Cuff the Duke

So we've got a lot of snow down on the ground here in Newfoundland. It's stopped planes and pretty much everything that you'd want to do. My plans for a party tonight at my place were buried under so much white fluff you could put fluffer nutter out of business. So imagine my suprise when one of my good friends from Halifax tells me that I should head down to the ship the night to see one snowed in band of some national reputation, that is, Cuff the Duke. I'm estatic.

Cuff the Duke is a great band in their own right and i always feel a surge of pride when bands I like come here and play small venues. Arena shows are always so sterile. Moms and their kids who are wide eyed fans. People who got tickets from people in the know... It's a different, and to me far inferior experience to that of a nice 'intimate' bar show. The band is right there, not behind some monolithic barrier of barrel chested security guards. It's even more special when it's at a venue that I've got a great deal of respect for. The Ship has that quality of a local Black Sheep or Zaphod's. It's a place that the up and coming bands play when they're in the area. I know Cuff the Duke has made their own name and are enjoy a huge amount of national success but that makes this all the better. Getting to return to the small venues and the close crowds and operating outside of the ticket giants and promoters and handlers.

I guess the guys are used to the bigger shows now and everything that that brings but for my money i'm glad that I get the toned down version.

I'm sure if you've been following the US primaries you've felt it. Something's missing from the elections. Sure, they've tried to do new things and to reach new voters but if you look a little bit deeper it's the same as it's always been. Vindictive news orgs. picking sides, mud slinging, sucking up to the big guys and putting the muscle on the little guys. Take the Teamsters. They're behind Obama now... but only after he pulled out in front and Clinton started her violent twitching death throes. Even with all the hype about this being the first "internet presidential race" it only really ended up being Facebook and MySpace that cared and after Obama muscled out a MySpacer that was running a fan group for him it became pretty clear that the candidates weren't ready to let the internet do its thing. Besides, who the hell ever used MyBarackObama.com or
TheHillaryIKnow.com?

No, all that slime and shade are still there, so why does it still feel empty....

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/02/22/nader_mtp/index.html

THAT'S IT!! Where has Nader been all this time! I can't wait to hear what huge corporate monolith he's going to bitch on this time and look forward to hating him when he costs the democrats the election again. Keep fighting the good fight Ralph!

mass effect "goggles do nothing" - Google Search

So I'm playing through Mass Effect and I just finished some mission involving a stolen nuke or a rogue band of biotics or whatever the other mission you get to do a million times is. I'm roaming around the planet and I find this

Brushing away the carbonization on the door of the contragravity speeder, you see the Nezo brand name. Judging by the charring, the wreckage has been here since the star's last viariable peak The corpose is wearing the remains of an expensive suit, and what appear to be melted antique aviator goggles.

The goggles, they do nothing?

They All Drowned

I love Hunter Thompson and random trivia so I love this.

It is a weird plan, rife with madness and a sort of low-tech desperation that nobody in Utah is proud of ... But it is necessary, they say, and it will not be the first time that white men in the Western Hemisphere have gotten involved in a tragic lake-draining project.

One of the uglist of these is the saga of the draining of the Lago de Amor, a remote inland lagoon in the highlands of Colombia where the legendary Treasure of El Dorado still rests in the foul black mud.

This nightmare is described in a book called The Fruit Palace, by a Britisher named Charles Nicholl, who came on the place while chasing a cocaine dream.

"Eldorado was not originally a place," Nicholl says, " but a person -- el dorado, the gilded man." He was the main figure in a coronation ceremony held for a new territorial chieftan (cacique) in the Chibcha empire.

"At the shores of the lagoon he was stripped naked, anointed with sticky resin, and sprayed with gold dust. A raft of reeds was prepared, with braziers of moque incense and piles of gold and jewels on it."

He and four other caciques floated to the middle of the lake, where he then dove into the lake, washing off the gold. The ceremony concluded with all the gold and jewels being thrown into the lake.

When the Spanish learned of the ceremony, they began many attempts to drain the lake, starting with Hernan Perez de Quesada in 1545.

"Using a bucket chain of Indian labourers with gourd jars, he succeeded in lowering the level of the water by some ten feet, enough to recover about 3,000 pesos of gold." They managed about three feet a month but rain refilled the lagoon almost as quickly. Antonia de Sepulveda and a crew of 8,000 Indians lowered the level by 60 feet about 40 years later. He recovered some gold and gems "including an emerald the size of a hen's egg." He failed to get financing for subsequent efforts and died "poor and tired."

A French scientist estimated in 1825 the value of the unrecovered treasure at 1,120,000 pounds.

The lake was completely drained after a British joint-stock company, Contractors, Ltd., bought the rights "to exploit the lagoon" in 1899.

"They drilled a tunnel right under the lake and up into the centre, and the water was sluiced away down this giant plughole, with mercury screens to trap any precious objects."

The lakebed, however, proved intractable, impossible to walk on because of layers of mud and slime, which became concrete with the sun's heat. Not even drilling equipment could free the mud-clogged sluices and tunnel, and eventually the lake refilled.

--HST May 19, 1986