Mickey Z
Cool Observer
Saturday, December 31, 2005
In search of "classics"
Just want to wish everyone a better 06 than we had in 05. Wishes for feline health in Hell’s Kitchen, Justice for all, blue skies for Joe and Suzanne, hugs for Mudge, and lots of love and laughter for all of us MZ’ers. Also wishes for seeing Mickey on C-span and looking forward to increasing action on Press Action.
Mickey, about the pictures you post today. Buk is really a lot prettier than Fabio but I still like that photo of you standing there at the podium showing your dimples.Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 12/31 at 08:43 AMThanks, RMJ...for the compliment and for everything you bring to this site and to the world. Let’s hope 2006 sees the dropping of charges against you...and other small (and “large") steps toward peace, justice, and solidarity everywhere and anywhere.
On a lighter note, I agree: I had never considered this before but, presented with those two options, I’d rather look like Buk than Fabio.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/31 at 10:25 AMGood wishes to MZ & All the Expendables...Mudge, Michael, James & Frank the Cat, Hawk, Rosemarie, Helga, Luna, Jim, the many others I might have forgotten at this moment, & special good wishes for Joe today -
May a more peaceful 2006 find you all better than 2005.
Thank you Mickey for providing this great place to hang and chat & disover, and thank you to all those here who’ve been such welcoming & stimulating company.
Posted by Amelopsis on from Canada 12/31 at 11:34 AMHi all!
I would like to contribute with an quote I thought about when reading about Bukowskis regrets:“A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.”
- John Barrymore (1882-1942).Now,I´m about to take my first whiskey and watch the news so I wish you a happy new year...and see you later!
Posted by The poster formerly known as "Old Glen". on from 12/31 at 12:00 PMWhat a great quote. A friend is about to move to San Pedro (where Bukowski lived many years, and died), I can’t wait to visit her just for the vibes.
A merry/happy new year to this curious crowd, who can chit chat one moment, and break into great political debate the next. I look forward to reading you for this coming year. And thanks for the last.
Posted by Peter (the other) on from California 12/31 at 12:43 PMLet us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent.
Pierre E. Trudeau (1919 - 2000)
Posted by Amelopsis on from Canada 12/31 at 01:03 PMHappy New Year everyone! I look forward to reading 365 more posts by Mickey and roughly 18,250 more expendable posts in the coming months.
Mickey, do you realize that in the first 7 days of this year you only had 37 posts from people? Now your almost doubling that every day. Hooray!! If the trend continues by next December you’ll be getting on average 350 comments for each one of your daily posts!! Eek!
Peace, Love and to a Compassionate Global Revolution!
LunaPosted by Luna_C on from the Delta 12/31 at 01:04 PMHello Mickey & Rosemarie & Amelopsis & Rev. Joe ( Knock one back for me, Rev., would ya? ) & Peter (the Other) - Peter, I see your posts all over the place… most recently at a site which featured some new Beatle material… you get around!
Thanks to all of you, and to Mudge and Hawk and Cart and Jim, from last night, for your good wishes…
It’s raining very hard, but the water levels are still below where they were yesterday - though they’re rising. Have to go back out, shortly.Rosemarie - hope your legal troubles disappear this year. Hope your ongoing battles over your car accident disappear, also… And, I hope you win some sort of citizen’s award for courage and compassion and relentless honesty, energy, and good hope!
Oh, and to you - and to all of us, may a splendid little “money tree” spring up in our yards or window boxes or mini-gardens or in that little clay pot placed by the window, and make this a less anxious, less harried, less exhausting year…Mickey - “Sometimes A Great Notion,” sounded great, but I agree with you about the length.
I have no fiction lying about, though my son has some good stuff tucked away upstairs. I don’t know what to suggest. JOS was pretty passionate about a Danial Quinn book… ( I’ve not yet read Ishmael, though it’s right here on my desk...)
Derrick Jensen is coming out with a new book - his “magnum opus,” I understand. Probably very long, as well. ( And I’m still working on “Culture of Make Believe.” )
I was thinking, the other day, about a book of short stories from Kafka I once very much enjoyed… included Metamorphosis and Hunger Artist.
Other folks will probably have to suggest the best and most reasonable read… I’ll try to sign on, if my house isn’t drifting down the block.Gotta get back out there…
See youz soon, I hope.Posted by joe on from Oregon 12/31 at 01:56 PMHello everyone. We’re expecting Dick Clark to stop by shortly.
Joe, here’s something you might be able to “use”: http://tinyurl.com/bpugh
Luna: 350 comments a day? I’ll need to clone myself...twice.
Bottoms up, Glen…
Hello Empress A. How are things on the other side of the border?
Peter: Good to have you here so regularly.
