timouse

Well, I guess Bob could have said "F##K It" and not have bothered bringing the world's attention to Ethiopia, because for all intents and purposes he was the person who got things rolling...thank jebus he took the road less travelled 'cause if he didn't he's be a drunk rock star lying in a ditch like Noel...

noel is at least realistic, but sir bob has a bigger point. politicians are not going to listen to a windbag like bono rail on about 3rd world debt. they will listen, however, to their constituents, or to a critical mass of their constituents. geldof's stated point is to get all of us lazy slugs up off the couch and make us think about what effect cancelling debt will have. the next thing we are to do is to write or call our MP and tell him that we want debt cancelled with no conditions. no structural adjustments to economies, no fuckery, no nothing.

live 8 is a pointless exercise if we don't all follow up. imagine if the day after live 8 happens, a million phone calls to MP's offices are logged. that will get attention. not necessarily action... (had to close on a cynical note) (~)

I don't understand why this happens sixty years later though. It seems a little backwards compared to where the 80 year old would have served his sentance and finally become a free man. Here, he lives most of his life as a free man only to finish it off in jail with an oxygen tank.

and the prison will probably be nicer than the old folks' home. bastard. someone oughta slip him automotive nitrous instead of oxygen...let him live out his days barfing and dizzy

Oil.

Lots of it.

I work for a company called SEOS that develops fancy-schmancy visual display systems with high-end projectors and heavily developed multimedia presentation capabilities. The systems are gorgeous. Aramco hired us out to upgrade four of their data mining presentation rooms.

wow. well then...this puts you ina bit of a spot. the 2nd most disliked foreign thing in the kingdom (after Uncle Sam's troops) are foreign oil workers. having said that, your chances of being kidnapped are probably in the same range as winning the lottery or being struck by lightning.

on balance, i'd still say go. it's like nowhere else on earth, and will increase your understanding of what's going on in the world like nothing else i can think of (other than getting drunk with dick cheney and having him l;et his guard down...)

keep us all posted! and good advice from velvet, if you get kidnapped, be a man on tv

It would be a heck of a place to have seen, and from what I understand, foreign (Western) workers are kept pretty much apart from the locals anyway. You might want to hear timouse weigh in, who was there for work-related reasons a few years back. Or William Sampson, who doesn't have much good to say about the place.

i had a five star holiday compared to poor bill sampson

a friend and i ran our own environmental consulting company and were invited by a Saudi dairy company to come over for 2 weeks to do a feasabiltiy study on a composting operation on their farm. this was pre-911, many things have changed for westerners since. they were termendously accommodating, and it was an amazing trip. as a foreigner and non-muslim, very few people get a chace to see The Kingdom, so i would have to say definitely yes, you oughta go, it's a fascinating place.

as i said i was there pre-911, and there are lots of stories of guys like william sampson who have ended up on the wrtong end of the SA justice system. the biggest problem seems to be that the anti-wahabbist movement is targeting foreigners coming to work in the oil patch and associated industries (not to mention the US military). there's a tremendous resentment brewing amongst young religious saudis who have no work and few prospects, and not enough family money to sustain them. they respond by lashing out at the honkies coming over to steal their jobs (notwitstanding the fact that very few saudis have the technical background or interest in these jobs). in fact SA has a long standing tradition of importing "guest workers" to actually make things and do things.

They have really only been rolling in $$ since the late 40's, and have been spending like Imelda Marcos in a shoe store in order to bring the standard of living up. Becuase of the sudden change in the country, a lot of what they've done is really half assed. We stayed in a "5 star hotel" in Riyadh. The lobby was beautiful, looked really elegant. The wall unit in our suite was made of lacquered 2 x 4's.

The phone system was among the worst i've ever seen. not only is it totally thrown together but it (along with everything else) shuts down 5x a day for prayer.

depending on your field of work (hopefully not connected to Saudi Aramco) you should be okay. from what i've seen though, the whackjobs tend to be targeting foreign worker compounds...the compounds are amazing (beer, satellite tv, single young canadian nurses) but are seens by the saudis as places of evil for basically the same reasons.

so the short non-rambling version...

pro:

-very good money

-seeing a society like nowhere else on earth

being part of a very small group of westerners that have actually been allowed in

con:

-potential hostility toward westerners could mean you get blowed up

-no beer (or any other alcohol) anywhere

-no TV (other than the Bearded Old Imam channel - "all bearded old men all the time"

-no live music

-no women anywhere in public...in fact, speaking to a woman in public can get both of you in big trouble.

i would say go, but that depends on your line of work and how close to danger it will put you.

honky tonk woman! i have cowbell that's the right pitch for that tune, i can't use it for fear of htw breaking out

the emission/pollution credit system has been going on amongst industry ever since Kyoto...if i run a company and manage to reduce my emissions below my country's agreed on goals, i can sell the difference as pollution credits to another company that has exceeded its' limits.

theoretically it's an incentive to get it together as if you can beat the (ususally very conservative) goals set for your country then you can net out. sadly the only stories i've seen so far have been US companies buying credits from developing nations who haven't got the technology to pollute effectively and are in a position to sell credits...

as far as appying this to cars, i suppose i would feel marginally less bitter about all the asshats who commute in a Humvee (Dumvee??) but a less polluting vehicle still wins hands down.

