E. Michael Harrington

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TEDDY BEARS in SUDAN

In Sudan, a bear
cannot be called Muhammad
The story's moral

One British teacher
will spend fifteen days in jail
for the naming rights

I want to name my
Teddy bear, Muhammad or
Jesus or Buddha

And then I want to
teach a class of little kids
about tolerance

I think the right place
to work with Muhammad the
Teddy is Sudan

The moderates in
Sudan will change their ways and
come to love Teddy

Muhammad T. Bear
and his Islamic fascist
extremist posse

Perhaps the Teddy
bear should have been called Jesus
Buddha or Debbie

What will become of
Muhammad T. Bear? Will they
want to whip him too?

If Dick Cheney had
M. T. Bear, he'd likely have
him waterboarded

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I BOUGHT AN "XO," that great $100 laptop computer that can weather any weather, survive any kid or kid's abuse, surf, sing, draw, paint, write, read, call and respond.

On November 19, I spent $428 in order to get the famous $100 laptop, and for my $428, a poor child in a poor country will also receive the same model laptop. I have been looking forward to the launch of the One Laptop Per Child and here it will come in time for Christmas. This already is the best present I will buy this year, and not because the present will come to me, but for the joy it has given me in imaging what Little Green will mean to a child who has so little.

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I started writing haiku many years ago and all because of a dream I had. In the dream, I was an internationally published poet. More on that sometime, but for now I need to repeat an old one. I wrote these 17 syllables and set them for piano and voice. I still love that song. Here is the simple haiku that is in my head. Words without music for anyone reading this, but I keep hearing her sing this as she did in Pittsburgh way back when.

I wait for my love
'neath the clock at the Biltmore
My love is not late

Now, I will quickly and randomly write a few more and end this micro-adventure in Tube 23.

I wait for the plane
She'll be here at eleven
But she'll be a ten

I need numbers to
express whatever it is
I need to express

Ten and eleven
will work as this one goes to
number eleven

There's time for 1 more
meaningless haiku 4 U
2 if I try hard

And for number 3
there'll be 5 more syllables
to end my cycle

Which 1 was number
3 and did it really end?
haiku to follow....

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YESTERDAY, WE HAD LOBSTER, SCALLOPS, SHRIMP and many more sea creatures at the NO NAME Restaurant on Boston Harbor. All times spent at No Name are special. I've been going to No Name since the days of KID-DOM. Most things kid are OK with me, still.

Today we went swimming early in the morning, and then to Quincy Market and a great tour by Susan the Park Ranger of Fanueil Hall. Fanueil Hall is the CRADLE OF LIBERTY, It is where those militant colonists, forced to be militant colonist by the bad bad King of England and his government. Susan the Park Ranger and I are proud Massachusetts natives who still won't forget that foreign country that warred with us - England/Great Britain or whatever the hell they call it.

Susan learned me good today. I didn't know that Benjamin Franklin had a serious and permanent split with his son over England.

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WE ATE AT ANTHONY'S PIER 4 tonight. We had an annoying waiter who was far too interested in my beautiful looking date but the food and view of Boston Harbor, the airport, boats and water were fantastic. His hitting on her was foolish and futile as she thought that sticking with me was a better option. We had halibut and scallops and a very good chardonnay, as well as all of Anthony's good side items.

We walked back here with a wild strong wind and very cold air blowing. I loved it while she froze. Even giving her my coat did little good. My insulation paid off - she doesn't have spare fat. And she doesn't read my blog or she would be embarrassed by something I wrote. I write this warm and happy.

More exciting details later........

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THE Amharic speaking ETHIOPIAN CAB DRIVER

I WAS IN ETHNOMUSICOLOGY heaven late this afternoon and all because of our cab driver. He was from Ethiopia, had been in Boston for 8 years but still spoke the most sing-songy Amharic language found in Ethiopia. His melodic range while speaking on his cell phone was enormous. He sang/spoke within a contour of a third of fifth but very often he would have an enormous jump of a 13th or even two octaves. It really was amazing to hear - I had trouble even seeing the road as I was too busy transcribing his melody/speech. It was also fun to hear a few English phrases thrown in - "that's true."

