Life in America

End of the Road

2009-10-11T22:11:00.000+02:00

The end is nigh! Well, for this blog, anyway. After we moved back to the states, I had some hopes to keep this blog alive with reflections and observations about life in the US, and especially how it compares to life in the EU. Given that I have managed to make about three posts in the six months since we returned, I'd say that isn't working out too well. Mostly it is a problem of time - The crucial imperative to get working again and restart the pipe business here in NC has eaten up all spare time I might spend on side projects like this, and this is unlikely to change anytime in the near to middle future.

Another problem has been content, because while it is very nice to be back in the states, it is also pretty easy, and I can no longer count on getting entire humorous blog articles out of trying to mail a box at the PO, or getting lost in French backroads, or having to fight off mobs of gypsies with a walking stick. Being able to go have a fun meal at a Cajun restaurant is wonderful, but it does not a riveting read make. Ergo, about the only posts I have made since returning have been goofy humor or random web jokes, and this sort of thing works much better on my Facebook account. In fact, most of what I might have posted here has migrated to my Facebook page - It's just easier to update, and the micro-blogging nature of FB fits my limited time schedule much better than having to compose entire articles here. And if I want to just chat nonsense and bad movies with friends, I do that on our Pub Crawler forum... again, there instead of here.

The decision to kill this blog was made during yesterday's reworking of our main website. A lot of old content is getting yanked, and Emily and I decided it was time to pull the plug on this blog too. The Pipe Blog will carry on, since it gets all the hits anyway, and I will be much happier in only having one blog to keep updated

For those who have followed us through our last seven years of struggle, thank you for your time and interest!

NY Times on French Health Care

2009-09-14T20:01:00.003+02:00

I've mentioned previously that my main regret about leaving France is losing the excellent French health care system. Here in the states, we have NO health care - no insurance, no ability to get affordable insurance, and if I get injured in the shop, I may as well put a bullet in my head because that would pretty much be the end of things, with no means of paying for expensive hospital treatment. This is why it continues to surprise me that there is actually such a controversy over the possibility of national health care here, even though admittedly a lot of the resistance is based on outright lies and propaganda by the insurance and drug industries, not to mention fanatical right wing opposition who simply don't want to see Obama succeed on anything, no matter how much good it might do the country. The NY Times had an excellent article on this subject today:

Get Real on Health Care

Some snips below...

I don’t think there’s much to debate when France spends 11 percent of its gross domestic product on health care and insures everyone and the United States spends 16.5 percent of G.D.P. and leaves 20 percent of adults under 65 uninsured. The numbers don’t lie: The U.S. system is wasteful and unjust.
...
So I’m convinced there’s no real argument. As President Obama put it last week, “We spend one and half times more per person on health care than any other country, but we aren’t healthier for it.” Why would the United States cling to the dubious distinction of being the only wealthy nation that does not afford basic health insurance to all?
....

Toes

2009-08-27T17:27:00.002+02:00

What is life in North Carolina like, ask my European friends?

It is just like this:

This could be my theme song these days...
Oh, and here are the lyrics, for those who have trouble with country-accented singing vocals:

I got my toes in the water, ass in the
Sand
Not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand
Life is good today. life is good today.

Well, the plane touched down just about 3 o'clock
And the city's still on my mind
Bikinis and palm trees danced in my head
I was still in the baggage line
Concrete and cars are there own prison bars like this life i'm living in
But the plane brought me farther.
I'm surrounded by water
And i'm not going back again

I got my toes in the water, ass in the sand
Not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand
Life is good today. life is good today.

Adios and vaya con dios
Yeah i'm leaving GA
And if it weren't for tequila and pretty senoritas
I'd have no reason to stay
Adios and vaya con dios
Yeah i'm leaving GA
Gonna lay in the hot sun and roll a big fat one
And grab my guitar and play

Four days flew by like a drunk friday night as the summer
Drew to an end
They couldn't believe that i just couldn't leave
And i bid adieu to my friends
Because my bartender she's from the islands
Her body's been kissed by the sun
And coconut replaces the smell of the bar and i don't know if its her or the
Rum

I got my toes in the water, ass in the sand
Not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand
Life is good today. life is good today.

Adios and vaya con dios
A long way from the lake
Its where all the muchachas they call me "big poppa" when i throw pesos their Way
Adios and vaya con dios
A long way from GA
Someone do me a favor and pass me the jaeger
And i'll grab my guitar and play

Adios and vaya con dios
Going home now to stay
The senoritas don't care-o when there's no dinero
You got no money to stay
Adios and vaya con dios
Going home now to stay

With my ass in a lawn chair
And toes in the clay
Not a worry in the world, a PBR on the way
Life is good today. Life is good today

Poorly-placed ads

2009-08-18T20:33:00.003+02:00

Well, if there was ever anything that summed up the amusing silliness of "Life in America", it would be this - a website devoted to collecting various surreal and often very funny examples of poorly-considered advertising placements:

15 Unfortunately Placed Ads

A few of my favorites......

