Posts by Bob Munro

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  • Island Life: And some with a fountain pen,

    Thanks Paul. Yet another musical road that leads back to Gram Parsons eh? :)

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report

  • Island Life: And some with a fountain pen,

    Yes, as through this world I've wandered
    I've seen lots of funny men;
    Some will rob you with a six-gun,
    And some with a fountain pen.

    I had to hunt far back into the record pile to unearth ‘Pretty Boy Floyd’ from Guthrie’s Dustbowl Ballads.
    I guess one of the challenges for us in Depression 2.0 will be to leave a musical legacy half as good as the one from the Great Depression.

    Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
    Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?

    Once I built a tower, up to the sun, brick, and rivet, and lime;
    Once I built a tower, now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report

  • Field Theory: Behold the Roar of the…,

    Tracey has just put up the stats.
    I didn't see the game but it appears the All Blacks never got to put the ball into a scrum until the second half? That seems rather unusual.

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report

  • Hard News: Because They Could,

    He flies straight back to the US today, and on return will go directly to a campaign office and join his wife, working the phones for Obama.

    Amazing.

    They are feeling the pull of history at FiveThirty Eight also.

    Organizers of America,

    H-Hour, D-Day is upon you.

    That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
    Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
    And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
    We would not die in that man's company
    That fears his fellowship to die with us.
    .....etc.

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report

  • Hard News: Punk'd?,

    ...and The Kos has a transcript.

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report

  • Field Theory: Vrooooom,

    A mate and I worked long days for five months each winter in the ski industry many years ago. By mid October it was finally all over. We would celebrate by closing the curtains and sit in two armchairs in front of the telly at the start of the ‘Great Race’ and never leave till the winner crossed the line.

    We now live different lives and our paths hardly cross but we always ring each other on Bathurst day for a catch up. The importance of the call seems to go up with the passing of time and we both make an effort to keep the ritual going. We had a great chat on Sunday.

    We did not talk about cars.

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report

  • Hard News: The odds, and the simply odd,

    Tim on page one:

    I attended an Obama rally in Columbus, Ohio over the weekend and while I can't speak for a McCain rally, I found the Obama rally to be a really inspiring event

    There's another take on how much fun the Obama rallies are in this piece in The New York Review of Books of a rally in Philadelphia.

    And yet what struck me in this perfect little model of political art was a tiny riff inserted into the tiny story, brought on by a shout from the crowd. When Obama launched into his story with "Because I love pie" a woman in the crowd shouted back, "I'll make you pie, baby!" and to the general hooting laughter the candidate returned, "Oh yeah, you're gonna make me pie?" Then, after a beat, amid even more raucous laughter, and several other female voices shouting out invitations, "You gonna make me sweet potato pie?" More shouts and laughter. "All of you gonna make me pie?"

    "Well you know I love sweet potato pie. And I think what we're going to have to do here"—and the laughter and the shouting rose and his voice rose above it—"what we're going to have to do is have a sweet potato pie contest... That's right. And in this contest, I'm gonna be the judge." The laughter rose and you could hear not only the women but the deep laughter of the men taking delight in the double entendre that was not only about sex, about that pie that that lanky confident smiling young man knew how to eat and enjoy and judge, but even more now, amazingly, as people came one by one to recognize, about something else. To those people gathered in Vernon Park that bright sundrenched morning, an even more titillating and more pleasurable double entendre, for it was most clearly about something they'd never had but hoped and dreamed of having and now had begun to believe they were within the shortest of short distances of finally tasting. "Because you all know," said the candidate, "that I know sweet potato pie."

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report

  • Hard News: The odds, and the simply odd,

    Rolling Stone on "mad dog Palin".

    Rolling Stone sticks it to McCain as well.

    Make-Believe Maverick

    Apologies. Mark Graham had already linked this on page 1.

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report

  • Hard News: The odds, and the simply odd,

    Rolling Stone on "mad dog Palin".

    Rolling Stone sticks it to McCain as well.

    Make-Believe Maverick

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report

  • Hard News: The odds, and the simply odd,

    This incredulous ABC correspondent's blog ponders Palin's counter to the ethics report.

    The ABC reporter is using the rules as they apply to normal people. I think Andrew Sullivan has it pretty much right.

    Again: this is the clear pattern with Palin: she publicly denies reality, insists on repeating that denial and is unable to deal with real world the way psychologically healthy people do. That's why I called her lies "odd lies." They are not the lies of a devious politician. They are much more troubling than that. They reflect a psyche unable to process fact when it conflicts with a delusional self-image. She is even worse in this psychotic denialism than Bush. She is a politician who can only survive in a propaganda state.

    Tim on page one:

    I attended an Obama rally in Columbus, Ohio over the weekend and while I can't speak for a McCain rally, I found the Obama rally to be a really inspiring event

    Michael Schaffer at The New Republic reports on the positive vibe at an Obama rally in Philadelphia.

    The crowd eats it up, with all the attendant cheers and sobs and exultations. The music comes on and the other pols flank Obama as he basks in the applause. As the audience files away, a retiree named Edith MacDonald stays put in her seat. "This is just such a happy place," she says, watching the crowd stream past. Brooks and Dunn's "Only in America" is playing again, and McDonald shouts over it to tell me that she's the last one left from her generation, born in South Carolina before migrating north. "I told my family, God left me here for a reason," she says. "So when I go up to heaven and see my family, I tell them" that the country had a black president.

    Can't you just feel the first tugs of the changing tide of history?

    Christchurch • Since Aug 2007 • 418 posts Report

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