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I've got copyright opinions to spew and am privy to some interesting new developments but it is time to move to these other matters.....

With love for God and his Earth, I remain, sincerely devoted to the left and right causes that are correct and left.

E. Michael Harrington

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I HAD THE BEST THANKSGIVING yesterday as my Mom and I drove on beautiful back roads to the fantastic and historic Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts, Sudbury, the beautiful old town with the 01776 zip code. Other than the zip code of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, which maps out the letters, O-BACH, there is no cooler zip code. (I used to live at 43210 when I was at Ohio State - pretty good but I'll never know how cool a year 43210 will be.) I think there is no better place to have Thanksgiving - the oldest still-operating inn (in the U. S.) in the state that invented Thanksgiving. The menu was excellent with homemade apple ciders, cheeses, breads, crackers, lobster bisque, fruits, turkey, cornbread stuffing, cranberry relish, cranberry sauce, cranberries, cranberry this and that, Indian pudding, apple pie, pumpkin pie and much more. I like this pdf about the Wayside Inn

We were also extremely lucky to meet and become friends with some wonderful people who were also dining at the Wayside Inn.

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I'll be healthy someday but for now, I am used to being sick.

The Beatles' HELP is now available as a 2-DVD set. Of course, I bought it immediately. I also need to own the Miles Davis ON THE CORNER sessions. Unlike many jazz purists, I love electric Miles as much or more than many of his other periods. My first Miles was BITCHES BREW - that's how impure I am. Along with being impure, my first Bob Dylan was NASHVILLE SKYLINE and my first exposure to the great Aretha Franklin song, "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man," was via The Flying Burrito Brothers' recording of it on THE GILDED PALACE OF SIN - yes, I thought it was a slow 1969 country rock song. I grew up happily confused about many strains of popular music.

Haiku are coming soon.

Happy Black Friday I might go buy a garment bag on wheels now, provided the lines are short enough.

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SUNDAY

SALT LAKE CITY, our College Music Society conference, the Little America Hotel and Le Caille were great. It was fun to see old friends and make new ones. And as always, the cab drivers were excellent. To the airport this morning, I had a proud Sudanese driver and father of two boys, 11 years old and 5 years old who "talk too much." My driver name was Ali and he has lived in Salt Lake City since 1999. We discussed how bad things are in Sudan now especially with the Chinese and their obsession and ownership of so much Sudanese oil. If only we didn't genuflect for the Chinese at every opportunity and conveniently overlook their human rights atrocities around the globe, perhaps we could help the Sudanese people. China Good Cuba Bad. And on and on that will go....

Going from the airport to the Little America on Thursday was a driver from Pakistan who could only keep saying how bad and corrupt the BITCH - Benazir Bhutto - was. I thought that elections would be a good idea but he thought otherwise as Bhutto had been driven out and he surely did not want her back. Sadly, I helped ruin his Sunday.

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I should blog a lot about CMS and what I am doing with them and what I will be doing with them but it will have to wait and it would be better if a lot of it was oral and not written. Oh, that kind of stuff……

THE BIGGEST PROBLEM for me lately is that I've been sick and cannot get healthy. I don't do sickness well and I've had too many big commitments and cannot get out of them. I guess I'll just go on sick and sickly while sickly sickening and polluting those around me.

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MONDAY

All of New England, and especially we Bostonians, were beginning Thanksgiving with about the best possible news Mike Lowell, the Red Sox 3rd baseman, will be staying with the Boston Red Sox for the next three years. He could have gone to another team Philadelphia for 4 years and $50 million. Would Mike Lowell-like salary have made W. C. Fields change his tune about Philadelphia?

Mike Lowell is no Johnny "Looks Like Jesus, Acts Like Judas, Throws Like Mary" Damon.

