2008

So that was 2008. Hope it was great for you. To see the year out here is my Best of 2008 musically:

1: "Lately" by the Helio Sequence
2: "The Bones of You" by Elbow
3: "Inni Mer syngur vitleysingur" by Sigur Ros
4: "Drangonflies" by Ember FX
5: "Word Up" by Boss Hoss
6: "Supernatural Superserious" by REM
7: "Orphans" by Beck
8: "White Boy" by James
9: "Pork & Beans" by Weazer
10: "Love the World You find" by the Flaming Lips
11: "You Can't Count on Me" by The Counting Crows
12: "Home" by Shawn Mullins
13: "Paralzyer" by Finger Eleven
14: "Folsom Daycare Blues" by Ralph's World
15: "Oh My Lover" by Adem
16: "DLZ" by TV On the Radio
17: "Disaster Button" by Snow Patrol
18: "Hammers & Strings (A Lullaby)" by Jack's Mannequin
19: "Heretic Pride" by The Mountain Goats
20: "Lipstick" by Wills & The Willing (feat Tom Mcrae)
21: "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
22: "Let's Dance to Joy Division" by the Wombats
23: "Allergies" by The Barenaked Ladies

Take care and see you in 2009.

Shoe threw that?

The news on this side of the pond has been all about Bush being attacked in Iraq by a shoe wielding maniac. The clip has been endlessly played on the news channels, it is all over the web and inches of newspaper columns will be filled with the telling and analysis of the story. But what struck me was the complete lack of Secret Service response to the incident.

I don’t know if you have seen the footage, but when the 1st shoe is thrown there is no agent throwing himself in the way. By the time the 2nd shoe is thrown you would expect Bush to be surrounded by his body guards so that nothing could hit him. Instead the Commander in Chief has to duck from the 2nd shoe (which apparently were a size 10 for the stat fans), and then, and only then do the Secret Service come bursting through the door behind the President. The current reports are claiming that security wrestled the attacked to the ground, but the TV footage I have seen seems to indicate that it was in fact another journalist.

I can’t help but feel that Clint Eastwood would never have allowed a shoe to be thrown at the President, and who know in a few year maybe he could make a movie about if all, In the line of shoes anyone?

Link to our girls photoshoot

Rather than boring you all with many pictures you can use the linkl to see all the photos from the Christmas shoot.

Just click on the title above to be taken to monicalunardi.com

Balls to Christmas

Here is another picture from the families photo shoot. Again this is one we are not going to use - but isn't it a great one? The reason this got discarded is that there was no Emma.

Fog Lights

Today was what Londoners would describe as a real “pea-souper”. The fog was so thick when I left my house this morning that you could see maybe 30 meters in front of yourself. What was truly amazing is that every 4th or 5th car did not have any lights on. It was as if these people have a death wish. The same thing happens when we get rain. There is a Californian law that states that if you have your wins-shield wipers on you need to have you headlamps on too, but so many people do not comply with this law. And then they wonder why there are more accidents when the weather is wet or foggy.

Chinese Democracy

I don't normally review albums on this blog. But Guns & Roses have just released their long promised album, and having obtained a copy I wanted to share my thoughts with the world. Or the 2 people that read this blog.

Nowhere near as good as Appetite for Destruction, but realistically what could be? Appetite is one of the best debut albums of all time and was hungry, angry and sexy. Obviously once you get that level of critical and commercial success things are going to change. When I first started listening to Chinese Democracy I thought that it was a poor effort. But then when I took it in to the context of the albums released by G’N’R Chinese Democracy makes sense. Chinese Democracy reminds me of the latter half of Use Your Illusion 2, those long songs all about pain and loneliness. So as a progression this album is an extension of those themes and sounds.

