A short but fascinating trip to Xi'an, a city steeped in fascinating Chinese history just past and an upcoming short trip back to the states from Beijing will prevent more frequent posting to Crackpot Chronicles until almost the second week in June. We are going to New York to attend and celebrate the joyous occasion my son's wedding. I've enjoyed your readership and marvelled at the international scope of Crackpot Chronicles. It really is a global village and I send my regards to the community of readers far and wide who stop by here from time to time.

Congratulations to filmmaker Michael Moore for winning top honors at the Cannes film festival for his docu-torial Farenheit 911, a scathing indictment of the state of security in America that may have missed the opportunity to predict and prevent the attacks on September 11th, 2001.

It is scathing of Bush, portraying him as out of his depth and keen to further his family’s links to Saudi families made rich from oil - including with the relatives of Osama bin Laden, blamed for the September 11 attacks.
Khaleej Times

Contemplating the signifigance of this slam from the international film community, arguably more influential than any political body on Earth, George W. Bush fell off his bike while enjoying some recreational activity on Saturday.

Bush's rival in this year's presidential election, Democratic candidate John Kerry, who fell off a bicycle and grazed his hand earlier this month, wished the president well after learning of Saturday's spill. "I hope he's OK," said the 60-year-old Massachusetts senator, who took a bike ride in Boston on Saturday but managed to stay upright.

Michael Moore, according to news coverage of the Cannes awards, is planning on having Farenheit 911 screened before the November U.S. presidential elections despite the fact that Disney recently abandoned their distribution arrangements for Farenheit 911

Flatulent Bulldogs Rule as Cannes Top Dogs

Reuters via Yahoo
By Paul Majendie

CANNES, France (Reuters) - A pair of flatulent bulldogs were picked Friday for the top dog award at Cannes.

The "Palm Dog" prize for best canine performance in a film has become a regular feature at the festival, running alongside, albeit at a respectful distance from, the Palme d'Or award.

Judges of the annual spoof award -- five British and French journalists -- finally settled on the bulldogs owned by renowned American wine critic Robert Parker.

The dogs made an explosive appearance in the documentary "Mondovino" that traced the trials and tribulations of vineyards around the world. They made their presence smelt while documentary film-maker Jonathan Nossiter was interviewing Parker, whose wine quality ratings are considered among the most influential in the business.

"Our winners are two flatulent bulldogs called Edgar and Hoover," said jury chairman Toby Rose, a British journalist who instituted the award four years ago.

"It is very amusing as Parker is the world's leading nose. Does it have an effect on the sensitivity of his nostrils one wonders," Rose said. In a vintage year, honorable mention was given to the bulldog who dramatically expires on screen in the Tom Hanks black comedy "The Lady Killers." "There were an enormous amount of dog performances in films at Cannes this year," Rose told Reuters.

But the Mondovino bulldogs won hands down, ably supported by a host of "extras," the family dogs who roamed around the various vineyards Nossiter visited for the film. "They were so natural and the film was given the prize because of its collective canine commitment," said Rose who presented an overjoyed Nossiter the black leather Palm Dog collar with gold lettering.

"Dogs are more than indispensable to the big screen," said Rose who would dearly love to cross the Atlantic with his annual awards. "Roll on the dog Oscars," he said. Rose, the proud owner of a nine-year-old fox terrier called Mutt, said: "Animals do have key roles but are never in a position to be recognized."

Pressed to name the greatest ever canine performance on the silver screen, he said: "Lassie and Rin Tin Tin would be up there as major contenders
"But I would go for the dog in "As Good As It Gets." Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson were up for Oscars. The dog never had a chance." .

Picture: Ellen and Lassie, 1989 (one of the biggest celebrities I've met), photo by Bob Weatherwax

On Mother's Day (??) Blogger delivered a major interface and coding upgrade. This would be a boon to new users or Bloggers who use Blogger templates, but those of us with custom coded templates were in for a bumpy ride.

The new dashboard interface, the talk of the blogosphere, is certainly nifty. There is a certain amount of glitchiness typical of new releases, but these are forgivable. But the comments feature? Give me a break!