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TUESDAY

Tuesday was amazing. I spoke at Berklee for two hours followed by almost two more hours of talk with faculty friends at Legal Seafood, followed by two more hours at Suffolk Law School followed by time afterwards with law students and faculty at more good Boston pubs.

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WEDNESDAY

YESTERDAY, while at the Newbury Comics Mothership on Newbury Street in Boston, before my Berklee talk, I felt like shopping for a few friends and in the process bought a few things for me. The best of these:

The TWIN PEAKS DEFINITIVE GOLD BOX Edition - 10 DVD's. These discs feature gorgeous color in every scene, unlike the poor DVD release of the first season many years ago.

AND then came the most fun purchase of ages - a DVD from Negativland. If you are copyRight extremist - a copy RIGHT type versus a copy LEFT type - if you love the RIAA and think that you should ask permission and obtain a license for using someone else's intellectual property at all times - you know, if you think dreaming about a movie or singing in the shower should require a license - then this film will be painful. All of your sacred cows will be assaulted. This is a trip to hell for you. Watching this will make you think you’re sitting on flaming embers in the bowels of hell. Lucifer himself hits play on the DVD and laughs at you while you shriek in horror at the nonstop assault on the S-Cows. (Perhaps this would be like the feeling Mitt Romney would get seeing two grey squirrels gathering nuts and knowing that his large hunting guns are in the trunk of the Volvo and not available for his hunting pleasure.) Your icons and your values are being brutalized numerous times per second in audio and visual expression. Of course, I love what I've seen so far in OUR FAVORITE THINGS by Negativland. It makes me laugh very hard for many good reasons and probably a few that are negative. I should wax philosophic here - about rebellion, chaos, information theory (I can't think chaos without thinking information theory, a sickness that first started for me 30 years ago), and how it is great to see the underdog occasionally win - but there are better things to do right now.

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It's Thanksgiving Day and I am still sick. I hope to spend the day collapsed and miserable. I'm thankful that I am not in Iraq or any place where there is great danger and injustice. I am most grateful for my friends and family, and for lawmakers who lack courage, conviction and compassion. They are to the good of society what Negativland are to ordinary.

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I'M REALLY FORTUNATE to have the friends I have. Many of my friends have been writing and calling wondering why I have been so invisible and elusive, why I haven't returned emails and phone calls and more. Those who know me best know I value friends more than family and that I must be in ridiculous time-trying situations or I would have responded to their overtures (contacts would be a better word as overture can be pompous - kind of like using phrases such as, "definitive performance," or "compelling," when talking about music).

In any and all events, I hope my friends forgive me for not calling, writing, emailing or more. My normal busy has been steroid-ically busy. A few of the details.....

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Monday 10/29 - 2-hour interview for Artists House Music, 2-hour lecture to Loyola Law School, wild activities in between and after. It was New Orleans and I had to live up to that Great City and what she and my pals expected.

Tuesday - too busy and fly away from NOLA. And lawyers, and recuperating from my injury on St. Charles.

Wednesday - too busy and lawyers and situps. (Lately, on a bad day, I do 200 situps. Usually I do 400 situps. I have to get strong like bull and bulls have strong stomachs.) And limping due to my fall on St. Charles.

Wednesday - the same

Thursday - no time for anything. During my free 90 minutes, I spoke to 103 really cool and seemingly receptive students at Vanderbilt University.

Friday - was there a Friday?

Saturday - I spoke about copyright, trademark, the joys of the Internets (especially Tubes 43 & 56) and the basics of the music industry at the Americana Music Association meeting in Nashville. (It's fun to speak about something about which you are clueless and a victimizer.)

And, on the 12th day, God created lawyers.

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More and more stuff:

HOUSE problems - the gigantic machine that heats and cools my house failed, more lawyers, layers, liars and more and more stuff leading to tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I am co-chair of a wonderful Leadership Music event that has sucked the blood and air out a few of us (or not). It has been time consuming, AND MUCH WORSE for me - DREAM CONSUMING. Sometimes when a mind is small ("present company SUSPECTED"), the brain has to work during the off hours, during those precious times known as, "dreaming." And damn it, I've been dreaming copyright, music, bad hip hop, average hip hop (you'd think great hip hop was coming but that might be next week), that one special woman, mojitos and more.....

