A n a r c h i c _ U n i v e r s e ®

A Request From Al Gore

Just click to enlarge:

http://www.algore.com/

Wassup, ¿Tina la vecina?

•The links are open to comments and there's a lot of good stuff my buddies and I have gathered. We star early and I go into the  night. Our 'hood was so quiet I suspected once more Kobe Bryant had helped the Lakers ...  lose. When I heard the video commentary early thism orning, I just couldn't believe how they lost this game and likely the championship - unless they pull a Red Sox against the Yankees, y'know, wen the curse was broken, but I don't think so.
LATimes.com Basketball commentary, games 4 to 1.

•Here in the land of Santa Monica-Malibu USD, the Santa Monica Daily Press, or SMDP for short, wants to know folks opinion on hazing, or initiation; it's a tradition, you get the drift, right? Hazing is illegal. Governor Schwarzenegger has signed into law that da police conduct investigations in the future to book felonies. But it seems the school district hasn't updated its page. So, yours truly will Google search it for the reporter. Ha! The changes are for college hazing only. Very disappointing.

•Finally, in a scoop of economics, my husband and son figured out the new iPod will end up costing twice as much as the older one. It's an iPod paid on time, guys! The At&T bill takes care of the added profit of this iPod supposed to be cheaper by one hundred bucks than its previous version. And if you count all the li'l  gizmos that people will buy... Let me tell you something: Steve jobs could sell sand in the Sahara, condos on the left side of Vieira Souto Avenue, south of Ocean Avenue here, the man is an artist when it comes to product design and a great salesperson. I love Apple and I <3 my Mac.
But I really don't need an iPod.

• And despite all requests to join in the campaign for Barack Obama, I have kind of a hangover. I will vote for him, but I did wish to see Hillary elected.

• Later, boys and girls! I'll be back, for sure. I'd like to tell you about any link  you want to know more about.

• Here's  a photo of a traditional wedding cake in southern France. Today is Saint Anthony's and I am sure some chick would like to marry. Don't spend thousands of dollars. Save that cash for the kid or kids. Or spend it on a trip. Later. OMG! Tim Russert just went to meet his Maker at age 58.

JPL, NASA and Barack Obama

Please follow the latest on Phoenix and its findings on Mars below this link:

Martian One and Martian Junior
click and watch.  http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/phoenix/main.php

Just a click away into outerspace. Phoenix is also on Twitter, imagine that! It's on my tinovska51, just check it out!

Here in the argh! blogosphere all I know is Barack Obama has severed ties with  his church, where once he was lost and twenty years ago had been found. Why get into religion if one cannot please everybody by belonging to one denomination? You can go here, or here or here, too.
You can call me biased, fair enough, I always flaunted my partisanship towards Billary. However, my son is only a Democratic, and a smart kid at sixteen, even if attending SAMOHI. He just now said he feels scared of Obama because Obama is getting worse than Kerry, meaning a flip-flopper, and my son feels Obama will be annihilated if running for president in November.

All I can say about this and it's not much, I never felt the guy was sincere, even when just today I heard someone on TV say he was the same in front of four people as he'd be in front of forty-thousand. He's good looking, I'll grant his Michele good taste. The sermons being given at his former church are pretty much the same as most sermons given where the older generations of African-Americans worship.
The feelings of not being wanted or ever having been asked to be here are legit. So preachers exaggerate and play with these feelings. Barack started his campaign as one of inclusion, excluding Clinton, natch, and now all of Trinity Church from Chicago.  I am sorry, no can do.

I will vote for the Democratic ticket regardless of the candidate's name. To say I'm less than thrilled with Obama is not true. I was never thrilled with him in the first place.

But then, my Jewish grandma would say, "You don't have to go to bed with him." True, Mamie, and I prefer this big dawg with glasses here.

From Santa Monica: The California Republic

This morning I found out through the newspaper delivered here that we, Californians, are the leading state in official unemployment, beating the Rust Belt easily. We have officially 6.2% Californians jobless. The statistics doesn't take into account people who aren't looking for a job. Or undocumented immigrants.  I hear they have started going back to their lands owned by America Fruit Co. to get paid 7 dollars a day. Chelsea Clinton is a delightful politician, with a voice that resembles her dad's.

