8 Minutes 31 Seconds

Wagnerian opera or an uncompromising tragedy by Sophocles - disguised as a Western. The revelation of why this unrelenting Fury with a gun has been hunting Henry Fonda makes that other great film revelation -- "Rosebud!" -- seem pretty trite by comparison. We never escape our deeds, and if our deeds were bad enough, well then some day someone like Charles Bronson just might come a-calling. Karma.

Once Upon A Time In The West - The Duel

Oh, Charlie

The Zen-mystical stylings of Charlie Sheen. My favorite: the orange kitteh going all Mitch Miller on our ass as he proudly proclaims "I got magic and I got poetry at my fingertips."

http://mediumlarge.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/cats-quote-charlie-sheen/

Sundown at the old Gallagher place

Lounging out back around the firepit. Burning some amazing incense. The two hens, "Camilla" and "Nigella", are winding down and getting ready to tuck themselves into their coop for the night. Our neighbor's white peacock "Sebastian" is perched on the peak of our roof like a weathervane. The sunset ia lighting him up, seeming from inside; he doesn't look real, he's all golden. At this particular moment, life is good.

This is what a collapse looks like - Feb 21

Detroit Schools Closing: Michigan Officials Order Robert Bobb To Shut Half The City's Schools

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/21/detroit-schools-closing_n_826007.html

Sarko joins the chorus: multiculturalism has failed

More interesting doings in Europe. Sarko joins the growing chorus (Merkel, Cameron) of leaders admitting that Europe's multiculturalism experiment has failed. A sea change, or just typical political maneuvering for advantage with an increasingly xenophobic polis?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110210/wl_afp/francepoliticsimmigrationsociety_20110210231042

UK's Cameron declares multiculturalism a failure

First Merkel, now Cameron, declaring that the European experiment with multiculturalism has failed. Interesting times in old Europe. Very interesting times.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41444364/ns/world_news-europe/?fb_ref=story_header&fb_source=profile_multiline

This is what a collapse looks like

I've been paying a lot of attention recently to what most people are referring to as The Great Recession. An enormous amount of attention, maybe even obsessive attention. Looking at it from an historian’s point of view, I've come to believe that this isn't a mere recession, or even a Depression. This is "It". If one wished to be polite and speak in terms that won’t scare the kiddies, the current situation might be described as "a consolidation of society down into a much more compact, sustainable size." I'm not a polite person, and I do have a flair for the hyperbolic, so I think I'll use the simple and quite accurate word "collapse."

I noticed the first signs of the collapse out on the margins, out in the exurban areas where I live. In every rural county within driving distance of my home, there are a couple of "zombie" subdivisions and a couple of "zombie" strip malls, along with several others that are one anchor-store away from dying and becoming zombified. Out on the perimeter, where I live, in the places where the last four decades really didn’t happen (except for the ubiquitous satellite dishes), it's easy to see how it’s all rolling back now. One strip mall, abandoned early in the collapse, is already well on the way to being reclaimed: the parking lot is dotted with small, new pine trees. Give them five years, and they’ll grow higher than a man, hiding the ruins from the road and giving nature the privacy it prefers when it does its work. I think of Stephen King’s “langoliers” when I pass this place, and the others like it.

But another place where the collapse will become more and more obvious is deep down in the crumbling, dessicated urban core. Case in point: Detroit. Expect to see more of this …


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/13/detroit-budget-woes_n_795806.html

… city officials will be faced with the tough decision whether to repurpose or outright abandon certain sections of the city, as the population has dwindled by half since 1950.

Mayor Dave Bing also recently announced that the city will offer incentives to residents to move to certain less blighted areas of town.