Notes from the Surf

"Best Fake Punt Ever (Bills/Titans)"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7xksmk0ghc
If football doesn't work out for him, perhaps a future as a magician?

The brutal truth about America’s healthcare
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/the-brutal-truth-about-americarsquos-healthcare-1772580.html
Health spending as a share of GDP: US 16%, UK 8.4%. Spending per head: US $7,290, UK $2,992. Practising physicians (per 1,000 people): US 2.4, UK 2.5. Life expectancy: US 78, UK 80. Infant mortality (per 1,000 live births): US 6.7, UK 4.8.

GOP attacks are hurting conservatives in the UK
http://politicalirony.com/2009/08/17/gop-attacks-are-hurting-conservatives-in-the-uk/
"US Republican Party attacks on the British National Health Service as part of their campaign to discredit US health care reform are receiving wide coverage there and are causing a backlash. The NHS is so popular in the UK that virtually all politicians, including conservatives, support it, but British Conservative Party links to the US Republican party are causing it to lose popularity quickly."

Afghanistan: This is what democracy looks like?
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48142
a village elder in Herat province... said he had been threatened by a local commander with "very unpleasant consequences" if the residents of his village did not vote for Karzai

Honduras: "It all appeared staged"
http://www.revleft.com/vb/honduras-second-frontline-t115106/index.html
it took the firefighters more than one hour to get to the scene of the fires -- time to keep all the media cameras rolling... all night and all morning the only media story in the mainstream press was the "violence and terrorism" perpetrated by Zelaya's "handful of goons." There was nothing in the media... about the mass march of tens of thousands of people

Romania: Police without rent money threaten general strike
http://english.hotnews.ro/stiri-regional_europe-6041560-update-policemens-protest-finished-the-unions-threaten-with-general-strike.htm
"The policemen in Bucharest started protesting at 10 AM... policemen are also protesting in several other cities: Alba-Iulia (Central-West), Sibiu (Central), Deva (West), Targu-Mures (North), Brasov (Central), Craiova (South), Resita (West), Ramnicu-Valcea (South), Piatra Neamt (East) and Galati (East)."

Russia: 2000 car makers protest
http://www.mnweekly.ru/news/20090811/55384938.html
"union activists said the plant should come under workers' control... Analysts fear there may be social unrest in Tolyatti, a city of 700,000"

Ireland: Employees occupy superstore
http://www.swp.ie/index.php?page=316&dept=News
"The Thomas Cook occupation may just be the spark... Mitchelstown has a history of worker's taking control"

Argentina: FASINPAT now officially a free company
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2052/32/
Thousands of supporters from other workers' organizations, human rights groups and social movements, along with entire families and students, joined the workers... "here they are the workers of Zanon, workers without a boss." ...For many at the recuperated enterprises, the occupation of their workplace meant much more than safe-guarding their jobs, it also became part of a struggle for a world without exploitation.

Honduras: Coup regime fires local staff of hospital. Doctors / nurses ignore their orders.
http://www.medicc.org/ns/index.php?s=19&p=19
"The hospital and its community health outreach are supported by a number of U.S. and other international organizations, including the Sacramento, California Central Labor Council, Global Links, The Birthing Project, and MEDICC. Several US medical schools also have cooperative arrangements with the Garifuna hospital, including Johns Hopkins, Emory, Charles Drew and University of California (SF)."

As usual, last night I was unable to sleep, so I was channeling on last.fm, when suddenly I heard it !

I couldn't believe my ears ! I had to pinch myself, to look once more at the screen, in order to convince myself that it was for real...

I was looking for this track for 3 years now! And when I had almost forgot all about it, lost all hope that I'd ever find who sang such an enlightening tune, it came to me by a twist of chance...

Immediately, I struck the keys and searched for it on beemp3, plundered into my photo library and picked up the pictures I found appropriate for the song.

But making a movie-clip only with these seemed somehow incomplete.

As I once told my friend, "this track is going to be on the Original Soundtrack of our lives' movie".

Therefore, I needed a certain

je ne sais quoi...

---

I chose

• one of her poems.
• and one poem particularly caged inside my bones...
  

 

---

I hope he does not mind using it...

Last night I took some Ambien. All I remember is taking it, and the time the clock read just as I went to bed. Apparantly I wrote this on microsoft word:

My hands look so strange, I look at them and think “hand” but somehow they don’t look like hands. I look at them and I don’t think, this is the meaning of hand…no I just see them on their own, pale bony appendages with splotchy patches. I mean they’re not really hands, they’re just atoms like all the rest of everything, it’s silly that they are called hands. We like to group bunches of atoms and name them, so many names. Cups, computers, hands, feet….it’s all atoms. Why must we have so many names?

Other than that, for the first time in a while I actually slept 7 hours uninterupted (though I haven't checked the house, for all I know I went on a sleepwalking rampage).

Last night I went to sleep around 3 am, despite my efforts to lay down earlier. I don't remember any of my dreams, but it doesn't matter. My baby sister came up the stairs with her fine tawny hair tired up on her head, around 10:15 this morning and told me in her squeaky little voice, "Sis-seee, Mama says it's time to get uuup!" And then she ran back down the stairs.

I'm inclined to be annoyed to be woken up, just on principle, but two facts make annoyance a stupid feeling to waste my time on:

1. My four-year-old sister is possibly the cutest kid in the world, and it is now her job to wake me up in the mornings. Much to her nosy little delight. How can I be annoyed at the very thing that makes her so happy?

2. I feel well-rested for the first time in weeks, having gotten more sleep (without the influence of painkillers, anti-psychotics, anti-depressants, weed, or alcohol) last night than I can remember getting all summer. Seven hours of pure, natural sleep. Feels good.

Being well rested does not preclude me from trying to take a nap later, though.

lately i've spent a great deal of time scribbling aimlessly into a notebook i purchased for such purposes. little falls out of my head that is not simply a lot of melancholic garbage and i know this is partly due to the sun and its insistence on leaving me again. i feel as though i am engaged in a distinctly one-sided and agonizing relationship with the sun gods. clearly it is a yearly occurrence for me to slip gradually into this frame of mind. i am aware. it doesn't cease the progression from relatively sane individual to this mess of a person so broken down by a seeming lack of vitamin d and ambition that i can hardly see the sun when it does show itself for all the possibility and doubt streaming down my face.

sometimes i sit in empty parking lots with an empty page in front of me and pens with no ink. i've been going to movies by myself and i wonder why this seems strange to anyone. i am hardly useful in social situations at the best of times and now i am either angry or inconsolably drowning in what is more than likely exaggerated misery.

all of this being said i applied to school yesterday, finally, after much delay and my particular brand of procrastination. now i need to focus on completing several admission requirements including an advanced health care professional level CPR certification prior to January 2010.

i'm not sure i know how to love anyone, anymore. this strikes me as most unfortunate however i find it difficult to commit myself in any way to another human for any length of time. i am sure i spent a large portion of my late teens being terrified i'd never find someone willing to commit to me. now i realize i am that person. that isn't to say i can't love at all, i do love, i love lots of things and people. however, if you think you're going to make me fall in love with you to the point that i am so enamoured of your presence that i won't know what to do when you're not around anymore - think again, sir.

i spent the entire morning painting, and then i read something written by someone for whom i have harboured a distinct and scarcely sensible fondness. it made me realize that i do love autumn despite myself and the cold creeping in. and i've always loved the rain. so, i suppose all one can do is take a deep breath and listen to thick as a brick, maybe dig out the extra blankets. maybe switch to zeppelin if tull isn't doin' it for you.

we'll make it through this one too, i'm sure.