tucker

Instructions: Go to your music player of choice and put it on shuffle. Say the following questions aloud, and press play. Use the song title as the answer to the question. NO CHEATING.

How does the world see you? Tú Querías Jugar (You Want To Play)(Compay Segundo)

Will I have a happy life? Beware, Verwoerd!(Miriam Makeba and Harry Belafonte)

What do my friends really think of me? Amber (Ken Nordine)

What do people secretly think of me? Hurry, Mama, Hurry (Makeba and Belafonte, again)

How can I be happy? Turquoise (Ken Nordine again)

What should I do with my life? Poor Butterfly (Sarah Vaughan)

Will I ever have children? Evga Mana Mou(Savina Yannatou & Primavera En Salonico)

What is some good advice for me? Golden Years (David Bowie)

How will I be remembered? Ponte I - Macau (A Outra Banda)

What is my signature dancing song? Bok Espok (Kepa Junkera)

What do I think my current theme song is? 'Ntricciapiedi (Alfredo Tenaglia, Domenico Rosica sr., Domenico Rosica jr. e Maurizio Valentini)

What does everyone else think my current theme song is? End of My Journey (Campbell Brothers)

What song will play at my funeral? Six Sonatas for Cembalo I. Moderato(Lou Harrison)

What type of men/women do you like? Anima (Milton Nascimento)

What is my day going to be like? Blues On Planet Mars (Sun Ra & His Astro-Solar-Infinity Arkestra)

The Face of the New Medusa...

It so happens that I am not exactly a fan of Hillary Clinton. She strikes me as standing for everything wrong with, well, humanity.

So, imagine my delight when I logged on to AOL to find that the headlines they were flashing in the welcome screen were temporarily not matching the photos, giving me a particularly haggish shot of Clinton along with the headline "Hot New Look Not Hot on You."

It turns out that the headline was to go with some piece on makeup, and that Hillary was citing the Bible on immigration (OK, so a stopped clock is right twice a day, or once if it is digital).

Those Dominicans...

First, let me outline some of my many prejudices:

I tend to take a dim view of apologists.
I tend to take a dim view of Protestantism (and if you get confused and think that I am saying that this means that I don't like Protestants, can it. You are too poor a reader to be worth argument).
I tend to take a dim view of pussyfooting ecumenical dialog.
I take a very dim view of Canada.
I tend to take a dim view of states bordering Canada (with the exception of Minnesota, because their Canadians live in Thunder Bay, which is cool).

As a result, awhile back, as I mentioned earlier, I removed the link to Mark Shea, a former Protestant who looks kindly at his benighted former co-religionists, an apologist who brims with polite turns of phrase, a resident of Seattle, which is practically British Columbia, and an admirer of Scott Hahn.

Now, as soft-on-heretic apologists go, Mark Shea has always struck me as a pretty decent and thoughtful guy. I could probably sit down and drink a beer with him. I even read his site pretty regularly, because he knows how to keep the content interesting, varied, and a few of my favorite lunatics comment frequently, so if I am in the need to spear some anti-immigrant, free-marketeering, neo-con boob, the fishin's real good over there. And it is especially fun when Shea breaks with Limbaugh orthodoxy and gets the Wal*Mart and Velveeta set all worked up.

However, Mark Shea has halfway earned himself his spot on the links list with this entry. He pussyfoots a little bit in apologizing for being more like Torquemada and less like Leo Bascaglia, but you get a wonderful little question about Joseph Smith in there.

And it is good to see that it was contact with one of our Oakland Dominicans that caused this little manifestation of virility.

Good for the Dominicans and good for Mark Shea.

Basic green salad

This is another recipe that is easy to do, but tastes quite good. I will also give a couple of seasonal variations.

For the greens, I use a mix. On Sunday we used butter lettuce, red leaf, romaine, radicchio, arugula and a little bit of mixed spring greens. Frisee is also good, but I didn't use it on Sunday. Wash the greens, tear them into bite sized pieces, and dry them.