The two little old ladies who were conning homeless men, making them disappear, and then pocketing their life insurances bought by these shrews, will receive heavy sentences, so it seems. A funny piece was about a mayor whose cat had been lost. It's a huge 20 lbs. cat. It was found inside a wall, just like "The Black Cat" -- Edgar Allan Poe's short story classic.

Today is gardening day.  I love my gardens, but everyone who sees them infers we have Dead Presidents galore. Well, we don't. Ours is the same pitiful fate as that of other Californians, crushed by gasoline prices, inflated prices of food, thank goodness, no unemployment, but bills, nevertheless. Ah, for the better days California had under President Bill Clinton.

I have decided to ditch UCLA altogether and start anew on my normal pressure hydrocephalus bit. They don't return calls and I must get on with a normal life, ha-ha, as if "normal people" existed, especially in Greater Los Angeles.  Right now I feel very irritable and know I am not my real self.  I got a new neurologist, a Japanese one, and will get myself a neurosurgeon when I see him.

It's a faintly sunny day.  Gardening is out of the way, lunch is on its way. Kitty had a bath and it's Lucky's turn now.  I saw some awesome photos by swanksalot on Flickr.  Won't you check them out?

More whatever nevermind from yours truly, Tina Oiticica Harris, sometime later. Enjoy your weekend as I will enjoy ours in just right  Southern California. Check out Jello Biafra's interview on "California über Alles."

Enjoy a clip in Brazil of Jello BIafra and others singing "I Fought The Law".

Teens on the Wheel

It was sad news in the California section of the Los Angeles Times today. High school teens in a Subaru Impreza WRX got into serious trouble when the teen driving missed the turn, drove up the cliff on the PCH north in Malibu; the car turned upside down.

The cops at the scene claim the smell of alcohol could be felt in the air near the bodies. One was killed; the others injured. They were 17 and 16.

The feeling of invincibility of teens sometimes defies common sense and teachings. These teens were involved in a play about  drunk driving. Jagermeister is potent. They missed a show in Hollywood and went to the Santa Monica Pier to drink.

I feel sorry all this happened and  soon will be forgotten.

Click here to hear one of Clapton's most moving songs. Below, a photo by GHR of a pair of infamously noisy blue jays, according to politically incorrect Mark Twain, click above for some comedy relief.

Buy a Home or Go to College?

Everyday my son gets mail offers from colleges. I opened one yesterday to find out he has a gmail account. The college is a small one, near Boston, with handpicked kids who excel in math or chemistry. The class size is a dream: ratio of 14 kids to a professor. The labs are all state-of-the-art.

Sticker shock for my husband, who hasn't kept in touch with the inflated costs of colleges these days: about 40 K a year. Wow! That is a lot of money for the education of an undergrad. I have just gotten a visitor who went to USC only a few years before I got there. USC's info page has quite important info on the top of its page: our great SoCal weather.  It's 64F this afternoon. Drool, you guys in the chilly weather...

I recall my years in grad school there with fondness. Our campus is beautiful and small enough for one to walk from one side to the other. The student body was a little bit of a pain, undergrads, I mean. In 1985 Valleyspeak was everywhere. It was a fer shur in your ears all day long. I felt out of place. USC housing placed me in one of the two towers for undergrads. It was convenient, close to my office, facing the pool, near Touton Hall, an all-male residence hall falling apart, party town, where John Wayne lived.

My husband, whom I met at USC, says I should live in the present. Life seems to have been easier back then. No home payments, low rent, cinema nights at Bovard, with film makers present, no kid or mother to take care of.

There are some great links for tomorrow, it's still a tad windy. All my best to my anarchic_universe del.icio.us network fellow partners in crime:

Seth Anderson, André Marmota, Gabriela Zago, Tom Watson, Pedro Marques, and I, yours truly, Tina Oiticica Harris are the team.

I had shunned Twitter, but I am beginning to enjoy it. Won't you join me?
They're beautiful. And now, a word from our sponsors. Boy, that income revelation was baaaaaad!

 

How Do You Know, Tina? That's Easy...

Unlike Craig Ferguson, who has his imaginary psychic to keep him informed, I don't really need an imaginary psychic to let me know what's up around the world. There are people who e-mail me, there is Blogsville in Portuguese, in English, in French; there are Google Alerts; there are phone calls and, finally, my son,who keeps me posted on the latest news of SAMOHI, where Sean Penn went to school. Is that good or is it bad reference?