North Carolina brews good beer

2009-08-06T17:40:00.003+02:00

Posted from the Greensboro News & Record:

North Carolina brews reputation for good beer

Welcome to the revolution. North Carolina is the craft beer state of the South.
.......Hang on any bar stool and you’ll hear a dozen reasons: the changing laws, the increasing interest, the supportive retailers, the growing number of festivals, and the natural tie-in to the homegrown food movement.

And of course, the brewers themselves. They’re making good beer here.

You’ll also hear barroom proclamations about North Carolina becoming more hip and hear how Beer Advocate magazine picked Asheville over Portland, Ore., earlier this year as the No. 1 beer destination in the country.

Imagine that. Asheville — a city once called backward by one of its own favorite sons, Thomas Wolfe — now has nine breweries.
........A change in the law helped. Four years ago, legislators overturned a law that dated back to 1935, the era of Prohibition, and allowed brewers to make beers that could exceed 6 percent alcohol content.
That change happened because thousands of people never involved or even interested in politics jumped aboard to help push what became known as “Pop the Cap.’’

And last August, brewmasters formed the N.C. Brewers Guild to help craft brew pubs go the way of the N.C. wineries: lobby, collaborate and get the word out about North Carolina’s homegrown brew.

Click the top link for the full story, I've just pasted some excerpts here.

The Lighter Side of La Roche

2009-08-04T17:11:00.003+02:00

Despite (or perhaps because of?) its resemblance to the village of the Burgermeister Meisterburger, La Roche-Bernard was probably one of the nicest, if not the nicest, little towns that we regularly visited. It's true that it was extremely scenic, and had a beautiful view from the river docks, but what we most often enjoyed was the hidden park walkway that wound around the town. Side streets that looked like back alleys would actually take you behind the buildings and into a rambling footpath that wove all through the town and took you in and out of gardens, parks, and old ruins - it was very much a hidden world, a la "The Secret Garden". It was pleasant all year round, but as my favorite time for going out walking is in the fall, that's when most of our photos and sketches were done. Here is Emily, relaxing on a bench on a cool Autumn day with a crisp breeze from the river blowing the dead leaves across the cobblestone pathway.

La Roche-Bernard

2009-08-01T23:43:00.003+02:00

I've been going back through our Brittany photos and tweaking them a bit, trying to capture more of the emotional feel of the places rather than the literal photographic versions. Here's the first halfway tolerable result of much fiddling, a street scene from the little town of La Roche-Bernard, which was not far north of Herbignac. The photo texture was taken from a multi-exposure of all our La Roche photos, to help give the picture the spirit of the town, literally. I'm generally pleased with the result, for an early attempt, and I think it captures the "feel" of a small Breton town, at least in terms of my reactions.

Sometimes I ...

2009-07-30T17:09:00.003+02:00

Since moving back to the states, there are some things I do now, just because I can. Sometimes I ...

... Go buy groceries at 11pm at night. Because the stores are open. Not only are they open, but the crowds are gone.

... Stare in wonder at the selection of biscuits and waffles and pancakes and sausages and breakfast burritos on the breakfast foods aisle.

... Get slightly choked up that the grocery store book and magazine section has more English language reading than I saw in the biggest bookstores in France.

... Can't help but laugh at the insanely huge and bloated vehicles that Americans drive. V8 hot rods I can understand, but why would anyone want to have to struggle around town in something as ungainly as a Hummer?

... Want to just lie flat and stretched out on the cool, air-conditioned floors everywhere. Last night a store manager came and apologized to us, and gave us free cinnamon twists, because the AC wasn't doing a very good job in his Taco Bell. He hasn't been in a movie theater in Nantes in the summer.

... Go to mega-bookstores like Barnes & Noble, and just sit in the magazine section and absorb the mass of English-language media, and revel in the sheer presence of it all. Can't do this for long, because people think you're weird if you just sit there, so I have to grab something off the shelf and pretend to read it while I sit being thankful. It is an odd world when you can have an entire magazine devoted to collectors of classic Datsuns from the '70's.

... Wish the USA had more political parties. I like the Libertarians and vote for them often, but no one is ever going to take them seriously enough to give them media coverage or put their candidates on stage for presidential debates. Why can't we have Greens and Tories and Socialistes and UMPs and a Centre Nationale des Independents et Paysans (a party for independents and peasants, literally - that's me on both counts). Europe can keep their National Fronts, though. We have enough of those nuts already.

... Am absolutely stunned by the variety of stuff on the frozen food aisle. Super U had eight kinds of frozen pizza. The Wal-Mart grocery has a whole aisle devoted to pizzas. And another for chicken wings.

... Reflexively point in delight every time I see an entire restaurant devoted to hot wings. Or Cajun food. Or Japanese, or Indian, or Jamaican.