I don't mean to be ungrateful, but the long-awaited Comments feature and the underimplemented "conditional tags" necessary to use individual post pages resulted in a two-day hair-puller to configure The LongBow Papers (my husband's blog) to support comments. I managed to hack through it, but I can't say I'm thrilled with the results. It would have been much more reasonable for them to have povided an option to use a separate template for individual posts with comments.

Blogger's "Preview" feature, unfortunately, does not allow clicking through to the individual posts page, so in absence of a real testing environment, one is required to republish the entire blog repeatedly and if it's a large one, this can take almost half an hour per revision because of the volume of individual post pages generated. Assuming the connection doesn't time-out or bug back to the dashboard page in mid-publish, as it did several times.

Now that the Blogger comments are up and working, I am quite irritated to find that a reader who'd like to comment is required to create a Blogger account and profile ("it only takes 3 minutes," the dialog says) if they don't already have one--or comment anonymously. The link provided in the comment when you do log in doesn't give the commentators URL or email, it displays their Blogger Profile, if the account-holder elects to make it public (this doesn't happen by default). I find this inconvenient and invasive. I feel a bit hoodwinked, especially after all that hassle.

I'll stick with my third-party comments add-on. It took only two minutes to add the Haloscan hosted comments and I'll probably eventually pay the small premium to eliminate the unobstrusive ad the free version carries.

Blogger: can you say "Beta Testing"?

The ruling party in India was quite proud of its high tech campaign: sending 4 million e-mail messages and transmitting an automatic voice greeting from the PM, according to the NY Times.

Unfortunately, they overlooked the fact that out of the 180 million households, only 45 million have telephones. Among the 1.05 billion citizens, only 26.1 million have mobile phones and only 659,000 households have computers. In a gaffe resembling Bush the First's embarrassing public ignorance of UPC scanners in supermarkets, distancing him from the majority of the public whose votes he expected, Atal Bihari Vajpayee's high-tech campaign alienated the majority of his perceived constituency.

The message that the Hindu-nationalist-led government had delivered the country to a new era of prosperity was belied by the limited reach of the media to deliver it. That gap - the coexistence of a growing middle class with the growing frustration of those excluded from it - helps explain why Mr. Vajpayee's government has been turned out of office in the biggest upset since 1977...

Those gaps exhibit the quintessential short-sightedness that de-stabilizes leadership and leads to internal regime change. In democratic countries like India, this bloodless coup is imposed by elections. Even non-democracies should take note and take measures; for these nations, regime change or even major policy change is not often as peaceful.

The gap between the government and the populace of the U.S. grows wider as the official prevarications about the wars overseas become evident. Even Republicans don't like being suckered, especially by one of their own. Even Christians despise the savage execution of a Jew broadcast over the internet as an exhibit of contempt for America and all it stands for. Or the idea that, like the attacks of 911, it was inevitable.

The truth is hard to take, but unless those bitter pills are digested, the web of lies that invariably produce disaster accumulate, exponentiate and explode in more disasters. This is a world gone mad, writes my brilliant and prolfic husband in The LongBow Papers. There's hardly any other way to comprehend it. Perhaps it is only out of chaos that order can emerge.

"We're working hard to make your Abu Ghraib Fantasy Camp experience as real as safety and the law will allow."

Wonkette blogged the Abu Ghraib Fantasy Camp. Have a look. Is that twisted? Is that tasteless? Worse yet, think they'll get business? I do.

The cartoon in my previous post is sick and tasteless, I've been considering taking it down. But its not as sick or tasteless as the events to which it refers. Nor is the Abu Ghraib Fantasy Camp, to be fair.

It's hard to keep a sense of humor alive. I know you come here for a little lightness and audacity, irony or satire. So do I.

I'm saddened, angry and horrified. I don't have any great insight to offer today. Sometimes it just sucks and this is one of them.

I also know the bad times pass just like the good. Jesse Jackson says "keep hope alive" and when I don't believe myself, I believe him, Hymietown or no Hymietown.

From The Guardian, the ultimate comment on what the Arab world now thinks of the U.S., as if it weren't bad enough already.


copyright Steve Bell 2004

and read Arab world scorns Bush's TV 'apology'

The Chinese Ministry of Primates has made public an internal report alerting the government of restlessness among monkeys in several key provinces. The document recommends surveillance of monkeys in an unnamed province who are suspected of having separationist tendencies, promoting democracy and engaging in sex parties in obscure chambers of official buildings.