My basic salad dressing is to start with a dab of Dijon mustard, a splash of Worcester sauce, then one part balsamic vinegar to three parts Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Salt and pepper to taste. If you want to make it garlicy, add a clove of garlic through a garlic press. Sometimes I will let diced shallot steep in the vinegar for twenty minutes.

Then you can add toasted pine nuts, avocado, sun dried tomatoes, or whatever else you think will make the salad more interesting.

In the autumn I add slices of persimmon and shaved pecorino romano cheese. You can also use pear slices and dried jack cheese.

In the late autumn slices of fuji apples and blue cheese are yummy.

In the late summer, figs and queso manchego are perfect, not to mention vine ripened, organic, heirloom tomatoes. I also like to add julienned basil in the summer.

Ceci salad

This is a basic chickpea salad that can be served, as we did at the St. Joseph's dinner, as part of an antipasto or as the antipasto. It can also be incorporated into a green salad.

While you can use dried chickpeas (garbanzo beans), I use the canned, as it makes little difference in taste, and it is much easier.

Basically, an hour or so before serving, open the can, drain the ceci and put them in a bowl. Add a generous pinch of fresh thyme, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. I like to add some diced shallot, but Melanie thinks that just complicates things. She is probably right.

Crunchy Reactionaries

I have been mildly amused by the vitriol spewed out by the Wal*Mart and Velveeta set over Rod Dreher's Crunchy Conservative book. I am, of course, mostly in favor of the Crunchy Conservative folks, but take the whole thing with a grain of bemused detachment.

Of course most "conservatives" in this country are nothing more than Liberals with a couple of conservative ideas. Around here, you will find more genuine conservatives in Berkeley than you will in the Republican strongholds, where the radical autonomy revered by the Liberals reigns supreme.

I like Dreher, albeit in a sort of patronizing way. He just strikes me as such a little man (no, I don't mean that he is short, just sometimes shrill) that I have trouble taking him seriously in cultural matters, but he is trying hard to do the right thing, and points in the right direction. In many ways he reminds me of Joseph Pearce (or does he spell it Pierce? I never know with these Englischer): they are fumbling in the right direction, but ought to learn a bit more before writing books about it.

So, what exactly is a Conservative? Let's have that be the theme for the week, now that I can spend time writing on stuff like this (the last two weeks were full of cooking for our parish's St. Joseph Festa, which went quite well).

Speaking of the St. Joseph Festa, I will be posting recipes from it, too, so if you were there and would like to know how to make one of those things, just wait and they will all be here later tonight. Or tomorrow. You know the drill. Paid writing trumps free writing.

Just don't offer to pay me to maintain the blog, because then it would be work, and I would feel guilty taking money to sit down after a couple of martinis to rage against Ron Dellums. One should rage against Ron Dellums simply for the joy of it.

Courage in Hollywood

You know, I never disliked Christopher Reeves until watching one of his appearances where they wheeled him out to a standing ovation (with all of those Hollywood emotional types grimacing along) so he could tell the world to "vote democratic." I never gave him much thought until then. Previously I had just written him off as a B actor who had a terrible accident. But, once he started his second career as Supercreep, it was a different story. He was one of the few people that I thought, upon hearing of his death, "well, that's some good news. We'll have a brief flurry of afterglow, and then his pernicious influence will fade." Of course his widow got the afterglow happening again, for all of three days, but they are dead and gone, and the proper response to their passing undoubtedly is, "I hope they repented."

While he was alive he seemed the poster child for what Hollywood calls "bravery." Saying that AIDS is bad is also Hollywood Bravery, and you can wear little colored ribbons to show your solidarity with bravery. It is a mighty courageous act.

Now, if these people had any idea of what I have in store for them under the Keilholtz Dictatorship, then I suppose these stances would be courageous. Stupid, but courageous.

Most of the public seems to go along with this nonsense, so I was rather pleased to read this article.

