anagrams

since r. seems to be so captivate by dumplings of the night, as she calls them, here's a clever anagram for Northern Mariana Islands: Mandarin as harlot sinner.

Dumpling of the night becomes Do the thumping fling.

And so it goes...

Cinderfella

I was hoping to go see the new Russell Crowe film, "Cinderella Man", but have decided to boycott this and all future Crowe films after his choildish outburst and attack of a hotel clerk with a telephone.

Crowe should have to do some serious thinking behind bars. I think the judge should make an example of him, and not be lenient or reduce his sentence simply because he's a "star". Considering he's a foriegn national, I'd consider him a flight risk and demand he turn over his passport.

Only when Crowe makes a truly heartfelt apology to the clerk- HOW ABOUT IN PERSON (and possibly do some community service) then he can get back to 30 Odd Foot Of Grunt or whatever.

Remember, I'm still boycotting Dave Matthews after the Chicago River incident. Did he ever apologize?

Bop Bush!

Get your official George W. Bush punching bag here at http://www.bopbush.com/

Excellent!

As seen in the Saipan Tribune, a "Do Not Enter" sign on a street in Garapan. How many months ago did DPW (Dept. of Public Works) let us know about the installment of these signs? Like, never. And do they legally have the right to reroute traffic and disrupt the normal flow of business? According to the accompanying article, it seems DPW believes they have the right to ticket motorists who fail to comply.

Big news here: Japan Airlines is threatening to pull out! Whoa nelly! Say it ain't so! What'll happen to all the hordes of Japanese tourists coming down here to get sunburned, buy stuff they can get cheaper in Tokyo, get food poisoning, and have their rental cars and hotel rooms broken into and their valuables stolen? These are the same tourists who are supposed to go to back to Japan and tell their friends and family what a paradise these islands are. Well, if they're clubbed over the head while at the ATM and their body tossed in a field and their bank account cleaned out, they can't exactly give a glowing report, can they?

CUC (Commonwealth Utilities Corp.) is pulling an Enron by hitting all their customers with a couple hundred dollar "fuel surcharge". Yeah right. We're the ones having to pay our bills every month on time for fear of getting shut off (which will happen if the surcharge, which was NOT VOTED ON, is not paid) meanwhile the government still owes CUC hundreds of millions of dollars! The governor, while declaring things to be in a "state of emergency" still says the economy looks pretty darn good (his exact words). Why not look into William Stewart's suggestion of alternate power generating options? Or Chamber of Commerce president Alex Sablan's comment about cheaper sources of fuel?

Quote of the day

A centaur has a man-stomach and a horse-stomach. And of course both want breakfast. So first of all he has porridge and pavenders and kidneys and bacon and omelette and cold ham and toast and marmalade and coffee and beer. And after that he tends to the horse part of himself by grazing for an hour or so and finishing up with a hot mash, some oats, and a bag of sugar. That's why it's such a serious thing to ask a Centaur to stay for the weekend.

-from "The Silver Chair", by C.S. Lewis

new album in the works

Now that I have the ability and software to record on my computer, I am planning a new CD, tenatively available by mid-summer. I already have about 15 or so songs or fragments thereof sitting on my hard drive that I'm planning to include. Most are instrumental numbers and will serve as interludes between other tracks. Some go as far back as 1985! I've been playing around alot with sampling, looping and layering - a drum track from here, a guitar or keyboard track from there, a vocal over the top, etc. Hopefully this will all take some sort of shape in the near future.
I'll be meeting with a few friends as well to hash out some ideas - a tin and wood shack, some cold drinks, buzzing amplifiers, a few mikes and a 4-track machine. Pete will play drums, Virgil on bass, me on guitar, Kaleko on ukulele, Manny on additional guitar, then back to my apartment to load the tapes to my hard drive & overdub (minimal). Hopefully Virgil's parakeets will add to the music. Other participants may include (nothing's definite at this point): John Torres, Felix Sasamoto, Glen Sablan, Rex Borja, Sebastian Camacho, Jerry Alcantara, A.J., Floyd Lim, Mark Lim, Lovely, Suzette, etc. We'll see what happens.

