Typical... you leave the web alone for a few weeks and the whole world goes to Hell in a handbasket.

First off, the hurricanes. Katrina whacked the Gulf Coast, Rita gave Texas a bloody nose and Tammy has just moved away from this area of the world (where we received more rain in three days than the whole of the summer). Do I think the way people in New Orleans were left to die was racist? I think it's worse: I think it was poorist. I had to make up a word for it because we don't have a word for it. The way that people will discriminate against you because you're poor. Poorist.

There was a lot of it. News crews were able to get people and supplies in and out by road easily enough, but the poor were left to fend for themselves as FEMA claimed it was news to them over half a week later. It suited some people just fine that way, keeping the people they hate oppressed and confusing the issue further by claiming they weren't racists to boot. Even though some of them were racist, like the boat owner who only rescued whites (story here) because, as he said, "a nigger is a nigger is a nigger." Oh yeah, he was racist. Poorist too, because it was fine by him to have people living in toxic swill with no money to get out. It just suited him a little more that the poor were black.

Want another example? Suburban police closed at least one bridge to keep a handful of blacks from fleeing to white areas. Both the boat-owner and police stories were reported in Newsweek. We're constantly sold this American dream where everybody is equal, but now the world can see it's not true. There are so many subtle differences that are now obvious and just screaming at us. The blacks were kept poor, and the poorists could keep them that way and claim they weren't racist. But the end result was the same. The dead were mainly poor, the poor were mainly black, the poorists still had a level of semantics protecting their fragile world-view of tax-cuts helping all.

Being poorist is sneakier than just being misogynistic, racist or xenophobic. It's more weasely, must nastier. It's really sticking it to people who need assistance. It gives nasty bastards the ability to hate their fellow man and not get called out on it. So I'm calling them out on it. They'll hide behind their coded language and their "stop blaming us" cries as they use the confusion to cement their own twisted 'I'm better that you' mentality. But we know what they are. They're poorist scum, pure and simple.

Oh, and if I hear one more scheming politician complaining because they're being investigated for illegally handling more money than most of us will ever see in one place I'm going to be sick. You're meant to invite transparency, you're meant to be a supporter of openness... and if you're innocent, why the song-and-dance routine? Got something to hide?



Here's how I see it. If you got caught with your sticky fingers in the jar, suck it up and take what's due to you. Start using some of that "personal responsibility" you preach about to the oppressed for a change instead of complaining about how the judges are out to get you. It makes you sound like a petty crook, for Pete's sake.

Rolling Stone magazine did a great piece on Katrina, by the way. Read it here if you have ten minutes to spare. They were there, so I'd take their word for it over some political hack.

In other personal news: the house-building can now commence after the discovery of a sewer-pipe stub on our land. I have decided that the blog will be full of too much house news and not enough of my thoughts (this is, after all, an online diary) so I have started Our House. It's a step-by-step guide for anyone brave enough to want to build their own dream home from scratch. Or, in my case, to have a team of professional builders do the heavy listing for us!

I occasionally talk about web design in this blog (some people make cuckoo clocks for a hobby, I like messing with animated GIFs and HTML). There was a vacancy posted at work for someone that can write training material and knows web authoring software. Hey, that's me! So I applied for it. Apparently, they want someone to make a company intranet site that houses all our training material. I'll do it!

Listen : New Orleans Is Sinking - Tragically Hip ... You Could Have It So Much Better - Franz Ferdinand ... Circuitry - Project 86.

Last Wednesday was a sad day. We buried Beth's gran. She was 96, which is a pretty good stretch for anyone. She was ill for a while, and wasn't mentally with us for years. She reacted to my voice when we visited her in the hospital, but I guess only she'd know what she was trying to say.

So life has to go on.

As it did yesterday. We went to Yankee Stadium to see the Toronto Blue Jays get beaten 6-2. Rivera closed the game, home runs by Sheffield and A-Rod sealed the victory, and the outfield (Matsui especially) were outstanding. Beth was there, Beth's brother Mike, her parents, our brother-in-law and varoius friends of friends. We were enough of a voice that you could hear us chanting for certain players. The game was replaying in the evening when we got back and hearing us shouting out "Ga-ry Shef-field" surprised me. We were LOUD!

It's going to be close for the end of the season. Fingers crossed for the Bronx Bombers.

Listen : Baseball Cap - Faithless ... Babeball Bill - Echo & The Bunnymen.

Every seven years, my life gets interesting. I'm 35 now. Hold on tight, it's about to get interesting again.

First of all: we went camping and did a bit of sight-seeing. When it comes to the great outdoors, there's one thing that Nature has always known.

I am the King of Insects.

Small insects love me and want to in my general vicinity at all times. That usually involves biting me. I used to use DEET-based stuff which was smelly and sticky, so I'm glad for a substance called 'picaridin'. Cutter Advanced™ is the only insect repellent available in the US with this stuff in it. It smells faintly of Bailey's Irish Cream, which is nice, and works great. I'm happy to give it due props here.

The mosquitoes have asked me to abdicate. Maybe I'm not the King of Insects. I'm not the Lord Of The Flies either.



