Interesting: Man Films Japan Quake as the Ground Cracks Beneath his Feet.

He stays remarkably calm. Mind you, he's a lot likelier to be safe where he is than amongst buildings.
Most quake videos show office furniture falling over, ceilings breaking loose. This interested me far more, showing, in real-time, ground fissures opening and closing.
And liquefaction. Where apparently solid ground liquefies and flows, where water is squeezed out of the earth.
In the comments on youtube, people say "I'd have run away!" Where to, I wonder?
The quake areas are sufficiently large that running or driving is fairly irrelevant. all you can do is wait for it to end. or like this guy, observe it keenly, in a fairly detached sort of way.
Such a contrast to the usual "Gosh! Wow!" school of youtube videoist.

My Friend the Sun..........

I suppose it could be said this is my favourite band. Maybe. I can never make my mind up about things like that.
They were a great night out, in the days when big names still played on small stages in university dining halls.  Back there in the early seventies, (the old feller muttered, grasping his walking-stick,), going to see a band meant, well, seeing them. Not being half a mile back in a sea of heads, watching the action on a sixty-foot high tv screen. And I saw Family quite a few times. On one occasion, Roger Chapman, the lead singer, passed me a bottle of his beer. well, yes, the bar was open, but he'd just chucked a tambourine into the sky in a fit of wild exuberance. Unfortunately, it smashed the glass globe of a light above me. My injuries were minor, but bled well, and I spilled my pint... It was a masterly stroke for Chappo to stop singing, peer in my direction through the bright lights, say "Are you alright? Sorry..." and then proffer a bottle of Sam Smith's Nut-Brown Ale.
Good man. Ta for that.

And the Band Played 'Waltzing Matilda' - Eric Bogle

There's a bit of a Waltzing Matilda theme going on here, sparked by Adullamite and Relax Max's blogposts of late.

Waltzing, Mathilde!

Waltzing, Matilda?

Students of this blog will know that I've posted this song before, with the backstory, Mathilde, etc.
It was more recently brought to mind by a blonde joke on Adullamite's blog, and a Waltzing Matilda word quiz on Britishspeak.
This song is NOT Waltzing Matilda, it quotes it in the chorus, but it's properly called "Tom Traubert's blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen)".
Tom Waits, clearly, is not everybody's cup of tea. In fact, there are a lot of people out there who'll look horrified and say "What the F****?!", but to me, he's the real thing. He puts his heart into it. He puts his all into it. Many of his songs are far better known sung by other people, Jersey Girl, for instance, a massive hit for Bruce Springsteen. But I'd say, Put away your prejudices, your snap decisions, listen to the man.

It's not mainstream, it's not ever going to be at number one.
Justin Bieber will outsell him in a heartbeat. But I know who I'd go to listen to, if he were in town. I'd throw away a free bieber ticket, and pay good money to hear Tom Waits.

Well, my loyal three and a half readers? what do you think?

Isabel Makes Love on National Monuments (Jake Thackray)

 The late Jake Thackray, yorkshire poet, droll wit, gentleman, troubadour.  1938-2002



Isabel makes love upon national monuments
With style and enthusiasm and anyone at all.
Isabel's done Stonehenge and the houses of Parliament
But so far pretty Isabel's never played the Albert Hall.
Many a monolith has seen Isabel
Her bright hair in turmoil, her breasts' surging swell
But unhappy Albert is so far denied
The bright sight of Isabel getting into her stride.

The Fourth Bridge, the cenotaph, Balmoral and Wembley,
The British Museum and the House of Lords.
So many ticks in her National Trust catalogue
But so far the Royal Albert Hall has not scored.
Countless cathedrals can now proudly show
Where Isabel's pretty shoulder blades once briefly reposed.
But miserable Albert is still waiting for
The imprint of Isabel on his parquet floor.