... Am amazed by customer service. When you don't have it for a long time, it's a pleasant but bizarre shock. The guy at Woodcraft exchanged a power carving collet for us, without a receipt, just because he recognized us. And when a replacement wasn't in stock, he took one out of a packaged box from a carving kit and gave it to us, and took the box off the shelf until he could replace the collet on his own. In France it would have been a month before we got our replacement, if ever.

... Go out driving in the evening just to see the night life. Traffic is everywhere, people are out shopping and dining and seeing movies and generally running about. After 7pm, Herbignac was as dead and empty as the abandoned movie set of a 1940's Frankenstein movie. The only nightly sound was the creaking of the metal Super U sign as it dolefully clicked through its time and temperature displays.

... Wonder constantly what various friends in France and Europe would think of things. In the parking lots, "Gosh, what would Claudie think if she could see all these giant vehicles?" At the Fresh Market, "I wonder what Marcel would think of the selection of international spices and ingredients?" At the mall, "I wonder what Camille would think of all the odd fashions?" Out for dinner, "I wonder if we could ever get Beate into a Cajun restaurant?" One thing I do not have to wonder about is Pipe & Pint, because our French pipe collecting friends would love it. Guillaume, you need to fly over here just so you can enjoy open humidors of tobacco, cigars, good pipes, great beers, and wine and lambic all in the same shop...!

The Good Side of Brittany

2009-07-30T05:07:00.004+02:00

Emily thought my last post was quite hard on Brittany. I have little sympathy for the place - Brittany was quite hard on us, and I do not intend to sugarcoat my reflections on the difficulty of our lives there. But it wasn't all a horror, and I thought I'd put together another post to share the lighter side of seven years of hell...

(Click for larger versions)

Memories of Brittany

2009-07-29T04:27:00.002+02:00

It's already like a dream. This is my first attempt to put our experience into a combination of words and images. Click it for the full-size version.

Timecrimes

2009-07-10T20:20:00.004+02:00

Last night Em and I experienced something very odd, our first sense of homesickness for Europe, brought on by the most mundane sight one can imagine - a pan of a supermarket parking lot in a Spanish film. Suddenly we were there, recognizing all the familiar Renaults and Peugeots and Seats... a very strange experience. It was a parking lot as parking lots should look, meaning one where the cars were not outnumbered by trucks, yet at the same time, US parking lots also look "right". Multiculturealism is an exotic and confusing beast, it seems.

Our movie was the Spanish SF/thriller "Timecrimes", one of the best movies I have seen in a very long time and especially great after just watching the disappointing "Knowing" and "Mirrors". In a nutshell, Timecrimes is a Spanish SF flick that will fry your brain. I think it's interesting that so many of the better genre flicks I've seen lately are Spanish - must be something in the water over there. The poster misleads, making it look like some intense slasher film, which it most certainly is not. I can't describe it much without spoiling the whole wonder of the movie, but the very rough story is:

A guy on vacation is sitting in his back yard one day. He spies a nubile young woman getting naked in the nearby woods.

He goes to investigate and is attacked by a scary looking character with a bandaged head. (Note, again - This is not a slasher film. It may resemble one in screen caps and advertising, but it is a very different sort of beast)

Escaping, he finds a means to go back in time, literally zigzagging in and out of his own previous timeline. That's the first ten minutes and from there on out, your head will start exploding. What I loved about it was the fact that I kept thinking, "Oh, this is good but I can guess what will happen next", and then events would unfold in such an utterly different way as to make me cackle in delight. It was all, "Whoah" and, "WHOAH!" and, "Wait, pause that, I need to get my head around what's going on". Emily and I discussed it for a good fifteen minutes afterward (She had a difficult time fully getting her head round the structure of the time travel plot, while I was fascinated by the potential repercussions of the events).

It is certainly one of the very best movies about time travel that I have ever seen, and possibly the ONLY one that fits together so well - It is built like an extremely complex clock, and every little piece clicks into place.

Strongly recommended!

John Denver was right

2009-07-09T03:19:00.002+02:00

So, here we are again at last, back in North Carolina! And what a long, strange trip it has been. I've been across the ocean and right through hell; I can be forgiven for one hackneyed expression. I've given this blog a bit of thought, probably more than it was ever worth, and have decided to keep it running and keep writing in it from time to time. It was that or shut it down for good... I gave that idea some consideration, on the grounds that I already had the Pipe Blog to write and another blog was one too many, but in the end I opted to keep this going for the simple reason that it's open-ended. The Pipe Blog is a focused subject, with limits, while this one better fits a wide range of rambling and digression. The near future will probably bring a good bit of commentary on what it's like to be back in the USA after seven years abroad, but for this evening, I'll let John Denver sum up my feelings best:

There and Back Again

2009-03-20T21:39:00.000+01:00

Biz News - Fans of the more unusual Talbert Briars might want to take a look at this Ebay auction, on an odd piece done a couple years back for a special order. No new pipes from me, though, for reasons that are about to be obvious....