"The Band - It Makes No Difference"

same here

As well as Guilty - The Blues Brothers (basically, its just John Belushi accompanied by Paul Shaeffer on piano singing a Randy Newman song. Its far too fitting.)

10-01-94 So Many Roads

Because - The Beatles (so damn beautiful)

The Little Drummer Boy

i'll go along with everything other than the little drummer boy "guilty" was the perfect belushi tune!

cheers to kaidy may! you get to have a big show in your hometown for a change!

4. Somewhere Over the Rainbow - Israel Kamakawiwo'ole

isn't that an amazing song? stuart maclean plays it a lot...perfect music for a sunday afternoon

i love random setting on all of my musical devices. i have zillions of hours of music and spoken word on my mac at work (i'm amazed i got 10 tunes in a row with no talk ) the car CD player was the best, 10 cd's on shuffle...sometimes you just get totally in the groove of what the universe is throwing you.

good thread!!

everything on dr evil's list plus the longest road and bells of morning by stephen fearing.

Happy birthday you crazy bastard.

what she said

62, crazy as a loon, and rich. hey brian, wanna trade places?

boy named sue-johnny cash

love shack-the b52's

what i say-ray charles

sargeant pepper's lonely hearts club-bill cosby (thanks brad!!)

stella blue-grateful dead

country squall-willie p bennett

sweet georgia brown-django reinhart

short people-randy newman

russian lullaby-jerry garcia band

scarlet/fire-grateful dead

My favourite (long-gone by now) used to be in the St. George TTC station. Underneath a sign that read

Exit St. George

someone had scrawled

Enter the Dragon

(It's a two-way pun, combining both St. George and Bruce Lee's most famous movie.)

Aloha,

Brad

post of the day i've been giggling about this ever since reading it this morning. thanks for brightening up a monday, brad!! and good luck with the grafitti project km, i'll keep my eyes open...

greg, that's one of my favourite tunes. the range that richard sings gives me the chills...

I'm currently lovin' It Makes No Difference, Get up Jake, I Shall Be Released (technically not The Bands tune), King Harvest (if it can actually be covered, it's a tricky one), Chest Fever (paging killer keyboardist) Ferdinand The Imposter and you gotta love the way they do Mystery Train.

i would add stage fright, shape i'm in and don't do it ( still have that bass line bouncing through m head

Given that a defining factor of The Band's music was the constant presense of both piano and organ, I think two keyboard players would be great!

agreed. keyboard guys are hard to come by tho' if we can convince can and adam that they need to do this, then we're happy as fat rats

edit to add - not to strike a sore point with you about rats, arron, maybe i should have picked a better expression

how about amused to death - roger waters?

we prefer to call it genetically enhanced

and no disrespect to PETA or any of their beliefs, there's senseless mistreatment of animals and people alike being prepetrated all over this mudball. good on them for speaking out about it...

People

Eating

Tasty

Animals

(sorry, it's the Lazlo in me coming out...)

if only it weren't in america....

Now we have the Divine Right of US Presidents?

[color:purple]Sweet.

yep. [color:purple]what an age we live in.

the CBC ran a documentary on gay marriage, focusing on the surviving spouse after a tragedy...the worst one was 2 midwest men who were a gay couple running a farm. they both sunk all their money into improving the farm, and were quite successful until one passed away. instantly the surviving family of the dead guy (who had not spoken to their uncle in 15 years, no doubt on account of lifestyle issues) came out of the woodwork and grabbed the farm out from under the survivor...

the current rules have to change. not only are the laws as they stand economically and personally crippling the surviving partners of gay couples, but there are millions of loving same sex couples out there who are truly happy. why not let them live? and in a larger sense, there's no more humane way to help reduce the world's population. who knows, some of these coules may even opt to adopt kids with no families...i just don't understand.

I'm more troubled, though, by the kind of people that would do what they can to jumpstart it all, and fuck up an otherwise good existence for the rest of us. Frighteningly, they seem to have found their way into the White House.

after the last US (s)election, the winning team kept saying that God wanted GWB in the White House. Maybe it's true, and God is so fed up with all of us that she has decided to hasten the End Of Days by putting Shrub in charge of the toboggan ride to the end.

"Lord save me from your followers "

thant's just fine. we rodents are remarkably thick skinned, and tend to take pre-emptive shots at ourselves

how can you tell if the stage is level?

the drummer is drooling out of both sides of his mouth

woo hoo! F-E-A-T!!!

hey stone mtn! you gonna be there?