Tomorrow comes the LM event, followed by a flight to NYC and planned activities there, back to BNA, then to Salt Lake City (to the Little America Hotel with its POLYGAMY PORTER and all of the fun events planned for us), back to BNA then immediately to Boston to speak at some great law schools and music schools, but most importantly, to see Mom. More on these sagas later......

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I wore a very bright yellow corduroy short this week (I've lost 30 lbs. and can now wear this old rarely worn shirt again), and heard two kinds of comments -

that is such a bright shirt

and

that would look good if it was BLUE

I need a dresser or Dress Consultant. What clothes should I wear? I'd rather the clothes be clean - I am always successful at that - and look OK and/or not Abrasive, Loud, Effete and Arrogant. [A-L-E-A = Greek for "chance?"].

I've got to make more very large changes in my life and they've got to happen in the next significant time span.

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MY TAKE ON POLITICS

Obama does not do insults well and describing the Clintons as problems of the 60's or re-living the 60's is not too effective. But politics is politics and one has to get out of character. Americans demand a few things when it comes to politics. And here are some of those things....

YOU HAVE TO RESORT to the playground. If you're not on top, beat up and make fun of the one who is on top. By lowering she who is on top, you go up. Obama is doing it, as is everyone not named Hillary Clinton. She'll do it as soon as she falls too far.

RUDY GUILIANI ------ every Democrat needs to contribute to his campaign, especially now that one of the GREATEST Protectors Of The Unborn (he surely doesn't care much for the BORN), Pat Robertson, has now come out in favor of one of the GREATEST baby killers, RUDY GUILIANI. The best way a Democrat can be elected in 2008 is if the GREAT BABY KILLER/Cross Dresser/Three Times a Marrier - RUDY G - becomes the Republican nominee.

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AND, many many many (3 many's) men in the U. S. do not like women, and especially strong women. Just ask a guy who's in a not-so-good marriage (assuming you can find such a theoretically-induced man) what he thinks of a strong woman.

And the U. S. will not vote for a man who appears to be black, i.e., African American. Even the extremely popular Colin Powell, pre-U. N. testimony Colin Powell, wold have failed if he had decided to run for President and gotten far. Poor CP - he should never have drank GWB's Kool Aid.

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This blog might go on too long. It's time to exercise appropriate judgment and end this rant.

Happy Friday to my friends and those unfortunate enough to have traversed down Tube 46 and onto this site.

Aloha, Annuit Coeptis, Good night and good luck.....

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CHINA - Another U. S. Embarrassment, but who cares about human rights when prices are low?

I HOPE THAT EVERYONE ATTACKS CHINA for its oppressive policies against its human beings (the U. S. used to care about human rights) and its very bad trade policies.

FOR AN EVEN BETTER EXAMPLE--------their new toy with beads that are painted with stuff that if ingested, is or is almost the "date rape drug," as if kids aren't screwy enough without ingesting a Chinese paint-based date rape generic-or-not drug.

But, we are supposed to like China because there are so many of them and Wal-Mart stuff and lots of stuff in the U. S. is really cheap because of their human rights issues. And we are supposed to eat FREEDOM FRIES instead of French fries, and get excited and FREEDOM KISS instead of French kiss that HOT ONE sitting nearby. But then comes the new French President who gets down on bended knees, yanks out a small brown lipstick container and goes at it in front of the House and Senate in his I-LOVE-THE-U.S. more than you do speech.

AGAIN, and as always when it comes to that great sport, politics... I am SO CONFUSED.

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As always, the Democrats in Washington will confirm Bush's nominee for Attorney General because they lack guts and integrity and are posturing with reasoning such as.... "well, he's better than Gonzales," or "his term is almost over," or "what harm can this attorney general do," or "Bush could have sent up someone much worse." When will so many of these pussy Democrats ever have guts?

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