As for me, before I head out soon, I’d like to offer more examples of the recrudescing of recrudesce:
http://tinyurl.com/9ztfs
http://tinyurl.com/cx4d6Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/31 at 02:04 PMWinter is busy making up for all the snow we lost with recent rains. It’s starting to look a little more as it should outside today.
I think it’s great that so many readers will be wondering even for a brief moment which of their wolves to feed in the New Year.
A Greater Peace will be well “served” if every one makes their choice with some added consciousness. (and we’d be one step closer to a utiopian world for us all)
Posted by Amelopsis on from Canada 12/31 at 02:34 PMI’ll not be back for a while, but I thought I’d leave you with a question I saw at this interesting and quirky site: http://galquest.blogspot.com/
Politics of a single supercontinent?
How would the world be different today, geopolitically speaking, if the ancient land masses had never drifted apart and, therefore, today’s world consisted of a single supercontinent? How would biological life be affected?Posted by Amelopsis on from Canada 12/31 at 02:37 PMWell, it’s already New Year here. Thanks for the greetings, everyone. The internet is often referred to as virtual but it really is human contact. In some ways it is more personal than ordinary contact as it enables people to be intimate through being vulnerable i.e. you can take more risks in talking about yourself.
I have valued being able to contribute some of my thoughts here and to read others views and ... I don’t know what to call them, I was going to say wishes but they are more like hearts desires.
This “place” really has it’s own spirit and it is in great measure due to Mickey’s character - a passion for justice and a desire to be honest, with others and himself.
This has attracted like minded souls and I would name you all but I know I would forget someone.
Thank you all for contributing. There have been days when just reading your banter has proved such a tonic for me. To know there are sane people with compassion out there with whom I can communicate is no small thing, I can tell you.
My heart goes out to you, Rosemarie. I have another friend here who is under similar attack and I know it tests every fibre of your being. I truly look forward to this time next year when I read your summary of a victorious 2006 with a happy heart.
So here’s hoping for Justice in ‘06, personal, national and international.Cheers All,
JimPosted by Jim on from 12/31 at 04:18 PMhaven’t read the post or any previous comments but just on to say happy new year (almost).
in scotland new years eve is called hogmanay for reasons i won’t go into here. in a lot of ways we take it more seriously than christmas. the parties don’t stop till late february. its our way of dealing with the long winter.
it is ten to ten here and the strange thing in this pub is free internet access. not came across that one before but using the opportunity to sya happy new year when it comes to evryone and happy new year already to jim and helga.
Posted by michael on from scotland 12/31 at 04:50 PMThanks for the link, Amelopsis. Thanks for taking time out to say hello, Michael. Thanks for the wonderful note, Jim. If I show any such character here, it’s because the Expendables bring out the best in me.
Running out now for a bite and maybe a movie (if not, a renter). No DVD yet. Our ancient TV needs some kind of adaptor and neither of us is ambitious enough to figure it out.
See everyone later. Hope you’re dry, Joe.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/31 at 04:57 PMGood day, my dears...a quote that I feel would benefit each and every one of us to keep in mind in 2006, from Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)--
“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backward.”
All and each of my numerous and valued Expendables have my wishes for a bright and bountiful 2006. It’s flabberghastingly hard to believe that we’re the best part of a decade into the third millennium of the Common Era and this richest nation anywhere ever still thinks of itself as unable to afford to support its own people, while a vanishingly small minority grows repulsively obesely wealthy.
It revolts me that people who lost everything in 2004’s hurricanes are still wihtout permanent housing. It truly terrifies me, standing on the brink of homelessness on 1/3 as I am, that Katrina and Rita and Wilma victims have a bare minimum for survival, if they’re lucky, and that’s even under threat for many (debate about extending housing assistance to people who weren’t already receiving it before the hurricane came down on the side of “not"), while Halliburton and Chevron and Exxon post record profits and pay less tax than corporations anywhere else in the world.
The way American society works is dysfunctional, as I know each of us knows. But folks...this crisis exists because the Left takes the bait and fights among its constituent parties, while the Right makes common cause and uses evil, but effective, tactics to impose their horrible nightmare Breughel-in-Hell vision of the world on the majority.
I’m as guilty as the enxt person of “us-vs-them” thinking. I claim no unique vision. I am just, at last, coming to know firsthand how much it matters to change the course of this fucking Ship of State before the reefs ahead (the housing bubble’s about to burst, and the disaster that will follow behind that is awful to contemplate) rip a hole in the side.
We as citizens need to make sure we support SOME kind of group or position or plan that might, just might, lead us out of the darkness I fear lies ahead. The Left has no ideas that I can see to make an economic difference. Can someone enlighten me?
I’m off to my sister’s for some artificial jollity. I send love and peace and warm wishes to you all! It’s the wonderful people I know who give me the impetus to bother slogging on, so thanks to the Expendables all.
xoxo
MudgePosted by Mudge on from Dear, dead Austin 12/31 at 05:13 PMMZ, mine host, I must single you out for praise and devotion...you are a one-of-a-kind being in the best senses of those words.