We also visited picturesque Longwood Gardens and I took this picture. It's actually four pictures all 'Photoshopped' together.

So what's the interesting stuff? We put a deposit down to build the house. The bank has our mortgage application and it all starts in earnest from next week. Whooo boy.

Listen : Let's Play House - Snoop Dogg ... Mr. Mortgage - Peter & The Test Tube Babies.

Two things I just wanted to mention today, neither of them connected at all.

First of all: the bombings in London a week and a bit ago. I used to work in Kings Cross railway station. Not near it: in it. I did over five years at King's Cross Thameslink (formerly KX Midland) and St. Pancras too... and when I say I was a Secondman at Hitchin TCSOP when I started in '86 and an R/S 'B' at Royston when I left the job in 2001, anyone that worked in the offices of the old British Rail will know this isn't bullshine.

Taking all that into account, I'd have to say that I have a pretty good idea of what happened down there on 7/7.

After all, I was also on 2200-0600 on the night of the King's Cross Underground fire, when they had to get 31's and 47's to pull the 312's, 313's and 317's out of the platforms because the 25kV was cut and there was smoke pouring out of the grates in the Euston Road. I was the Sunday office CO2 at Thameslink when the Bishopsgate bomb went off near Liverpool Street, and everyone in the station looked outside because it sounded for all the world like a car-crash without the squeal of brakes. I can't remember the number of times I was involved in evacuating a railway station in almost 15 years on the job, but it was well into the double-digits.

With all that said, I have a message for anyone that thinks bombs scare Londoners. We've had bits of London blown up since the Luftwaffe, so your point is...?

In fact, the part I found as disgusing as the bombs themselves was the vitriol from 12 of the 13 letter writers in the next day's New York Post. All but one of them had used their letter to justify Mess-O-Potamia, bash the "liberal elite" (who they would later punish by awarding them large tax cuts... I wonder if any NeoConservative ever wondered why they fight so hard to make the "elite" even more elite? That would be like giving pedophiles access to children because you say you object to sexual deviance, but that's what the Catholic Church did for decades and they helped get the vote out for Bush/Cheney in 2004 so you never know), argue against treating the environment as something more than your own personal urinal and promising to fight the terrorists to the end (without having the balls to actually see a terrorist in the flesh, never mind raise a weapon against one). The New York Post is the all-American newspaper that's owned by an Australian who once took a comedian author to court (and lost) because another of his holdings had registered the phrase "fair and balanced" so they could legally use it without acually being it, and the comedian used it too. You can see why I was disgusted by this, while simultaneously acknowledging that life is not without a certain amount of irony.

The second thing: The Dukes Of Hazzard. The man that used to play 'Cooter', who later became a politician and now runs two museums dedicated to the "good ol' boys", said the new film is a "profanity-laced script with blatant sexual situations that mocks the good clean family values of our series." You can see the full story right here.

Dukes Of Hazzard as "good clean family values" ...I'll let you think about that for a few seconds. Good, clean, family values. Don't let that picture of Daisy Duke on the right sway your opinion.

It got me thinking: weren't they moonshiners? And wasn't Daisy one of the first examples of overt crumpet on the boob tube (OK, you can look at the picture now)? And didn't Bo and Luke get in a fight nearly every week at the Boar's Nest Bar? Which brings to mind this question: why the hell were they running moonshine if booze was legal? Wouldn't the legal availability of booze cut down demand for the hooch and kill the Duke's profit margin?

If that was "family values", isn't Tatantino's 'Pulp Fiction' a little bit Disney?

Listen : Kings Cross - Pet Shop Boys ... We Have Explosive - Future Sound Of London ... Not Afraid - Sisqo ... World, Shut Your Mouth - Julian Cope.

Happy Fourth Second of July from the land of good news.

First of all, a big happy 35^th birthday to Beth. Happy birthday, love!

Now for the headlines. I got promoted at work. I'm now training new recruits the job I've been doing since 2001. More money, company laptop, salary (so I get a better vacation deal too). I'd rather be designing web pages, truth be told, but it looks like I may get to do that in my spare time for a few dollars anyway (thanks Gene... maybe I can get your web site polished up for gratis!).

If you have a quick read of the last posting, you'll see that we had no fun with one builder but were lined up to meet another. Well, good news again because this one designs the houses he builds, we've fallen in love with one of the designs, it's within our budget and this time we got a detailed run-down of everything involved in the construction. Frost block? Sewage permit? Even factoring in the cost of blasting hypothetical bedrock, should we need it? We know how much it'll all cost. The beauty of it all is that we know someone that went with them (I think I mentioned it last time around) and their detailed run-down has been nicely accurate.

So as we look forward to another summer of barbeques, getting out and about in nice weather (and hopefully a great summer of music leading to an end to world hunger after the Live8 concerts), I'll be detailing the progress of Chez Seabrook in the months to come.

Listen : Feel Good Hit Of The Summer - Queens Of The Stone Age ... Blood Red Summer - Coheed & Cambria ... The Sun Rising - The Beloved ... Happy Birthday - Altered Images.