land issues

In a recent Saipan Tribune story, local people are said to prefer land ownership to be held only by persons of Northern Marianas descent, meaning people who are "full blooded Chamorro and/or Carolinian". How do they determine this? Blood tests? See how much SPAM content it has? Or by your Spanish/German/Japanese/Filipino family name(s)? According to cultural anthropologists, the Chamorro race no longer exists, due to centuries of racial mixing. Anyhow, I'm quite sure determining land ownership on the basis of race and/or national origin is illegal in this country.

Another story mentioned a BBQ cookoff. I'd attend, if only they didn't turn the beef into shoe leather and chicken wasn't still pink on the inside.

Some senators recently went on a fact-finding mission to Manila. Any facts they couldn't otherwise establish at the Nagoya Star nightclub in Garapan?

Yaaaaaawwwwwnnnnnnn........hm. 'Xcuse me.

Went to see the Hitchhiker's Guide the other day. Lot better than I expected. Thought it was gonna like, suck. But suck it did not.

I did however worry about the other people in the theater who probably never heard of it and were probably wondering why this was supposed to be amusing. I wonder if Chamorros get British humor? The Vogon ships made everyone ooh and aah, at least, as did the "Heart Of Gold" (the main characters' ship).

I liked actually that there were parts of the movie that Douglas (Adams) wrote specifically for it, and that it was not strictly a by-the-book exercise. John Malkovich was guite interesting. And the guy that played Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox had some good lines, especially the "freedom and democracy and all that stuff" and "there are parts of my brain that just aren't presidential material". Good W. impression.

Updates again...

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy opens tomorrow. There's a 10:30 am showing, something which our one theater here has not done in years. Must be expecting a big turnout.

Got my computers back yesterday and have been trying to get thenm back up and running. So far my collection includes the Pegasus PC with the 80gb hd, 128 mb ram, and windows 2000; as well as the Samsung notebook w/ windows 98, open office, and some other neat little programs. I'm relly taken with the tiny notebooks made back in the '90s, before people decided they needed 20' monitors for dvds, gaming etc. A friend told me today HP is going back to making small laptops. Me, I always thought HP was a steak sauce.

A funny moment at the computer shop the other day: I kinda freaked cuz the Samsung didn't have Solitaire installed. No fancy hardware, software or applications for me, eh? Just a deck of cards. Got it. Sweet!

Later.

news of the criminally insane

This just in:

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says: "I think we're definitely winning. I think we've been winning for some time."

Sure about that? You wouldn't want us to get our hopes up now, would you? Or would you?

More updates

Just found out from a friend/business associate that a trip in June to India, Bangladesh, and Vietnam (business, mostly) is a definite possibility and we should know for sure pretty soon. Also, another business trip, this one to the Philippines, is on around the same time period. Maybe I'll get to drop in on Nic in Hong Kong, on the way... Sweet!



I have to go back to the computer place tomorrow and get some work done. I believe my sound card is toast. Windows2K was not properly installed, so there's little files (clipboard, sound mapping - wait, those are important!!!) that keep giving up the ghost on me, usually in the middle of something important. I installed SoundForge and Audacity but cannot use either one as I keep getting told by Microsoft's digital gnomes in my cpu that the sound mapping file is in use by another aplication. According to task manager, there IS NO OTHER APPLICATION RUNNING!!!

I keep jumping back and forth btw Mozilla Firefox and IE 6.0. I like some features on one and some on the other. I only use Thunderbird for e-mail. I've been using MS Word, Excel and Access for various things but they were not properly installed and even Windows Installer was not properly installed. I found a free open source program called Open Office - all the same functions (word processing, spreadsheets, html coding, database access) and the ability to save as .doc or.xls files. One day I'll be completely free of the Redmond gnomes, just you wait and see (insert Dr. Evil laugh here.....)