It seems like it has been a terribly long time since I have updated this blog, especially since the days when I could manage new posts each week, sometimes even every couple of days. Not so in 2008 - For us, like so many others, it has been a very difficult year and I have been too busy simply trying to stay fed and sheltered to keep up with my online writing. This may change soon, though, for today's picture is the harbinger of major news -

My wife and I are moving back to the United States!

We've lived nearly seven years in France. It's time. There are a multitude of reasons for the move - some expectedly angry and unpleasant, others fortuitous and perfectly timed. I may tell some harrowing stories in the future, but I don't want to dwell on specifics for the moment. Suffice to say that in one bright swoop, circumstances lined up ideally to enable us to make another transatlantic hop on our shoestring (nay, non-existent!) budget, and we chose to grab the opportunity. I write this sitting amidst packed boxes of books and clothes, and if all goes well, we should be leaving Brittany to return to North Carolina sometime in late April or May.

I depart France with the same jumble of extreme feelings I've had through all my time here. The people are wonderful, the bureacracy is a nightmare. The scenery is stunning, the communication is an eternal struggle. For every incredible vista of ruined castle overlooking rocky seaside cliffs, there are a dozen entreaties to government offices and business administration officials. It's nation where complete strangers will fly halfway across the country to bring you a bottle of their favorite wine, yet you have to literally scream and threaten violence just to get a fonctionnaire to acknowledge a fax. Living here has been like life with a beautiful trophy wife - lovely to look at, yet terribly difficult to maintain. But I know I will miss the place terribly, despite all the hassles, as we settle back into the relaxed, insular, Shire-like rythym of life in North Carolina. I can't help but think of Frodo Baggins, and wonder if I, too, will feel as though I'm "going back to sleep".

One aspect that I'm certain won't go back to sleep is my pipemaking - Talbert Briars will continue and carry on as always, and I look forward to once again being able to compete with the ranks of American pipemakers on an even footing, unhampered by the horrible dollar-to-euro currency imbalance that has dogged so much of our time here. It's also going to be a wonder to really be able to focus on my work again, without the pressures and immense weights of worry we have suffered for so long. All pipemaking will be shut down for the next several months, and our workshop is now closed in France. Some of the French machinery may be sold, some is definitely going with me, but it will take a long time to design and build our new workshop in the US, and until then there will be no new pipes (For those who may be interested, we have exactly two pipes remaining in stock for sale - one Ligne Bretagne and one Talbert Morta. Contact us soon if you're interested in either, before they get packed!)

I know the pipe community will probably have questions for us, but I'd ask that they be either posted here as comments, or held back until I can assemble a FAQ for this move, which will answer some of the obvious inquiries like, "Will Mortas and Ligne Bretagnes continue?", "Are you selling any of your stock and tools?", "Will your stamping change?", "Will your pricing change?", and so on. I have enough to do with the move, I'd as soon not have to type replies to the same questions many times over! And some questions have no answers as yet... The Ligne Bretagne stummels and hardware are going with me, for example, but I have not yet decided if they will change name. Morta pipes may continue if I can secure a reliable source of high quality blocks, but the material is hard to come by, and I am not interested in producing a substandard product. Time will tell...

In the very near future, the website will go offline except for a front page linking to this blog and our "Life in France" blog, where I hope to chart the progress of our move and our reactions to re-immersion in the American lifestyle and culture (Things I look forward to - KFC, good Mexican food, easy talking, and being able to get things accomplished without fifteen notarized attestations from the mairie and the préfecture plus stamped copies of every utility bill we've ever had and our marriage license. Things I do not look forward to - Loud, belligerent people, US non-health care, and Paris Hilton... though I think we have managed to foist her off on the Brits now). People interested in this social stuff may want to add us back to their Favorites for a bit, because the blogs are likely to be more active soon.

And speaking of, I'm currently looking for a good title for the "Life in France" blog if anyone has any ideas, since "An American Pipemaker in Brittany" won't work anymore. I'm going to miss sights like this being outside my front door...

Why do I never hear when they publish this stuff?

2009-02-19T16:40:00.002+01:00

Books, books.... My Amazon Wishlist has just gotten a bit fatter, giving me even more stuff that I can pine for and not afford to buy. "The BBook of Geek" sounds hilarious and probably extremely tangent-inducing, particularly if it's half as comprehensive as suggested in this Ars Technica review. But I will be extremely annoyed if they don't have some mention of Starblazers...

But even the BBook of Geek must bow to the marketing brilliance of "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies", the perfect gift for wives, girlfriends, and Jane Austen fans everywhere.

"Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" features the original text of Jane Austen's beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone crunching zombie action.

Hey, it's a book my wife and I can both enjoy!

