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“All important issues are re-examined and re-debated every generation, and a new generation is born daily.” Pudinhand Wilson.

So some illegal immigrant lady, who is under court order to report for deportation, has flouted the judge’s order and is holed up in the storefront church of a Chicago Methodist congregation, having accepted their offer of “Sanctuary.”

I remember learning about sanctuary in fifth grade World (actually European) History. The principle of Sanctuary applied in Europe when the church, the Roman Catholic Church, had authority superior to that of any political entity. And it was used exclusively to protect high level courtier types who found themselves on the political outs locally but were still favored by the church.

When I’m in charge, the Methodist bishop of Chicago would already be in jail for harboring a fugitive.

The judge who had Boy George do a community service sentence in full public view (street cleaning) should be voted out. America needs less not more of Boy George.

Pud thinks Boy George is all about heroin. It’s the sort of music he could perform on the nod. And the junkies listening to it would say, “He’s just like us and he’s making millions of dollars!”

I suppose he had something to do with androgyny or sexual identity, but what a bad exemplar! You’d have to go pretty deep into real perversity to find anything as unwholesome as the marketing invention that is Boy George.

So good for Jon Benet Ramsey, America’s favorite fantasy-molest, her death was not in vain. The arrest of a suspect today should keep Boy George out of the news for a while.

A few juicy twists in the Jon Benet case, followed the capture of Osama, should occupy the news through October, and, throw in a couple of terror plots, the Republicans CAN retain control of both houses come November.

And reporters in prison! The two Chronicle reporters are currently under threat in the BALCO case, and Josh Wolf is actually in jail. This is bad and painful. But almost as painful is having to listen to the arguments, once again, for why we need a free press.

BTW: Josh Wolf, according to his website, was almost visited at his Federal Correctional Facility, by Judith Miller. The mention treats it as some sort of validation. In fact, Judith Miller is a scumbag, a disgrace to professional journalism who is morally drowning in Iraqi blood.

Her visit was “almost” because she wasn’t an approved visitor. I’m sure she knew this in advance. Lucky for Josh that a meeting with Judith Miller didn’t soil his resume.

With news like this I can sort of understand why terrorists would want to make their own.

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from MY MUSICAL EDUCATION

A wiry, sort of nervous guy named Raymond Ojeda had a little wind-only sheet music shop in the Tenderloin in the early 1970’s.

The couple times I, a TSN (true snot nose) flute student, bought music there I also received some professional musician perspective from Mr Ojeda himself.

Ray was a bassoonist for the SF Symphony but he wasn’t a totally happy camper. The way he talked he was always about to be fired, or about to quit. There was politics that went way over my head.

One of Ray Ojeda’s rants was about the goddamn German repertoire they’d been playing in recent years (I think Josef Krips was conducting then). “And,” he said, “it’s all because of the Jews. The fucking Jews out-German the Germans.” I guess “the Jews” were major benefactors, darn them.

“Beethoven, Beethoven, Beethoven. They’d make us play a Beethoven symphony on every program if they could.”

Then he’d extol the glory days of Pierre Monteux, who played plenty of French music.

“The difference between French and German music is the same as the difference between French and German food,” Ray said.

From my point of view it would be great to be a professional musician. What’s to complain about? My mom, who grew up around some musicians understood the precarious financial circumstances of most of them.

When we moved back to San Francisco when I was ten, we had some weather stripping done by a carpenter who used to be a violinist in the SF Symphony. His story was that he had to get away from his deadbeat musician friends. He, the carpenter, had made a decent living with the symphony and lessons and all, but his musician friends were always broke and always wanting to borrow money from him. So he became a carpenter.

So much for high art.

BTW: Pud googled Raymond Ojeda. He died in 1989, the notice said, shortly after retiring from the SF Symphony. Probably bitched the whole time.

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SPIRAL ARMS

Hurricanes and galaxies both have spiral arms. Pud is comforted that there are repeated patterns, that everything is not random.

I wonder what the force is?

Pud says he expects there are spiral arms at the atomic or sub-atomic levels

Pud looks it up. Great web site. The essence of science is admitting what you don’t know.

Voila—no relation between spiral arms of hurricanes and those of galaxies.

Pud is encouraged—it shows a paradigm, spiral-armedness, that exists at a level higher than the forces creating hurricanes and galaxies.

