Another weekend.

I should have taken my camera last night. & the Harpers Weekly Review.

Last night was good. I should have taken my camera. And now the Weekly Review.

Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, came out in support of allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. “No matter how I look at this issue,“ Mullen testified before Congress, ”I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.” The Reuters news service withdrew a report that President Barack Obama was “backdooring” the American middle class with hidden taxes,White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel apologized to Sarah Palin for using the term “fucking retarded,” U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan conceded that Hurricane Katrina was probably not “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans,”and James Clyburn, the House majority whip, dismissed fiscal restraint as a viable national economic policy. “We're not going to save our way out of this recession,” he said. “We've got to spend.” Underwear Bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab provided federal authorities with actionable intelligence without having been tortured and despite having been offered some of the basic protections of the American legal system.U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair warned that “malicious cyber activity” was menacing the nation,and the federal government was hoarding the genetic information of American newborns.In Afghanistan's Helmand Province, the Taliban were ambushing the American military using “ancient signaling techniques”; three people were killed and 17 wounded in a suicide-bomb attack in Kandahar, and a drone strike killed 29 presumed terrorists in northwestern Pakistan, where the Taliban were stalking American soldiers and their hired mercenaries. “We know the movement of U.S. Marines and Blackwater guys,” said a spokesman for the group. “We have prepared suicide bombers to go after them.” General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, insisted that the surge was making “significant progress.”Americans were drinking more cheap booze.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood stated that Toyota automobiles were unsafe, then said that they weren't, then issued a position statement claiming that he would remain “vigilant.”Americans were growing distrustful of their banks, which they accused of being too concerned with the bottom line.Justice Clarence Thomas appeared confused as to why newspapers would criticize the Supreme Court's decision establishing the right of corporations to buy elections. “The people who were editorializing against it were the New York Times Company and The Washington Post Company,” Thomas said. “These are corporations.”A court in Israel ruled that Yigal Amir, who in 1995 assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, would remain in indefinite solitary confinement. Amir called the decision “vengeance” and added that “if the purpose here is to punish, [the court] should say so.”Anti-Muslim Europeans were rejecting “political Islam and the symbols of political Islam,”three headless bodies were discovered in a “narco-grave” in Juarez, and the government of North Korea reported that Pyongangites continued to work with “full confidence” and were “full of hope,” due to the “benefits of socialism” and a bean-flour drink issued to schoolchildren.Students at Princeton University wanted their grades re-inflated. Evangelical Christians were beating non-believers senseless in professional mixed-martial-arts contests, and in Haiti, Max Beauvoir, the “supreme master” of voodoo, accused Christian fundamentalists of stealing earthquake-relief supplies. “The evangelicals are in control and they take everything for themselves,” said Beauvoir. “That's a shame.”Muslim doctors were fitting women with exploding breast implants for use in suicide attacks, sales of “fashion-forward” bulletproof clothing remained brisk in Bogotá, Colombia, and a new biography of Warren Beatty confirmed that he is, in fact, vain.

Research demonstrated that abstinence-based sexual education may work under the following conditions: if it encourages children to delay sex until they are “ready” rather than exclusively until after marriage; if it does not depict all sex outside of marriage as uniformly inappropriate; and if it does not “disparage” condoms. Monica Rodriguez, a spokeswoman for the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, called the findings “exciting” and “a new tool.”Roasted nuts were increasingly scarce in New York City, and some residents of Lancaster, Texas, were offended by a billboard of a giant cucumber with eyes. English school administrators were fining parents for spending vacation time with their children,31 wealthy American mothers were struggling to find ways to communicate their parenting demands to their nannies, and Jennifer Love Hewitt advised spurned women to glue glass objects to their vulvas. “After a breakup, a friend of mine Swarovski-crystalled my precious lady,” she said. “It shined like a disco ball.”

Photos cannot capture the sound of a place.