You want courage? Tell your liberal friends that money spent on AIDS research is a waste of time, and at this point of the disease, almost anyone who gets it is simply getting the consequences of their behavior.

It is true and fun, and you will be surprised, after a few stock expressions of horror, and lame attempts at argument, many will probably agree with you, particularly if they are involved in the arts and are sick and tired of the disproportionate amount of energy that goes into AIDS-related projects.

I even had one leftist friend (an old-time pre-sexual politics leftist who really has an axe to grind against the homosexualists), agree and go beyond even my own modest proposals of how to deal with the issue.

There are two things that I admire about Castro: his dislike of the Kennedy clan and his AIDS/Sexual Deviance policy (related, perhaps? I have always thought JFK to be a little girly).

Or mention that the Abrahan Lincoln Brigade were Commie slimebats who should have all been buried in the mud of the Ebro. In fact, I would pay good money to see a film about a little group of sexual deviants in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade terrorizing the Spanish countryside, only to get theirs when a young Galician General blasts them back to the pits from which they climbed. We could call our little film "Courage on the Rio Ebro".

More on Preposterous Aryan Names

Someone pointed out that I have a lot of nerve poking fun of the Lers, when I bear a name equally preposterous, in its excessive popularity among parents of a certain age (proto-boomers and early boomers) and its Teutonic origin.

True enough, however, you need to know that "Erik" is only absurd in its overuse. There can only be one living Erik at any time, and that is clearly me. So, the rest of you imposters must now change your name to "Toad" or "Lex" or whatever you want. Or you will have to come and pluck the helmet off my head, where it looks over my scowling, red bearded mug.

Of course, the name "Eric" is in no way related to "Erik", rather it is an Englisch name, and, thus can be used many times over, as in "every Tom, Dick and Eric." And "Erick" is just silly, being only one letter away from "Brick." As for "Erich" I suppose we can allow one Erich in Germany, but I will never trust him.

It's just not going to happen this Lent.

My schedule has changed, so there will be no Friday Afternoon Sermons this Lent.

Aw, shucks, you say?

Well, you can create your own. The topic for this week is the idiocy of "Baby on Board" placards. Remember those from the 80's. It seemed that every boomer parent had one. Then they got spoofed and went away.

Guess what? The boomer spawn have grown up and I am seeing them anew.

Speaking of boomer spawn, I was a bit shocked to read of a "Tyler" something or other who was in the Olympics. I always think of the "lers" as little kids (anglo boomers loved those ler names: Tyler, Skyler, Tayler, or Taylor, whatever, it's still pronounced ler). Now they are all growed up and have "Baby on Board" placards of their own. I wonder when they will discover cheesy jazz fusion and white zinfandel.

So, rant away for this Friday. Have fun.

Meanwhile, paid writing and unpaid cooking beckon. I like both.

By the way, iPods are amazingly cool inventions. You hit shuffle and it is like listening to the best free-form radio in the world. Scarlatti to Amalia Rodrigues to George Jones. You tell me where I can find programming like that on the radio.

And, I was asked about the NPR report on the Oakland murder rate. It is bad around some parts, mostly far to the south and far to the north of us (by a peculiarity of geography we call the northernmost part of town "West Oakland" and the southernmost part of town "East Oakland," which are both the bad parts of Oakland. Technically we live in East Oakland, but are not that far into it, so none of the really bad stuff happens in our neighborhood). In our area crime tends to be more along the lines of property crimes, domestic violence, and drug offences, and my guess (not based on any data collecting by the police or anything that scientific) is that the rates are pretty steady. When we moved into the area, they were dropping pretty fast. I think they have probably stabilized, but will continue to decline.

What is going on in the other parts of town, on the other hand, is pretty ugly. I have no theory as to the causes, because I avoid those areas (for the most part), and do not have any direct observations. Often I wonder how it is possible for any ghetto to remain, given the cost of housing.