At Westminster Abbey she lay on a cold tombstone
The meat in a sandwich of monumental love.
Old pole-faced Wordsworth unblinking beneath them,
A bright-eyed young Archdeacon breathless above.
Many a stoney-faced statue has flickered its eyes
And swayed to the rhythm of her little panting cries
But wretched old Albert never yet has known
Isabel's pretty whinnying to echo 'round his dome.

On the last night of the promenade she waved to the conductor,
And there and then on the podium with scarcely a pause,
With a smile and a wave and a loud "Rule Britannia!"
She completed her collection to enormous applause.
Rapturous Albert now knows full well
He's captured forever the elusive Isabel.
Prettily disheveled but firmly installed,
And faithful forevermore to the Royal Albert Hall.

No more frantic scramblings up the dome of St Paul,
No more dank ramblings on Hadrian's wall.
With form and enthusiasm and anyone at all
Isabel makes love at the Royal Albert Hall.



The Last Will and Testament of Jake Thackray


I, the under-mentioned, by this document
Do declare my true intentions, my last will, my testament.
When I turn up my toes, when I rattle my clack, when I agonise,
I want no great wet weepings, no tearing of hair, no wringing of hands,
No sighs, no lack-a-days, no woe-is-me's and none of your sad adieus.
Go, go, go and get the priest and then go get the booze, boys.


Death, where is thy victory? Grave, where is thy sting?
When I snuff it bury me quickly, then let carousels begin -
But not a do with a few ham sandwiches, a sausage roll or two and "A small port wine, please".
Roll the carpet right back, get cracking with your old Gay Gordons
And your knees up, shake it up, live it up, sup it up, hell of a kind of a time.
And if the coppers come around, well, tell them the party's mine, boys.


Let best beef be eaten, fill every empty glass,
Let no breast be beaten, let no tooth be gnashed.
Don't bother with a fancy tombstone or a big-deal angel or a little copper flower pot:
Grow a dog-rose in my eyes or a pussy-willow
But no forget-me-nots, no epitaphs, no keepsakes; you can let my memory slip.
You can say a prayer or two for me soul then, but - make it quick, boys.


Lady, if your bosom is heaving don't waste your bosom on me.
Let it heave for a man who's breathing, a man who can feel, a man who can see.
And to my cronies: you can read my books, you can drive around in my motor car.
And you can fish your trout with my fly and tackle, you can play on my guitar,
And sing my songs, wear my shirts. You can even settle my debts.
You can kiss my little missus if she's willing then, but - no regrets, boys.


Your rosebuds are numbered;
Gather them now for rosebuds' sake.
And if your hands aren't too encumbered
Gather a bud or two for Jake.

On the Myth of the Popular Blog Post

If I was one of those bloggers with google ads, and links to sites that pay me if you buy from them, or just pay per 15 million click-throughs, then the nature of my blog would be very different. I'd update it every day, without fail, for instance, and I'd be constantly writing stuff of spurious value, but with eye-catching snappy titles -like "Ten New Ways to Get a Perfect Figure Without Dieting" or "How Beeswax Poultices Cured My Depression Within One Week!", or "How to make Serious Money out of collecting Junk!" (subtitled "A Year Ago I Was Just Like You, Now I Live in a Thirty-Room Mansion, and Have a Ferrari as my Lawnmower!"
In short, if I was obsessed by getting lots of visitors, I'd write stuff like that. Instead, I view large numbers of visitors with some suspicion. What the hell are they doing here?

Seriously, folks, if you really want to know how to cure your cat's hacking cough, or make a million in three months by doing something that's so simple you'll kick yourself when I tell you how, then you've come to the wrong place.

My wealth-making abilities are such that I'll probably need to keep working for at least a year AFTER I'm dead.