A Valentine from Darcy

Dearest Elizabeth,

You above all others know how I detest this day. That we should be expected to lavish gifts and sonnets upon our nearest relations for no other reason than expectation itself! How preposterous! How infuriating! (Your flowers and letter arrived promptly and in good condition, thank you).

And yet there is no escaping the added sorrow hanging over this day. Pemberley ceases to live in your absence, my love. My own heart beats more slowly, and my morning patrols want for their usual liveliness. Yesterday I happened on a small herd of unmentionables in the woods, and could not bring myself to remit them back to Hell. My darling, there is no joy in killing without you.

I hope your stay in Longbourn has been a pleasant one, and I pray you return with no shortage of alacrity. Do be vigilant, though – and keep your Katana near, as there have been frequent reports of trouble in Derbyshire.

La Chambre des Morts

2009-02-15T17:38:00.009+01:00

Here in Brittany, we are currently deep in the grey rainy darkness of winter, when we get all the fun of week after week of overcast skies and heavy rain, but no snow. This winter has been sunnier than usual, however, so I'm thankful for small wonders. Today's pic is another photo from Carnac, this one suitable for use as desktop wallpaper. And if you're wondering where all these links suddenly came from, I've started using the Firefox blogging add-on Zemanta, which is proving to be very useful so far. Zemanta scans typed text and suggests one-click Wikipedia links for recognized terms, so in future our visitors will be able to handily look up things I might reference in posts. It also adds some handy sidebars to the Blogger window that allow me to search image hosting sites for publicly-available pics of whatever I need to show a pic of, for example, Godzilla:

Image via Wikipedia

So, mark this as one tiny step forward for the blog. But to get back to my intro about being mired in the bleak Breton winter, there just isn't a lot to do out here except stay in, TRY to stay warm, and keep the DVD player spinning with good movies. I've been going out of my way lately to hunt down a decent selection of French films, and I intend to try my hand at reviewing a few for this blog, starting today with "La Chambre des Morts".

Clarification: At the risk of being pronounced an artless heathen, I will say that the term "French film" did not initially carry a positive connotation for me. If I thought "French film", the mental image that sprung to mind was an arthouse movie filled with miserable couples who spend the entire running time sitting in cafés smoking and screwing each other's spouses while dourly pontificating on the emptiness of life. Films for Woody Allen fans, in other words. For myself, however, I want to see a good thriller, or horror film, or comedy, or basically anything that has a story and doesn't leave me wanting to slit my wrists by the end of it. Call me Ishmael.

I suspect I am not alone in the above impression of French films, which is why living here was a small revelation regarding the quality and range of French cinema, especially in regard to many of my favorite genres. Today, France is quickly on the way to toppling Japan & Asia as King of the Modern Horror Film - French shockers are starting to come out faster and faster, bringing a French cultural sensibility that breathes new life into even the most tired of genre styles. But today's review isn't really a horror film; it's more of a mystery/thriller, despite being called "the French Silence of the Lambs". Voila, let's talk about:

La Chambre des Morts

Plot - Joyriding jerks accidentally kill a man carrying a huge cash ransom to pay off the kidnapper of his daughter. The daughter is killed by her captor as a result. These events set off a complex suspense thriller about a young female detective (Herself traumatized by a childhood abduction experience) trying to catch the insane killer, who has abducted a new victim, while simultaneously the joyriders must deal with the fallout of their actions and their sudden acquisition of a bag of cash. Very creepy finale when all the storylines converge at the lair of the murderer.

It's somewhat fair to call it a "Lambs" clone, but compared to Silence it was less gory, slower-paced, more realistic, and with less focus on the "serial killer as superhero" theme. The killer was no genius madman, but just a thoroughly messed-up individual... yet to the movie's credit, not that much less frightening than Lector. We enjoyed the film very much. It only has a rating of 6 on IMDB but I'd put it much higher - It had well-developed characters and a creeping sense of escalation that were very enjoyable. It does NOT have action happening every three minutes, graphic gore, or shakycam - instead, the mystery unfolds quite gradually as the main storylines crisscross, and we really come to root for our heroine (played with all the same smarts, deduction, and insecurity of Jodie Foster's agent). If the "feel" of the film reminded me of anything, I'd say it was more similar to a 70's thriller than a modern one, at least right up to the climactic adventure in the killer's lair (which resembles more the good parts of Silent Hill). I'd definitely recommend this one to anyone looking to do some international cross-cultural movie sampling of films that AREN'T annoying arthouse fap. Oh, and for inexplicable reasons, the film is on DVD in the states as "Melody's Smile" - an odd title change from the much more accurate, original "Room of the Dead".

I'll be posting comments in future blogs on a variety of other Frenchie flicks, including La Moustache, A L'Interieur (said to possibly be the most horrifying film ever made), Jet Lag (Decolage Horaire), Ils, Malefique, Sheitan, L'Auberge Espangol, Les Poupées Russes, Fauteils d'Orchestre, Apres Vous, and a number of others in a multitude of genres.