We have a mayoral race going on, however, and the outcome will be bleak, no matter who wins. The best man for the job (Ignacio de la Fuente) is as appealing as a wet loaf of bread. The worst man for the job (Ron Dellums, a man with no executive experience, and little more pedigree than being a careerist, Leftist-Democratic yes man) makes old Ignatz look like bonafide leadership material.

A move to Berkeley in our future? We will see.

When I am not around to entertain you...

There will be times when you need to read my rants, or to get some fresh cooking ideas (speaking of which, does anyone even remember the last time I posted a recipe?), and you will come here and find nothing but old, stale posts. Yawn.

In other words, you need to cultivate some new hobbies. Might I suggest you bone up on volcanoes?

Volcanoes are fascinating things. Learn all about them at Stromboli On Line, the outstanding effort of a team of Swiss volcanologists. Go read, look at pictures, learn about big, dangerous, fire spitting mountains.

If not volcanoes, then how about Blake Edwards films? Birdy num num, anyone?

Should Liberals Leave the Catholic Church?

So asks this article. Of course the answer is: no, they should stop being liberals.

Of course this applies to the so-called neocons (better known as pseudocons, or simply cons), who are liberal to the bone, as well as it does the sexual leftists (ah for the good old days when the enemies were reds, not lavenders).

The solution is to tape, in every room of the house, the following slogan: Error has no rights.

And then, every morning, in addition to the newspaper, every recovering Liberal should read the Syllabus of Errors.

WWTD?

No Friday Afternoon Sermon

Friday has come and gone, and, obviously you did not get a Friday Afternoon Sermon. Pity. I was going to rant about something or other, but it can wait.

The reason I skipped it was that I spent too much time fiddling with software Thursday night (OK, I admit it, I was loading songs into the iPod). No time to write. Sorry. Also, I have been baiting reds, or atheists, or whatever sort of fellow traveller it is that I have been crossing swords with in the taurine world.

Maybe I will give you a mid-week sermon, but that misses the atmosphere that I am shooting for in having Friday Afternoon Sermons.

You see, the Friday Afternoon Sermon was how the blog began. It started as an email circular that was to take the place of my Friday Afternoon Martini during Lent. I was intrigued by the crossing fo the images of a bunch of Mohammedans listening to their imams and images of the Western Friday afternoon (whoo hooo, the weekend is here). I created a little setting for the Friday Afternoon Sermon: a hot, slightly muggy day, in a piazza. The hearers of the sermon are not really there all by choice, and the piazza is full of various police in a variety of levels of uniform. Those who mutter against the Leader get stern looks from one of the secret policemen, you know, the guy over at that other table, sipping his Campari and looking for all the world like somebody's uncle. You say, "I have heard enough of this..." and the policeman who looks like someone's uncle makes a funny noise and shakes his head. A few minutes later, a skinny fellow in a trench coat and sunglasses leans over to you and says, "it is a shame how old ladies sit in the piazza these days and mutter and gossip." You get the message. You listen to the Leader. Somewhere in the distance, you hear someone selling ice cream. It is hot. You wish you had a copy of Hemingway...to throw at the Leader. But you wouldn't do that anyway. You are a good citizen and have always been a good citizen.

It had the extra benefit of allowing my friends to have a little extra penance during Lent. In fact it became so popular (one week I had no fewer than seven people send me emails saying "stop sending me those stupid things. I have no time for this nonsense.") that I knew then and there that I had to start posting this to an even bigger audience. Writing for a chain of newspapers wasn't enough. I had to be heard in Slovakia, in Ireland, in Germany, in Italy, in Malta, in Canada, yes, even in Canada.

And I have a reader of this blog who is an elected official in one of the above nations. I will let you guess, although it won't do you any good, because I am not saying. Anyway, this country obviously does not provide enough entertainment for its elected officials.

So, the Friday Afternoon Sermons are dear to my heart. Maybe I will wear a turban while writing the next one.

Do any of you know how to tie a turban? You do tie turbans, don't you?