Apart from that, I need to get more RAM installed (only have 128 mb). Have an 81 gb hd, and a brand spanking new LG 52X32X52 CD-rw drive (thanks to Mr. Lee at Tic Toc Internet). Just got a really nice pair of comp speakers, too - small, but nice (some Korean brand, made in China... ?!).

Look for some new CD projects, coming your way soon at www.aaughrecords.com (as soon as I get things sorted out - soon, hopefully!)

-Rick

About freakin time for an update...

I know it makes no difference but I selected Arial as the font for this because Times New Roman drives me absolutely up the wall. We're talking gecko time here.

Anyhoo, China did not happen. I was all set to go, plane ticket, hotel reservations and then she talked me into staying. For us. now that I'm actually staying, she's talking crazy, splitting up and all that garbage.

I'm like whatever. As Napoleon would say, "Gosh! IDIOTS!" and stalk out of the room.

Last night hung out at Hamilton's (again) and watched some bizarre (of course) documentary on ESPN about Bobby Fischer. Then r. dropped by and we discussed Fischer, Beatles, Allen, strip clubs and etc. just like usual.

Then an odd thing happened. The gov walked in, sat at the bar, and ordered mexican food, as if he's a regular. He acted really surprised to see an old business card on the bulletin board, from when he was dc rep. That's when i noticed the ag's old business card was missing.

Signed up for the postal exam. Have to see how that goes. A lot of hiring here on island is by racial preference or just plain idiocy or favoritism (or maybe just plain autism). Hopefully since it's a federal job and the p.o. mgr is from guam, it may be more even (he was, after all, the one who told me about the opening).

later.,

Goodbye Saipan, hello Suzhou

I leave for China on April 11th, 2005, Continental Airlines, 6:30 p.m. I travel first to Hong Kong, pick up my visa there, then cross the border into China and continue by train to Shanghai.

Suzhou is only a short distance away from Shanghai, 45 minutes by train. I kind of had the impression that Suzhou was a sleepy, quaint little backwater. Turns out there's a major industrial park there, thanks to the people of Jordan and Singapore. They make computer hardware, Air Jordans and the like. Suzhou also has, not one or two, but THREE Starbucks locations. And McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut, etc. Not sure if that's good or bad. Shanghai has an IKEA....

Movies, etc.

SEEN RECENTLY ON DVD:

• Tae Guk Gi - very emotional, dramatic rendering of the Korean War, filmed in Korea by Koreans! Quite powerful but violent too, kinda like Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's List.
• Zhou Yu's Train - comeback role of sorts for Gong Li (Raise the Red Lantern); a story about a woman raised by a train-conductor father whose sole purpose in life, besides painting intricate designs on porcelain bowls and vases, is riding trains, mostly to visit a lover in a far-off province in China, but mostly, just for the sheer heck of it.
• Napoleon Dynamite - Hilarious. Brilliant, really. "What are you gonna do today, Napoleon?" "Whatever I want to. GOSH!!!!"
• IHuckabees - BORING. Really wanted to like it but this was one of those like the Royal Tennenbaums I had an extremely hard time sitting through and had to turn it off midways.
• Beijing Bicycle - Really good story about bike messenger in China & his bike. Liked the side story about the "rich woman" in the window. Also the bath house.

LOOKING FORWARD TO:

• Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (May)
• Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (also May?)
• Chronicles Of Narnia - Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (December)
• new Doctor Who series from BBC Wales - if we ever get it stateside or islandside.... the assistant's a TOTAL babe.

First post on new blog

For older posts, go to (2003-2005) or (2001-2003). More to come soon!

New book and CD in the works, due out this spring (I think).

Possible titles: Back Porch Blues (book), Tropical Depression (cd).



Stay tuna for more updates...

Feeling a little detatched from the Iraqi conflict this holiday? Put a human face on the stories here:



A Baghdad girl's diary



Thanks to habibi for the link.