.......................... But what I really would like to see is a French kaiju film...

Calvin & Hobbes say it like it is

2008-12-28T15:15:00.003+01:00

Calvin & Hobbes perfectly sum up the current state of our economic difficulties:

(I found this shortly after reading an article on Fannie & Freddie, where it was mentioned that the director made a 14 million dollar/year salary. I'm sorry, but unless you're personally bringing peace to the middle east, NOBODY does enough work in a year to justify 14 million....)

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-17T16:07:00.002+01:00

The Batman of Sheffield

2008-12-13T15:54:00.002+01:00

This is British news, rather than French, but it's just plain cool for the holiday season:

Mystery surrounds "Batman of Sheffield"

Direct article link
(from the UK Telegraph)

By Matthew Moore
Last Updated: 12:18PM GMT 13 Dec 2008

The identity of a Sheffield benefactor who hides behind a Batman mask and a fake American accent remains unclear

Dubbed the "Christmas crusader", the real-life superhero has been spotted lending a hand at a soup kitchen, charity job and children's hospital in Sheffield.
But despite his good works and charitable donations totalling £10,000, the Yorkshire Batman's identity is as mysterious as his Gotham City counterpart.
He is known to be a local entrepreneur, but wears a mask at all times and speaks with a fake American accent.
"I don't want to reveal my identity because it's more important to highlight the charities," he told the Daily Express.
"I don't care if some people think I'm bonkers. If I inspire others to give their time and money to good causes this Christmas, it's been worth it.
"My message is that you don't need to be a superhero, or super wealthy, to give to deserving causes. If you can give cash, or toys, that's fantastic. The most precious gift of all is your time."
Batman helped stack shelves and man the tills at Bluebell Wood Children's Hospice charity shop in the city, where staff said that his presence sent takings through the roof.
"At first we thought he was a joker, but he turned out to be a true superhero," said one shop worker. "We're thinking of getting a Bat light installed so we can send him a signal whenever business is slow."

The Heart Attack Grill

2008-11-30T17:55:00.006+01:00

People ask me what I miss about the states.

Insanity, that's what I miss...

France seems to me to be a very self-conscious country, very concerned to be taken seriously and where no one wants to risk looking foolish. Ergo, there is a distinct deficit in over-the-top lunacy of this particular American variety:

Gigantic quadruple-decker hamburgers served by "Naughty Nurses" with cigarettes and beer.

God bless America!

(Note - I did not believe these pics at first, figuring they must be Photoshop fakes. Oh, the burgers I could easily believe, but not the cigs ,not in today's world of inane anti-smoking freakout. Then I learned the place was in Arizona, and it all made sense. Go Midwest!)

How Sarko got his groove back

2008-11-15T17:36:00.003+01:00

The news is so odd these days. While most of the EU is now officially in recession, France continues to show positive growth - the only EU country that still is, IIRC. Today I just read that Sarkozy is taking advantage of this to press his case for a more controlled form of global capitalism, in this interesting NPR article. They have a lot of good ideas to take to the table, but can you spot the key problem that will make sure no serious changes are ever actually implemented?

Sarkozy and the Europeans want to change the rules of the financial game. They speak of more regulation, lower corporate salaries, global governance and binding multilateral measures enforced by international organizations — the kind of talk that makes American free-marketeers shiver.

Call me cynical.....

"Your call is important to us!"

2008-11-12T14:22:00.002+01:00

This has no connection to anything, but I wanted to post it because I thought it was hilarious. It's a TV commercial parody of what call centers are like... and pretty close to my mental image of them, too. How many classic TV and cinema robots can you spot?

The best election news so far

2008-11-05T14:25:00.004+01:00

One can only wonder how much better McCain might have done if not for the appalling choice to run with this creature...

Trever's Halloween movie list

2008-10-20T15:16:00.003+02:00

Just posted this on another forum, so I may as well copy it here too! Here's my recommended viewing list for seasonal October entertainment.

(I should note that my preferences in scary movies is that they actually be scary, rather than stomach-churning, so my favorites list is biased towards older haunted house movies instead of modern gore fests)

The original black & white, 1963 film "The Haunting" is one of the scariest flicks ever made. It is rated G. There is no gore, no profanity, and virtually no special effects of any kind. Nonetheless, I can safely promise that it will freak you out if you watch it in a dark room.

Once you have experienced "The Haunting", you will never again be able to hear its absolutely perfect literary introduction without having all the hair on your arms prickle:

Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone

The first comment on IMDB sums it up:

There is no blood, there is no slashing, today this would be rated "G." But, this is the scariest movie, ever. Every time I watch this masterpiece (and I have watched it over 50 times), I see or hear something new.

The density of the black and white is incredible. The camera angles and reflection shots are unsettling. The score is appropriately terrifying, from the ringing of tiny bells to the cannon ball rocking down the hall.