However, this post started with me looking at my site-monitor/meter. I ditched Site-Meter, because it missed so many visitors. I use Active-Meter, to find out simple stuff about my visitors, like where in the world they are (approximately, fear not.... I can't usually locate you any closer than your ISP's nominal address, which, in the U.S. may not even be in the same state as you, if I look at my own visits, I appear to vary my location by a couple of hundred miles, depending on where my ISP routes me), I'm also interested in where they found a link to me, which are regular visitors etc. It's just curiousity. I've got someone in Ulan Bator, who drops in on a weekly basis, there's a police department in Australia....
Well, they popped up after I made reference to a horrifying attack on garden gnomes in Western Australia. The press dubbed it "The Gnomesville Massacre". I'm not sure if the aussie cops think I might be a suspect, or whether they're just happy that their cause is publicised half a world away.

For the last few weeks, approximately two hundred and fifty people, per day, seem to have been googling "Why Women Shouldn't Skydive Nude". Or Binging it. They all end up at a post I made ages ago- http://gritinthegears.blogspot.com/2009/04/skydiving-in-high-heels.html. 
This contained an eye-popping pic of two men and two women, in freefall, naked. And the eye-popping bit is how boobies change their shape in a 120mph updraught. In the picture, they turn into inverted hemispherical cup-shapes.  Now I'm a man, and thus have no personal experience of the effects of high velocity air on boobies.
Judging by the expressions on the jumpers' faces, it's no big deal. They're smiling. Or is that another 12o mph updraft artifact. (See what I did there? Bilingual, me!)
Oh? did you just click the link and go take a look?
Sorry.
I just got a bit irked by all those uncouth visitors trailing by, leaving muddy footprints but, despite their numbers, never a comment, so I pulled the pic. If titillation is what they seek, the interweb's got plenty of titills. Let them lurk elsewhere.
The numbers even outdid my "Tractor Porn" post's highest ever total... For weeks. every day... Um. 280 so far, looking for that pic, today. No backlash as yet.
Eventually Google and Bing will figure out it's gone. then I might put it back up.

Charles Dickens, on Visiting Louisville in 1842

Having just been reading Charles Dickens' "American Notes", penned upon his travels in 1842, and from there going to browse the blogs on the interwebs, I came across a post from Jim Gottuso, with pictures taken down by the river near Louisville, and only a moment earlier, there I was, reading of Dickens staying at The Galt House in Louisville. He spoke well of it. That particular hotel burned down in 1865, there is a Galt House today, but it's a modern tower of concrete, steel, and glass.

It's worth reporting that Dickens, still only 29 years old, was a superstar of his day.

People stood in line for three days and nights to buy tickets to hear him speak and read from his novels.

Here then, for Jim and Sofia, a few words  from Dickens, from the same place they now inhabit, but a time quite  distant.

"There was nothing very interesting in the scenery of this day's journey, which brought us at midnight to Louisville. We slept at the Galt House; a splendid hotel; and were as handsomely lodged as though we had been in Paris, rather than hundreds of miles beyond the Alleghanies.


The city presenting no objects of sufficient interest to detain us on our way, we resolved to proceed next day by another steamboat, the Fulton, and to join it, about noon, at a suburb called Portland, where it would be delayed some time in passing through a canal.


The interval, after breakfast, we devoted to riding through the town, which is regular and cheerful: the streets being laid out at right angles, and planted with young trees. The buildings are smoky and blackened, from the use of bituminous coal, but an Englishman is well used to that appearance, and indisposed to quarrel with it. There did not appear to be much business stirring; and some unfinished buildings and improvements seemed to intimate that the city had been overbuilt in the ardour of 'going-a-head,' and was suffering under the re-action consequent upon such feverish forcing of its powers.

On our way to Portland, we passed a 'Magistrate's office,' which amused me, as looking far more like a dame school than any police establishment: for this awful Institution was nothing but a little lazy, good-for-nothing front parlour, open to the street; wherein two or three figures (I presume the magistrate and his myrmidons) were basking in the sunshine, the very effigies of languor and repose. It was a perfect picture of justice retired from business for want of customers; her sword and scales sold off; napping comfortably with her legs upon the table.