What Chinese Democracy does confirm to me is that Axl was not the hard rocker of the group, his instincts are towards middle of the road melodic rock. This album has no standout guitar riff a la Sweet Child O’ Mine, no hard rockers like Paradise City, You Could Be Mine or Welcome to the Jungle. And the lyrics all seem to be about how lonely Axl is, how no one understands him and madness. Gone are the dangerous songs about drugs & booze (Mr. Brownstone, Night Train,) sex (pretty much any song from Appetite and a fair few from Use Your Illusion 1&2), and just plain anger (Get in the Ring, Out Ta Get Me, Bad Apple).

Having said all that I quite like a few of the tracks. And once I look past that the band is called Guns & Roses and view this as what it truly is, an Axl Rose solo record, then I find I can appreciate it more. If this was a record by some unknown group I would view them as having potential, but the real question is will I go back to this in 6 weeks or even 6 months time and listen to it again? I am not sure I will.

Christmas Photo Shoot

We got some pictures taken for the girls to put in our Christmas cards. Here is one of the outakes, that will not be making in to the Burr family album.

I'm almost tempted to have a caption competition.

Gay Day

California has a long history of direct votes with regards to different policies. They are similar to referendums, and occur on nearly every election that takes place. They are called Propositions (or Props) and the most contentious one this year was Prop 8. Prop 8 wanted to ban Gay marriage. Gay marriage was made legal by a Californian Supreme Court case which ruled that the Californian Constitution makes discrimination of any kind illegal. Californians are rightly proud of the fact that slavery was never allowed in their state and this tradition of inclusion has long extended to the gay community.

San Francisco is well known as the gay capital of the world and in some parts of America, San Francisco is seen as being the prime example of everything that is wrong with modern USA.

Prop 8 was passed which mean that the Californian constitution now has to be amended to define the marriage as that between one man and one woman. This does lead me to wonder will divorce be made illegal. I guess it will depend upon the wording of the amendment.

The vote was close, and now the ramifications are being felt. The Attorney General is reviewing the Prop to see if it is legal. Surely this should have been done before the Prop was even put on the ballot. Regardless of your personal opinion on the measure it does seem a bit like poor sportsmanship to wait for the result and then challenge the rules. If you don’t like the rules before you start a game that is when you should challenge them.

There is also a group on Facebook trying to get Gay, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transsexuals and their “straight friends” to join together on 10th December to strike. The day is being billed as “A day without the Gay” and they are encouraging supporters to not go to work, not spend any money and not engage in any activity that will boost the economy in any way. A similar thing was done in 2007 by immigrant workers, who held a one day strike to flex their economic muscle. The gay community has significantly more financial clout than the immigrant community so it will be interesting to see how effective this day is.

That was the week that was

This has been a hectic and busy week. I started the week with a swollen face, after one of my teeth decided to explode. I needed emergency root canal treatment, which although painful was nothing compared to the pain I had been experiencing. My cheek is still swollen but not as bad as it was on Sunday evening!

On Wednesday we had pickets outside of our office building for 2 hours, blowing horns, playing middle of the road rock music (think Foreigner) and shouting about wanting a fair wage for a fair days work. I was going to point out that none of them was currently working, but the police were called and directed us away. The Union involved is the SEIU and they represent the service workers at the hospitals. Or to be more accurate they represent some of the service workers. Anyway enough hair splitting. They want more money. The management does not agree. It has come out that certain caretakers (or Janitors as they like to be called here) earn more than teachers do. As Ray would say “it’s a mixed up, meddled up, shook up world”.

My co-workers got all flustered by the strikers and many were running around giving constant updates to what was happening outside our offices. I couldn’t help but contrast their reaction to the reaction of my colleagues at the Child Support Agency. I remember clearly that on more than one occasion that the CSA would have protestors outside. There was also one occasion when one of the protestor’s got inside the building, but obviously hadn’t thought it through because he had no idea what to do once he got inside. My favourite story though of my whole time there was the time that we were asked to stay away from one side of the building because they Royal Navy Bomb Squad were defusing a bomb outside. During all of this my workers and I practiced a large sense of detachment and bravura which to this day I do not know if it was indifference to what was going on or just a huge piece of British stiff-upper lip. You know the idea that if you just continue working then it is not really happening.