The cast is excellent. The direction superb. This is horror at the peak of perfection--it is in your mind. The only thing better is to read the book by Ms. Jackson on a dark night when you are all alone, and "far from town." As Stephen King said about Shirley Jackson, "She never had to shout." Mr. Wise is to be credited with bringing her whispers to the screen.

Rent this for Halloween. Or, own it forever. I still have trouble getting to sleep after I watch this.

If you want other great haunting flicks that are big on the freaky and low on the gore, I can strongly recommend:

The Changeling

The Legend of Hell House

Scream of Fear

Night of the Demon

Haunted

Carnival of Souls

The Uninvited

I wish I didn't have to go back twenty to forty years just to find movies that could be scary without buckets of blood and SPFX.

French hold out against credit crunch

2008-10-08T17:36:00.003+02:00

An interesting article from BBC:

French hold out against credit crunch

Unlike Britain, the US and many other countries, France appears to be weathering the credit crunch storm in reasonable shape.

The BBC's Emma Jane Kirby asks if other nations should take a leaf out of the thrifty Gallic book?

If I had to use one word to describe France's financial system, the word I would choose would be "cautious".

French banks are immensely careful about whom they lend money to and, to limit risks, they spread their investments much more widely than those in the US or UK.

Only about a quarter of banking activity is related to investment banking and dealer-broker activity - the rest is all to do with retail banking.

This meant when the credit crunch bit, the French banks were hit a lot less hard than those in many other countries.

But it is not just about banking investments - this country as a whole simply takes far fewer risks.

Take the level of household debt. In France, it is at 47% of GDP, while in the UK it is well over twice that.

It's not that temptation does not exist in France - the lure of consumerism is just as strong as it is elsewhere.

But it is very difficult to spend money you do not have in France.

French credit cards are little more than debit cards, so there is no question of simply sticking a couple of flat screen TVs on your credit card and hoping to pay for them later - if there are insufficient funds in your account, your bank will immediately block the transaction.

In the wealthy suburb of St Germain-en-Laye, just outside Paris, I met Francois Artignan, a well-to-do banker who moved back to France two years ago after a long stint of living in the UK.

Francois admits he misses the buzz of London living but says he was alarmed by the way so many British people lived on their credit cards and never saved money.

"It's true that you can note a big difference in consuming behaviours between the French and the English," Mr Artignan says.

"People here don't believe you can just put your debts together and get them refinanced... But in London... it was as if wealth was something you could get from a bank, it's a sort of miracle people seem to believe in England.

"It seems to me people there are very keen to use up all the money they have, and that's a worry when you wonder how people are going to have money for retirement for instance," Mr Artignan says.

Sluggish growth

From his Paris office, the chief economist for market analyst Xerfi, Alexander Law, has been comparing the spending patterns of France and Britain.

Mr Law, who has dual nationality, believes that innate French prudence has saved it from disaster.

"Generally in France you spend what you have and not more," he explains.

"In the US and the UK, the economy has been driven by household spending, consumption has been driven by credit, and a lot less in France, so that's why when there were periods of expansion France grew a lot more slowly than the UK and the US but conversely when it's slowing down, it will slow down in a more moderate fashion than the UK or the US."

France's rate of growth is horribly sluggish - this year it looks set to hover around just 1%, meaning its likely to be way off target for meeting its promise to the EU to bring its budget deficit back under control by 2012.

But although its slow economy is hardly the envy of the world, its reluctance to tie its economy into the housing market in the same way the US did has also meant that when the American sub-prime market collapsed, it did not drag the French market with it.

There are far fewer household owners here than in the UK - about 57% of French people are on the property ladder, compared to 70% in the UK.

Although a high earner, Mr Artignan was 43 before buying his first home because in France, unless you have a big deposit, you can forget begging the banks for a huge loan.

Two conditions

President Nicolas Sarkozy is trying to push France into becoming a nation of house owners by building thousands of cheap new homes.

But France still believes in strict rules and regulations, Finance Minister Christine Lagarde says.

"Expect two conditions - a down payment of 20% of the value of the house plus mortgage [repayments] which will not exceed 30% of income.

"You already have a pretty good safety net there and clearly no real estate financing similar to the sub-prime market that has existed in the US and which has hurt the financial system so much," Ms Lagarde says.

France has long been feeling the pinch of the global rise in food and fuel prices and many people here complain that their spending power is falling fast.

In France, 46% of people chose to stay home for their summer holiday this year rather than splashing out on an expensive break away, and so many people are cutting back on dining out that some 3,000 cafes and restaurants went out of business in the first three months of this year.

Sparse spending means sparse growth - but should other countries take a leaf out of the parsimonious Gallic book?

"I'm not suggesting that we have the basic principles right, I'm not suggesting that we can teach the world lessons," Ms Lagarde says.

"But I think it will be for each and every category of players, traders, regulators, supervisors, to examine what they have done, what they should have done and what they should be doing in the future to bring a bit more morality into the system.