Here, as elsewhere in these parts, the road was perfectly alive with pigs of all ages; lying about in every direction, fast asleep.; or grunting along in quest of hidden dainties. I had always a sneaking kindness for these odd animals, and found a constant source of amusement, when all others failed, in watching their proceedings. As we were riding along this morning, I observed a little incident between two youthful pigs, which was so very human as to be inexpressibly comical and grotesque at the time, though I dare say, in telling, it is tame enough.


One young gentleman (a very delicate porker with several straws sticking about his nose, betokening recent investigations in a dung-hill) was walking deliberately on, profoundly thinking, when suddenly his brother, who was lying in a miry hole unseen by him, rose up immediately before his startled eyes, ghostly with damp mud. Never was pig's whole mass of blood so turned. He started back at least three feet, gazed for a moment, and then shot off as hard as he could go: his excessively little tail vibrating with speed and terror like a distracted pendulum. But before he had gone very far, he began to reason with himself as to the nature of this frightful appearance; and as he reasoned, he relaxed his speed by gradual degrees; until at last he stopped, and faced about. There was his brother, with the mud upon him glazing in the sun, yet staring out of the very same hole, perfectly amazed at his proceedings! He was no sooner assured of this; and he assured himself so carefully that one may almost say he shaded his eyes with his hand to see the better; than he came back at a round trot, pounced upon him, and summarily took off a piece of his tail; as a caution to him to be careful what he was about for the future, and never to play tricks with his family any more.

We found the steamboat in the canal, waiting for the slow process of getting through the lock, and went on board, where we shortly afterwards had a new kind of visitor in the person of a certain Kentucky Giant whose name is Porter, and who is of the moderate height of seven feet eight inches, in his stockings.

There never was a race of people who so completely gave the lie to history as these giants, or whom all the chroniclers have so cruelly libelled. Instead of roaring and ravaging about the world, constantly catering for their cannibal larders, and perpetually going to market in an unlawful manner, they are the meekest people in any man's acquaintance: rather inclining to milk and vegetable diet, and bearing anything for a quiet life. So decidedly are amiability and mildness their characteristics, that I confess I look upon that youth who distinguished himself by the slaughter of these inoffensive persons, as a false-hearted brigand, who, pretending to philanthropic motives, was secretly influenced only by the wealth stored up within their castles, and the hope of plunder. And I lean the more to this opinion from finding that even the historian of those exploits, with all his partiality for his hero, is fain to admit that the slaughtered monsters in question were of a very innocent and simple turn; extremely guileless and ready of belief; lending a credulous ear to the most improbable tales; suffering themselves to be easily entrapped into pits; and even (as in the case of the Welsh Giant) with an excess of the hospitable politeness of a landlord, ripping themselves open, rather than hint at the possibility of their guests being versed in the vagabond arts of sleight-of-hand and hocus-pocus.

The Kentucky Giant was but another illustration of the truth of this position. He had a weakness in the region of the knees, and a trustfulness in his long face, which appealed even to five-feet nine for encouragement and support. He was only twenty-five years old, he said, and had grown recently, for it had been found necessary to make an addition to the legs of his inexpressibles. At fifteen he was a short boy, and in those days his English father and his Irish mother had rather snubbed him, as being too small of stature to sustain the credit of the family. He added that his health had not been good, though it was better now; but short people are not wanting who whisper that he drinks too hard.

I understand he drives a hackney-coach, though how he does it, unless he stands on the footboard behind, and lies along the roof upon his chest, with his chin in the box, it would be difficult to comprehend. He brought his gun with him, as a curiosity. Christened 'The Little Rifle,' and displayed outside a shop-window, it would make the fortune of any retail business in Holborn. When he had shown himself and talked a little while, he withdrew with his pocket-instrument, and went bobbing down the cabin, among men of six feet high and upwards, like a light-house walking among lamp-posts.

Within a few minutes afterwards, we were out of the canal, and in the Ohio river again."

Language: Obfuscation and Equivocation as a Social Tool.