The monkeys have been publicizing unauthorized primate-abuse statements in foreign newspapers such as this from SIFY News (India)

The Year of the Monkey, which began [in January 2004], has brought misery to monkeys in China's zoos, which are forcing the animals to give more performances than usual due to their increasing popularity, state media said Monday.
In a zoo in Wuhan city, capital of Hubei province, a monkey wore away the skin on its rear after repeatedly performing cycling tricks during the week-long Lunar New Year holiday.

The Australian carried this story. The Ministry warned that the peaceful policy will not last if this unpatriotic activity continues.

Chinese farmers battle marauding monkeys
From AFP
May 04, 2004
BAMBOO farmers in east China's Anhui province are mobilising against armies of rhesus monkeys, who attack their fields in a veritable "war of the species," state media said Monday.

The conflict has broken out in Jing county, where rural families living on some of China's most suitable soil for bamboo have seen unusually fierce assaults from roving bands of monkeys this spring, Xinhua news agency said.

The problem for the farmers is that they cannot kill the monkeys, as the government has launched a campaign to protect the rhesus species, now considered "nearly endangered" after decades of hunting.

Instead, they have hired laborers whose only task is to drive the monkeys off the fields by peaceful means, an onerous task as they sometimes come in groups of 200 to 300.

The government hinted at even more creative solutions to China's serious rural unemployment problem if the monkeys continue on "this dangerous course."

Allen Cohen "The Oracle" Publisher and one of the architects of "The Summer Love" of has died. He leaves behind many, including me, whose life, writing and ethics have been informed and inspired by the presence of the vital alternative press that flourished in the 1960's.

The story of a generation and a movement can sometimes be traced through the life of one person. Allen Cohen is one of these people and I’m grateful that he lived in my times. Thanks to Lee Houskeeper for the announcement, which I've somewhat edited here.

Allen Cohen, founder of the rainbow-colored San Francisco Oracle underground newspaper, a wonderful contemporary poet, a joyful, bearded and bemused spirit of the Haight-Ashbury counterculture, has died. Mr. Cohen, 64, died Thursday of liver cancer in Walnut Creek.

He moved from Brooklyn to San Francisco in 1963 after reading the classic beat novel "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac. He soon found work at the Psychedelic Shop, a "head shop" in the Haight-Ashbury district. While perhaps under the influence of something he had ingested, he got the idea for a multicolored alternative newspaper.

He founded The San Francisco Oracle with a $500 loan. The first issue came out in September 1966, combining beat poetry and fiction with avant-garde art, articles and interviews. It soon became required reading on the street, even though the dizzying design often made reading a challenge. The same year. Cohen was arrested on obscenity charges for selling a collection of erotic poetry called "The Love Book.” After a widely publicized five-week trial, Mr. Cohen was convicted and fined $50.

The next year, the pages of the Oracle announced to the world the "Gathering of the Tribes” in Golden Gate Park, the first "be-in,” which featured beat regulars Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary and Gary Snyder.

The Oracle ceased publication in 1968, and Mr. Cohen moved to a commune in Albion, near Mendocino, and lived in a teepee. In 1970, he co-wrote "Childbirth is Ecstasy,” a poetic and photographic account of the natural birth of his son, River. A Chronicle reviewer said it was full of the "beauty of the childbirth experience and the deep enrichment of life for all concerned."

In the 1970s, Mr. Cohen was back in San Francisco, working at the Schlock Shop store on Grant Avenue, writing poetry and putting together a bound collector's edition of the Oracle. In later years, Mr. Cohen conducted slide shows and musical lectures about the 1960s scene in San Francisco, performed at poetry readings in the United States and Europe, organized events that he called "digital be-ins," worked as a substitute public school teacher in Oakland, and operated a day care center with his wife, Ann, in their Walnut Creek home.