SMMUSD needs to cut $$$. That is happening all over California. Actually, the advantage of a central state over united states is the fact that a central state, such as France, concentrates in its Ministery of Education all the data from all the schools in the country. It's easier to analyze what's going on in this way, I would believe.

Here we have the infamous No Child's Behind Left, which will be whooped out of the picture by whomever becomes president. It's a total failure. Isn't everything else?

So SMMUSD is firing teachers, naturally.  One would think they could give pink slips to administrators, but such doesn't seem to be the case. Even after the reported scandal in Special Ed. in which a hundred parents cried the blues over how Tim Walker strong-armed them to cut deals with the school district.  Well,  Tim Walker, the big guy in Special Ed. for SMMUSD is gone. The effects of his unethical bias on kids and parents are  permanent. We move on in the District of Excellence in Baloney for All. In the meantime, let's shake booty since we can't shake these leeches off the School District ( or the country...)

Have a nice day!

( Click and enjoy!)

Jodiorovsky in South America

The bad news is I have a quite painful sciatica.
That will go away in a few days of bed rest and Ibuprofen 800.

The bad news, I am watching Globo, the powerful Brazilian network, is the situation in South America. A guy was killed in Colombia, Venezuela's Chávez sent 6,000 troops to the border, and Equador sent some too. Argentina and Brazil confer about the situation by phone. It's a bad scenario.

I hope it doesn't develop into war.

The SAMOHI sh*t list scandal has quieted down. Now, the talk is crime in the OceanPark 'hood.

Let's forget about the ills and pain in the worl and watch Craig Ferguson, my favorite American. UK take this!

Dancing in the Street? La France and SAMOHI

My son takes French at SAMOHI, as part of a cultural excellence only SMMUSD can provide.  He has a thirteen-year-old female penpal in Bordeaux, which is in the southwest of France. I know girls get curious about the birds and the bees earlier than boys; if you saw Juno you know exactly what I am talking about. Actually,  right after sucker moms and dads  voted  for more money for the Santa Monica-Malibu USD , administrators again  got a raise.  Teachers got the fuzzy end of the stick  as Marilyn said in Some Like It Hot.  They keep the bathrooms filthy as a sex abstinence practice. It takes a lot of urge to go to the toilet at SAMOHI. Certaily not in Dr. Hugo Pedroza's office.

The penpal asked him if he liked la Tecktonik. Is that a nerd's drink?  Tech with tonic?  Naw, dudes and dudettes. Check it out.  To me it looks like a version of USA hip-hop danced without soul by bisexual teens without rhythm, rhyme or sense. It started in September, according to the first YouTubes posted. It's performed in the streets once a week by boys with boys and girls with girls. The dance also borrows the aggressive mock punches and karate moves of punk rock dance back in the 80s.
It's popular in bigger centers of France: Paris, Lyon, Lille, Nice. It's popular with the 15-25 years of age group. Sarko-Fasho would call them voyous.(bums)

They remind me of a remark made by a shrink who was my student of English in Brazil. "Nordic people don't have sex. They practice calisthenics."

I leave here a couple of samples and ask you if you think this dance will take on here in the USA. Yes, No, Maybe?  Just curious (Yellow) Inside joke for baby boomers. That was an interesting movie.  BTW, some updates on Oscar© in Universo Anárquico®'s top post. Just click on the links and see what gives. I was happy the Oscars were distributed around the runners. Did you see javier Barden and his mamma? I know, I KNOW! (Craig Ferguson intonation there.)

Woman is the N* of the World

I could write about the anniversary of "The Girl from Ipanema" -- the song that made bossa-nova super-famous, a tip I got from a friend while she was in New Mexico, of all places.  I remember the real girl from Ipanema, who posed for photographers years after the song was famous worldwide, song by Tom Jobim, lyrics by diplomat-poet Vinicius de Moraes. Her name is Heloísa; she is really beautiful, tall and tan. They used to sit in a bar-bistro, looking at the pretty girls walking by, a block from the beach.

However, the difficult journey Hillary Clinton has faced suggests to me John Lennon and Yoko Ono were darn-A-right when they wrote "Woman is the N* of the World. I am appalled at the low blows thrown her way.

Therefore, I leave you with a video I found where John Lennon explains how he came up with the song. Enjoy, see you tomorrow.