Hail To The Thief, indeed....

Radiohead Frontman Protests Bush Visit To London

(LAUNCH, 11/20/2003 5:00:00PM)







Radiohead vocalist Thom Yorke is at the forefront of protests surrounding President George Bush's visit to London this week, with Yorke calling Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair "liars," according to NME.com. The singer emailed NME after learning that London police were planning to create a three-mile "exclusion zone" to keep protesters away from Bush, because of concerns over alleged threats of terror attacks against the American leader.



When asked why he chose to speak out, Yorke said, "To make Blair squirm over his decision to take us into a illegitimate war (in Iraq) and follow this religious lunatic (Bush) toward a dangerous future for the whole planet...both of these men are liars. We have the right to call them such, they are putting our children's future in jeopardy. They are not controlling the terrorist threat, they are escalating it.."



Yorke said he was enraged that authorities were using "the threat of terrorism to suppress whatever they choose, intimidate and arrest whoever they wish."

Yorke concluded by suggesting that members of the British Royal Family protest Bush's visit as well, saying that "now is a good time to remind Blair that he's on very very very very very very very very thin ice."



Members of other British bands, such as Blur and Travis, have also spoken out against the President's visit to London and both leaders' stance on the occupation of Iraq. A protest march is scheduled for today (November 20) in London.

Wife takes razor to man's genitals

Posted Thu, 06 Nov 2003



A Cambodian woman who suspected her husband was having affairs attempted to cut off his genitals with a razor blade in a jealous rage, a newspaper report said on Thursday.



The couple from downtown Phnom Penh — Mar Len (29) and her husband Kan Bunhou (26) — began arguing on Tuesday evening but neighbours stepped in to cool the dispute, the Kampuchea Thmei (New Cambodia) daily said.



Kan Bunthou told police that the pair then went to bed but he awoke when his wife began attacking him with a razor blade.



He managed to fend her off before she completed the job and fled, he said, adding that family members took him to hospital where he had received 12 stitches to repair the damage.



The newspaper said police were searching for Mar Len, who would be charged with attempted murder.



During the row she had accused Kan Bunthou, a cameraman who filmed karaoke DVDs, of infidelity with the actresses and singers he worked with, it said.

Word on the street has it the Sex Pistols are planning a concert in the middle of bombed-out Baghdad...

"The Sex Pistols suck, we’re more punk than they ever were."

Billy Joe Armstrong, Green Day

"I created Punk for this day and age. Do you see Britney walking around wearing ties and singing punk? Hell no. That's what I do. I'm like a Sid Vicious for a new generation."

Avril Lavigne (Seventeen Magazine, 2002)

"People are like, 'Well, she doesn't know the Sex Pistols.' Why would I know that stuff? Look how young I am. That stuff's old, right?"

Avril Lavigne (Entertainment Weekly, 2002)

‘Britney Spears is as punk as that silly Lavigne bird. I never, ever cared for Green Day, with their ice cream van and huge video productions. As far as I’m concerned, anything that’s MTV-led I worry about. MTV is like a headless chicken.’

Johnny Rotten (MSNBC, 2003)

More quotes from Mr. Rotten:

Courtney Love — Now there’s a peice of work--trying to be Nancy Spungen, except

she should have taken a note from her since she’s dead.

Britney Spears — Her parents should be whipped. What’s going to happen when she

grows up?

Kurt Cobain — Is he still alive? That shows you how much thought I put into

that!

Arnold Schwarzenegger — He is excercising the

wrong muscle.

Madonna — A very nice lady.

Sadaam Hussein — He’s probably hiding with his “weapons of mass destruction.”

Joe Strummer — Very sad. It seems to be that when the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame

nominates people it creates death. It’s to our benefit that they’ve ignored us.

Joey Ramone — Sad. These are nice people. It’s not true “the good die young”

‘cause I’m the living proof that that’s not the case.