h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Now let's see if they give him the benefit of the Law.....

Down here, the lynch mob mentality is far from being an unpleasant part of history. Far too many people around these parts would string him up. God bless Texas. I figure that GW has either the good sense or the advisors to see that the right thing is done.

Handing Saddam over to the Iraqis may not be the right thing - I've a strong feeling that there could be a security slip up and... oh dear, whose body is that swinging in the breeze or hacked into tiny pieces?

They should put him on trial at the ICC in the Hague. Then, when they've found him guilty, they should lock him up and throw away the key. No sense in making martyrs.

Why the mondegreen tagline? Been listening to Desmond again?

Ahoy ahoy,
Len sees a sty,
Ahoy ahoy,
Barman and soda,
Ahoy ahoy,
Diseased man embalmed her,
Ahoy ahoy,
Lung nearly gave!

'At least, I think that's what he said'

Yes, I was listening a reggae compilation last night - had most of the classics on it; Israelites, Young Gifted and Black, Red Red Wine (Tony Tribe not UB40), Hurt So Good, Many Rivers to Cross, Pressure Drop.

It was very painful yesterday watching the press conference Dubya gave and to hear him crowing about Saddam's capture. Of the two of them I really don't know which one I despise the most. I'm not going to use the 'at least with Saddam you knew where you stood' cliche. He was utterly, utterly brutal, and once he got into power it seemed that he gave up on doing the dirty work and had others do it on his behalf. Bush is brutal in other ways. He claims to be a Christian and he claims to be compassionate. Two things:

Firstly, compassion is not a characteristic that runs deep in the Texas psyche - the Texan idea of justice is revenge. Of course, I'm being completely sweeping there and using stereotypes, but hell - if you see something often enough you have to deduce that it's so!

Secondly, Conservatism seems to be the only political movement I can think of which has to justify and talk up its motives by putting the word 'compassionate' in front. I've never heard of 'Compassionate Socialism' or 'Compassionate Liberalism'. There's really no such thing because compassion is written into them and taken as read.

I can't agree with you more about Conservatism. I am not a Conservative and never will be. I regard it as government by the few of the many for the few, sweetened by an appeal to baser human instincts: selfishness, intolerance, resistance to change, snobbery. I thought and still think that Dubya stole that election: read Michael Moore's forensic dissection of the shenanigans in Stupid White Men to see what I mean. However, he's acting like he had a sweeping mandate in America to turn the clock back, never mind what he's doing to the rest of the world.

I really must read some Michael Moore books.

I can't for the life of me understand why so many of the people who were denied the right to vote in the 2000 election didn't get together and do the American thing - sue! Even if they were poor people with little understanding of how to do that, I'm sure there must be plenty of lawyers whose lips would glisten at the thought of winning a lawsuit against the federal government of thte USA! Thw whole world knows that Bush didn't win that election, and that he stole it with the help of his bro, young Jeb. There was an email going around not long after Gore conceded defeat which compared the US election to that of a corrupt third world regime. I wish I could recall how it went.

Like so many of these commentators, Moore is good at exposing the rot at the heart of an issue, but not so good at proposing remedies. I got irritated with Bowling for Columbine when he tried to make that America's gun culture was all due to fear of black people. However, the argument that he makes that the election was stolen is hard to refute IF he is telling the unadulterated truth.

I've heard arguments put forward (by American conservatives, of course) that the electoral college is a *good thing*. I just think it's a complete anachronism: this is a *federal* election where it is quite possible for a one-person-one-vote system of representation to elect a President, especially in today's electronic era. Any intervening layers of representation obfuscate the reality; Bush lost the popular vote, and he probably lost the college vote as well.

I heard the rationale for the college vote explained several times during the 2000 fiasco, but as with so many things I hear, I can't remember how it went.

This makes interesting reading regarding that moron Bush and his environmental policies:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3325341.stm

"The White House wants greenhouse gas emissions to be cut not by what it calls the "command and control" of Kyoto"

The Bush administration just won't have anyone else tell them what to do will they. They believe they know what's best and they'll brook no argument - 'If you're not with us you're against us'. Since America is the most powerful country in the world they can pretty much do what they want, and since the American populace is so damn spoiled and used to getting what it wants when it wants it regardless, anything the President and his administration does (whoever the President is) to ensure that they can have what they want is

A lot of people have been comparing the current America to Rome immediately before the Empire crumbled. I'm not so optimistic as to believe that the American Empire will fall in the forseeable future, but I do wish that the EU would get its act together, speak with one voice, and stand up to the US *all* the time, the way they did against the steel tarriffs. I've read a few books about the beginnings of the US - particularly concerning the period around the Congressional Congress of 1787 which united the individual states under a federal government and created the USA. There was as much dissent then amongst the states as there is amongst European countries now.

Perhaps you should also read Paul Kennedy's 'The Rise and Fall of Great Powers': http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/0679720197/reviews/002-2677740-2360865#06797201977297.
It's a book I've been meaning to read for ages now, and haven't yet got around to doing. It postulates that the Rise is due to economic strength, and that the Fall is generally due to military over-commitment. Iraq might just tbe that start of that over-commitment.

Dang, there are so many books I need to read or want to read or ought to read, and I doubt that I'll end up reading more than a handful of them.

Incidentally, why 'Piano thief'? I can't make that into a mondegreen... does it have some other significance?

THELONIOUS Monk played the piano, so FELONIOUS Monk steals them.

I couldn't think of any other tagline.....

Ah The penny drops.

Now what's this about Concorde?

Oh, just a reference to a song I heard John Peel play over 20 years ago. I went out and bought the EP.
http://www.nativehipsters.co.uk/main.html

Strange stuff. But I like it.

You might like this band: the 'Stress' video is a hilarious masterpiece.
http://www.bigego.com/jbe03/#red

How strange - I had one of their CDs on my smployee pick shelf at work (I managed to squeeze it in somewhere between all the Tom Waits, Paul Weller, and Vaughan Williams), what with that being my name and me being like Zaphod Beeblebrox (ego the size of the universe, which is why the Total perspective Vortex had no effect on him). Never got around to listening to it before it sold though.

I'll have to wait until Mrs Gosho goes out later to check out the video - she's using the only PC we have with speakers.

"Total Perspective Vortex" would be a good name for a band, I think. I set up a band once called 'Hotbed of Apathy'. At that time, there were a lot of posturing pretentious bands around making statements like 'we don't do live gigs', or 'we don't do videos'. So our band preserved our integrity to the utmost by *not doing anything*. We weren't into playing music or writing songs, it was too commercial, you see. Hence the title to 'The Difficult First Album'....