Photos cannot capture the sound of a place, the drums, the music, the voice of someone trying to talk to you, yelling above the madness of the crowd. The sound of thunder, the smell of rain on concrete. The smell of India, the feelings of joy, fear and sickness it can evoke. The wild celebration continued late into the evening. One celebrant smashed a fluorescent tube over his chest, screaming into the night.

The light is off, Moreland Council passes the buck & the deserted car in the overgrown lane.

Who owns the deserted car in the lane? Whose rubbish litters it's interior? The defeated candidate in the Sri Lankan elections has been arrested. Is he a criminal for what happened to the Tamil civilians in the north? Surely if that is so, the current President Mahinda Rajapaksa should be trialled as well. That is not what he will be charged with though. Malcolm Turnbull declared his intentions to vote against the party that voted him out as leader and the Labour party could not get enough of his speech, letting him take longer than his allotted thirty minutes. How many things do we see in our day to day life that are taunted as being "green," but that still promote consumerism? Surely it would be better if we tried not to consume those items at all. Is a product, by being called "green," slightly deceiving and almost giving citizens Carte Blanche to carry on consuming with a false clear consciences? The street light is off. Finally. How long was it on for? In regards to the other two street lights, Stonnington has not replied, and the Moreland council wiped their hands of the matter and told me to get a hold of AGL, which I did. Is that enough from a council who supposedly cares about the changing environment, that has a website full of things community members can do to lessen their carbon footprint? Surely a call from the council would carry greater weight.

The girl on the roof.

Sri Lanka Arrests Defeated Candidate.

Bundi.

I arrived in Bundi, the sun setting, everything washed in golden light. Every time the bus came to a halt I would ask people if we had arrived in Bundi; one person would say yes and then another would say no. We eventually did though and I was glad that it had happened before night fall.

As the bus pulled to a halt I got up from my seat walked to the front of bus and was told by one of the stewards that he would get my luggage from the drivers sleeping compartment while I signaled for a rickshaw. Thinking nothing of it I got off the bus and started looking for a rickshaw. It was not hard, but as the rickshaw pulled up next to me, my bus drove past me, racing towards the distance, my luggage still in the drivers sleeping compartment.

Frantically I told the rickshaw driver what happened and then we were off. Chasing the bus, zig zagging past slow tractors and cows eating grass on the street. It was surreal. A scene from a movie. I lit a cigarette. We finally caught up with the bus, signaled for it to pull over and it eventually did.

I got my luggage from the sleeping compartment and as I got off the bus, (relieved and pissed off and tired), I told the steward how unappreciative I was at him for having told the driver to take off. He stared at my blankly/nonchalantly and then got back onto the bus and telling the driver to take off again. I watched as it disappeared into the distance.

Guns can't kill what soldiers can't see. Give.

Another week goes by. Another one begins. On Friday, while at work, an officer from the Borondoora Council gave me a call about the street light. I told him exactly where it was, and he said he would talk to CitiPower http://www.powercor.com.au/ to have the light turned off. Dissapointingly on Saturday the light was still on(the last picture in this entry). I was to find two other street lights on during the day on Saturday and Sunday. One on Glenferrie and Gordon Roads in Malvern and the other on Bell and Waverley Streets in Pascoe Vale (top picture). Appropriate generic correspondence will be sent to the relevant councils, but I wonder if more energy is used by me sitting at the lap top and writing these generic emails than how much energy will be saved during the day? But then if they were off the emails would not need to be sent? Give.

Haiti - Arcade Fire

Haïti, mon pays,
wounded mother I'll never see.
Ma famille set me free.
Throw my ashes into the sea.

Mes cousins jamais nés
hantent les nuits de Duvalier.
Rien n'arrete nos esprits.
Guns can't kill what soldiers can't see.

In the forest we lie hiding,
unmarked graves where flowers grow.
Hear the soldiers angry yelling,
in the river we will go.

Tous les morts-nés forment une armée,
soon we will reclaim the earth.
All the tears and all the bodies
bring about our second birth.

Haïti, never free,
n'aie pas peur de sonner l'alarme.
Tes enfants sont partis,
In those days their blood was still warm