Like tree trunks and volcanos share going-upedness.

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HEY JOE, TAKE A HIKE

That a loyal lackey of the ruling class could be defeated by a grassroots candidate shocked the ruling punditocracy.

“They’re acting as if the electorate turning out an incumbent is a gross aberration,” I said.

“It is,” my Phi Beta Kappa poli-sci major brother replied.

The newscasters are shocked because they too are loyal lackeys of the ruling class. They sold their souls for what they deemed a good price to a buyer who they thought could honor the deal.

They missed the spes-res ratio. The transfer of the soul to the devil (ruling class) happens immediately upon the telling of the first big lie (res). But the payoff, (job, wealth, prestige--spes) is meted out over time and is contingent upon the telling of additional, even more harmful lies.

The Lieberman loss shows that a guy can wind up without his soul AND without his job.

Lieberman claimed his loss was due to “the old politics of partisan polarization.” Wait a second! “Partisan”? This was a democratic primary, it’s all the same party. These fucks will say anything.

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TIME WELL SPENT

On one of last week’s warm afternoons my old friend Dennis and I took sandwiches and sodas to a recreational area in the Oakland Hills that’s part of the East Bay Regional Park. This is about as close to a road trip as I get these days.

In the car Dennis applied some Coppertone tanning lotion which, I‘d forgotten, is the hallmark smell of summer vacation.

We ate at one of the picnic tables scattered throughout a stand of second-growth redwoods. Dennis said they were probably a hundred years old, mere youngsters for the species. I could get my arms around the trunks.

The air had just the slightest movement. Occasional crow (gdmf) caws ricocheted off the bare trunks. And from across the parking lot came the most beautiful music of all, the whoops and screams of little kids at the swimming pool.

After eating we lay on our backs on the picnic table benches looking up through the branches at the sky. After a while I noticed that one or two trees were swaying slightly with the breeze.

I asked Dennis why only a couple of the trees were swaying.

First, we couldn’t be sure that all the trees WEREN’T swaying, only that some were swaying differently from the others.

“Maybe those trees are a little taller than the others, so they’re catching more wind,” Dennis said.

All my friends are geniuses.

There are a couple of Quicktime movies of ROBERTS RECREATION AREA at the bottom of the page linked. Look for the movies with “Roberts” in the name.

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PUD DONATES

He was really proud of himself:

“I just donated ten bucks to the Westboro Baptist Church,” he said. “I know you’re going to ask what the Westboro Baptist—

“No,” I said, “I’m going to ask you where you got ten bucks. You owe me twenty.”

“Ok, so it was YOUR political donation,” Pud said coyly.

Pud is such an asshole! Westboro Baptist Church is the home of Rev Fred Phelps, who leads daily protests against gay people. Lately he’s been demonstrating at funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq. His point is that America tolerates homosexuality so God punishes America by having American soldiers killed.

Congress has considered legislation to restrict his proximity to military funerals, a drastic measure just to deal with the behavior of one crackpot and his few followers.

His entire point of view is GOD HATES FAGS. In fact, the home page of the Westboro BC is godhatesfags. Check it out, it’s a hoot. He actually has a counter showing the number of days that Matthew Shepherd has been IN HELL!

On one page he breaks down the meaning of each word in GOD HATES FAGS, complete with biblical references. For HATE, he supplies:

the doctrine of reprobation or God's "HATE" involving eternal retribution or the everlasting punishment of most of mankind in Hell forever (e.g., Leviticus 20:13,23, Psalm 5:5, Psalm 11:5, Malachi 1:1-3, Romans 9:11-13, Matthew 7:13,23, John 12:39-40, 1 Peter 2:8, Jude 4, Revelation 13:8, 20:15, 21:27, etc.),

Note: per Phelps’ interpretation, God sends most of mankind to hell forever, to punish them.

“Anyway,” Pud said, “if we gay-commie-acidheads could chose the person to represent the world view we despise, Rev Phelps is it. We want more of him, not less. He’s the poster boy of the anti-gay agenda. You’re either for him or against him.”

Donations can be sent to: Westboro Baptist Church, 3701 W. 12th Street, Topeka, KS 66604.

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QUEEN NOOR FOR PRESIDENT

Total babe. Really smart. Very well spoken. Seemingly well intentioned and non-partisan. Speaks Arabic. And she’s a damn queen. Check out her website.

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