Coming into your living room and having a great cocktail party on any given day at any given time has been a delight to me. The wonderful people you attract is testament to your character. Even your trolls are of higher quality than other bloggers’ trolls! I mean, who else has a troll who creates and maitains a Wiki page to him?!
You’ve been good to me publicly and privately, MZ, you and Michele are my idea of what people should aspire to be...warts and all: Better today than yesterday, and “looking” for the way to get even better for tomorrow.
With love and gratitude,
Richard/MudgePosted by Mudge on from Dear, dead Austin 12/31 at 05:31 PMI thought I was gone, but I opened an email and found this wonderful Bertrand Russell quote:
“Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.”
-Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, author, Nobel laureate (1872-1970)
This time I really am “done” for the day!Posted by Mudge on from Dear, dead Austin 12/31 at 05:43 PMI second what Mudge just said.
Also, Thanks for the support Jim. I can’t wait for all of the legal battles to be behind me. Then I can tell the real story behind the story. It will include, government threats, witness intimidation and, by comparison, make the mob look like choir boys. This government is even worse than anyone can imagine. Everything that is seen up front is just an illusion.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 12/31 at 05:50 PMGood bye ‘05, you weren’t really that great
You are even making ‘06 come in a second late
We all know that Katrina was mighty bad
But it was really the government that made us so mad.So now ‘05 get out of our way
We now have a New Year and many a new day
Here comes the Revolution and brand new times
Let’s start the Trials for all the War Crimes.
rmjPosted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 12/31 at 06:06 PMHello and sincerest fondest best wishes to Mudge and Joe and RMJ and Amelopsis and every other Expendable, and of course our hosts-- hoping now that every issue we all deal with, whether forces of nature, legal or financial woes, all work out happily soon enough.
Thanks again, all for your supportive wishes during Frank’s troubles in and out of the vet’s… and here’s a couple of quotes in line with Mickey’s Bukowski one-- from Kierkegaard:
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards;
Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless
haste that they hurry past it;The most painful state of living is remembering the future… and Poe’s line, ‘I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.’
Here’s hoping that those intervals aren’t so horrible for all of us.
JPL, Roddycat and FrankPosted by James on from Hell's Kitchen 12/31 at 06:29 PMLOVE those graphics and the stories you tell, Mickey! And of course I also love the stories the expendables tell.
Yesterday did turn out to be a real scorcher: up to 113 F in some parts of the State of Victoria but a ‘mere’ 104 F in Daylesford, Victoria. It seems 2005 was the hottest year on record, so let’s hope 2006 does not get any hotter.
Happy New Year to all of you!!Posted by Helga Fremlin on from Daylesford, Australia 12/31 at 07:23 PMHi Helga… they have been showing the celebrations in Australia.
James...those are great quotes you have in # 20.I’m excited. I just realized that there is a Twilight Zone marathon going on on the SiFi channel so I will sign off for now, take a hot bath, snuggle up with a Genny Cream Ale, and head for the Twilight Zone.
Posted by RMJ on from Churchill 4 Prez Hdqts 12/31 at 07:45 PMI’m touched by such warm wishes and kind words. Thanks, everyone. Long live The Expendables.
Posted by Mickey Z. on from Astoria 12/31 at 07:49 PMHappy new year all, its been and gone here.
Had a funny evening. Kev, who got the tickets, just said “the Brewery Tap, £15.” He neglected to mention the hippy theme. Ho hum. Anyway, we put much late 60’s/early 70’s music on the jukebox, very discriminating as always. Then got attacked by a mad drunken hippy for putting Chemical Brothers on after 12 (having been enjoined to do so by the bar staff.) The nazi-fascist-bully-boy landlord turned the juke-box off to clear our songs! No big-deal, in the cosmological scale, but put a crimp in the evening. We’re already barring the White Hart for snottiness about underage kissing (big crime). We’re running out of pubs.Amelopsis, tried to introduce the ‘Pangaea’ theme to the evening’s symposium, the most intelligible response was “blimey, be a bit different wouldn’t it!” Possibly the american cultures would be more resilient, there would be a greater spread of domesticable animals and therefore more even economic development, but christ who knows, so much of culture is determined by physical environment, and I have no clue about pangaean weather. I feel quite snug about that.
Love and hugs to everyone, at risk of being wet I’ll say Spread The Love this year.
Posted by Mew on from mates house, slightly pissed 12/31 at 08:50 PMHappy New Year, everyone. I’ve haven’t been on the computer much today, so sorry for missing another Story Saturday, but I do look forward to many more Saturdays and many more stories. You guys are the best—and no, I don’t say that to every blog’s commentors!
Posted by Hawk on from Boulder, CO 12/31 at 10:37 PM
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