"I think we have let this world of fantasy and virtuality overcome reality... There have to be more principles, more discipline and a bit more reality," the minister says.

Tin Roof Blowdown

2008-09-01T13:49:00.003+02:00

I post regularly on a small, private forum devoted largely to chat about classic horror movies, SF, books, NASA news, Godzilla, MST3K, cryptozoology, and other misc sundries of interest to myself and other middle-aged geeks. There is a reviews board there, mainly devoted to horror/sf/fantasy movies & fiction, but I posted this review a year ago because the novel so thoroughly impressed me. It isn't often that one stumbles across crime fiction that transcends over the borders into "literature", but this was one extremely moving and powerful novel. I thought I would copy/paste it here today, given that we're all now counting the hours until Gustav makes landfall, to see if once again New Orleans is going to be devastated. So, my review:

Tin Roof Blowdown, a novel by James Lee Burke

Amazon link

"Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well."
-FEMA Director Michael Brown, Sept. 1, 2005

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this [she chuckles slightly]is working very well for them."
-Barbara Bush, 2005

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
–President Bush, on "Good Morning America," Sept. 1, 2005, six days after repeated warnings from experts about the scope of damage expected from Hurricane Katrina

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
–President Bush, Sept. 2, 2005

"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."
–Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) to lobbyists, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal

James Lee Burke's "Tin Roof Blowdown" is RIVETING. It is part of a mystery series, but it isn't cute characters solving village murders, it's on an entirely higher level. The reason I wanted to post on it was because it's set in New Orleans during and after the Katrina disaster, and is an eye popping read for its up-close depiction of just what living in New Orleans was like through that episode. The main character is a police detective trying to cope with the work overload, catch a gang, deal with a maniac, and stop organized vigilantes from shooting every black person they see. In short, the plot trappings are pretty much the same as most other police procedural thrillers, but the backdrop, the use of language and environment, and the sheer oppressive weight of the tragedy propel "Tin Roof Blowdown" far above the limits of its genre.

This is powerful reading for the stunning descriptions of the destruction of New Orleans. Seeing it through the lead's eyes as he wades to work in chest-deep water, surrounded by gruesome sights (a dead baby hangs in a tree for five days, a hugely fat man drifts past on a raft made of floats, surrounded by beer coolers and drinking as he sails the flooded streets, corpses piled like firewood and left to bloat and rot in the Louisiana heat)... It's a tough read, but an incredibly gripping one. The author pulls no punches concerning the incompetence of the disaster response (The scene at the hospital geriatric ward, where the lead character is warned not to even open the elevator doors on that floor, is truly horrific) It's a tough read, and will definitely upset more sensitive types, but it's one hell of a book.

Some comments from the multitude of five star Amazon reviews:

An Elegy for New Orleans - Burke's lush descriptions of the beauty of New Orleans and Louisiana bayou country are gone, replaced by "bodies wrapped tight like mummies in the gray and brown detritus left by the receding waters."

One of the things I like best about Burke's books is that he makes the locale a major player in his stories. He has a love/hate relationship with New Orleans and calls her the Whore of Babylon. When driving through the ruined streets, he muses "New Orleans had been a song, not a city. Like San Francisco, it didn't belong to a state; it belonged to a people." He describes southern Louisiana with lush brushstrokes, from the bayous to the wildlife to the marshes. But where he outdoes himself in The Tin Roof Blowdown is in his descriptions of post-Katrina New Orleans. No pictures that you may have seen will accurately tell the story of what happened to this historic city as well as Burke does in narrative form. It is that vivid and that horrible.

The ending of this book will stay with you for a long time - Robicheaux says, "When I go back to sleep, I once again tell myself I will never again have to witness the wide-scale suffering of innocent civilians, nor the betrayal and abandonment of our countrymen when they need us most.
"But that was before Katrina. That was before a storm with greater impact than the bomb blast that struck Hiroshima peeled the face off southern Louisiana. That was before one of the most beautiful cities in the Western Hemisphere was killed three times, and not just by the forces of nature."
Katrina is the most ominous character in this book because it was real. Burke shows us scenes of the storm's aftermath: bodies of old people left to rot in the streets by the city's convention center and survivors smashing their china to bits upon learning that their insurance companies will not cover water damage. And of course, there is the grim ghost of the Ninth Ward of Orleans Parish, still in ruins two years later.

And finally, an excerpt from a UK review in The Independent:

‘It’s been a long time since a crime novel made me cry. It’s been a long time since a crime novel made every hair on my body stand on end. The Tin Roof Blowdown did both…In my opinion The Tin Roof Blowdown is more than a crime novel; more than a literary novel, even. It is a work of profound historical value and importance that should, no, must be read by anyone interested in what happens when a holocaust breaks loose and civilisation breaks down… There were moments when I wanted to put the book down, it was so painful to continue. But I couldn’t. Nor, I dare say, will anyone else.’