In a 1990 interview, Mr. Cohen was asked to describe the influence of the New Age movement. "That movement, along with the anti-war movement, was a renaissance of American culture," he said. "Everything that's happened since -- both reactionary and progressive -- has come out of that movement. The religious fundamentalism of the '70s and '80s was a reaction to the seeming immorality of the hippie movement, and to the religious and spiritual thrust of psychedelics. You had a breakthrough in the awareness of spiritual experience, with people saying, 'God just isn't out there, and he doesn't just talk to the priests.'" Mr. Cohen was the co-editor of "An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind," a poetry anthology dealing with the Sept. 11 attacks. The book won the 2003 PEN National Literary Award.

Wavy Gravy, Chet Helms, Legendary Musicians and Famous Hippies Will Remember Cohen In A Memorial Walk Though The Haight Sunday Morning

Here's a part of one of his recent poems that is particularly resonant today.

On the Liberation of Iraq - Passover 2003
for Albert Nieman


Ali, the boy with no hands,
collateral damage
in a barrage from hell,
wants to commit suicide
if Americans can't replace
the hands they burned into oblivion.


In the birthplace of Abraham
in the Garden of Eden
where writing began
where the first laws
were inscribed into stone
America has sacrificed
libraries and museums of antiquities
while protecting the oil ministry
for its records of oil fields
and the Ministry of the Interior
where the secret police dwelled
with there juicy information on every one.

for the rest, and other nice things about Allen Cohen, go here

Reuters via Yahoo

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Insulting a president can be profitable, a Washington state bag maker has discovered, but it is best if the insult is written in French and tucked away on a tiny laundry label.

Labels on most of the backpacks, messenger and laptop bags made and sold by Tom Bihn have his company's contact information along with washing instructions in English and French along with a message reading: "Nous sommes desoles que notre president soit un idiot. Nous n'avons pas vote pour lui."

The translation reads: "We are sorry that our president is an idiot. We did not vote for him."

Tom Bihn, who designs and makes bags for his eponymous company of 10 employees in Port Angeles, a seaside city 60 miles northwest of Seattle, claims he has no idea how the phrase got onto the label, but credits it with doubling bag sales.

"We don't know how it got there," Bihn said in a dead-pan manner.

Asked if the message refers to President Bush or French President Jacques Chirac, Bihn said he had no clue whom the insult referred to.

Yeah, right. read the rest

May 1st, International Workers' Day, commemorates the historic struggle of working people throughout the world, and is recognized in every country except the United States, Canada, and South Africa. This despite the fact that the holiday began in the 1880s in the United States, with the fight for an eight-hour work day. Probably to distance themselves from Communist countries, and also to avoid the connection with a violent labor vs. police riot in Haymarket Square in Chicago following a May Day labor demonstration in 1886, America now celebrates Labor Day in September.

Workers of the world, awaken!
Rise in all your splendid might
Take the wealth that you are making,
It belongs to you by right.
No one will for bread be crying
We'll have freedom, love and health,
When the grand red flag is flying
In the Workers' Commonwealth

Joe Hill

Today, I find very little, if anything, funny. I don't know whether it is my revulsion about the pictures of American soldiers tormenting Iraqi prisoners or the sense that there's little right with the world in general.

Ex-manager admits supplying drugs Former Bay City Rollers manager Tam Paton has been fined £200,000 after he admitted supplying cannabis.

I've ever hardly met a manager that didn't help get their clients some weed (but usually it was the other way around). Why this man is singled out and how he came to be accused is beyond me. Is there some big secret about musicians using marijuana? A famous producer once told me that one of the most famous English rockers would not begin a recording session until his drugs were delivered, and the producer made sure that they were. Right? Wrong? I don't care. It's not anyone's business. I started bristling last month when David Crosby was busted in New York. He'd left behind a suitcase when checking out of a hotel and the bellboy who found it turned him in. What was his problem?

Personal drug use, when not connected to injurious crime, should not be a crime in itself. It is victimless. Addiction, even, should not be criminalized. It should be treated, as alcoholism is, like a treatable disease.

Animal rights activists are on my craplist today, as well. Did you hear the one about the animal rights activists in London who are creating problems for (of all things) a Batman shooting at an animal testing lab? link

I'm all for activism, but these Brits are a good example of people with no sense of proportion and too much time on their hands.