Ukulele Man & his Prodigal Sons

COMFEST !!!

Hey Folks -

COMFEST starts Friday, June 27 and goes through Sunday!!

FRIDAY: The Uke Man will be doing a Rant on the Live Arts Stage Friday night at 10:00 - just before Mas Bagua.

SUNDAY: Ukulele Man & his Prodigal Sons (all 7 of us) will be playing a set on the Solar Stage at 6:10 p.m.

See you at Comfest!!

- Uke Man

Listen to this man!!

Harry Knows stuff and shares it with us when few others will!!

Hey Folks -

Want some interesting news that knocked Uke Man on his butt ???

Listen to the first four minutes or so of Le Show (comments later) :


http://www.kcrw.com/media-player/mediaPlayer2.html?type=audio&id=ls080622le_show_-_june_22_20


- Uke Man

Kiss My grAss !!!

Lawns !@#%!@*#

Well, Folks -

Spring has sprung into the Good Ol' Summer Time, and that means loving lawn care.

The Uke Man HATES lawns!! Some grass? Yes!! Lawns?? No!!!

The Uke Man doesn't do status symbols, and he doesn't like loud, dangerous machinery screaming at him all day long on sunny days. A little scraggly grass and a push mower - fine. Put ground-cover everywhere else; then lie in a hammock and read a book in the quiet left by the absence of maniacal lawn lovers and their monster machines (but, then, there are Neighbors!!".

Yeah, I know: "Hey, Uke Man!! Why do you hate America?"

Well, listen to the radio essay below (or read it from a hammock - farther below), and maybe you will too.

- Uke Man

Listen at:

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wosu/local-wosu-708262.mp3



Or Read it:




Fixation with Lawncare Has Short History Ed Lentz, WOSU Commentator

COLUMBUS, OHIO (2008-05-19) With the coming of Spring also comes - for those of us who have one - our annual encounter with --- the lawn.


In the early spring, we fertilize and weed the lawn - removing all those unsightly dandelions and the ever insidious crabgrass. Having urged the grass to grow, it proceeds to do just that. Then we can spend a goodly portion of our time for the rest of the summer cutting and watering it.

And all of this so that we will have a sward of green that will reflect well on us. Because - to many people - a lawn is nothing more than a sort of green mirror reflecting who we are - at least to the neighbors.

Washington Irving - the creator of Rip Van Winkle, Ichabod Crane and others - put it this way - and I quote "Society is like a lawn where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface."

So as we sit on our porch and patio and admire our well-tended lawn, it is often tempting to think that we are following in a long and ancient tradition of lawn care.

And of course we would be wrong. The American lawn in its current form is a relatively recent invention.

When we look at an old picture of Statehouse Square in Columbus with its well-trimmed lawn, we might be inclined to think that the tradition of closely cut grass has been with us for a very long time.

But when we stop to consider that the lawnmower in any form did not really exist until well into the 1800's, we might wonder how that famous lawn was mowed.

And the answer is - it was either mowed by hand or mowed by mouth. For a number of years after Statehouse Square was surveyed in 1812, its grass - such as it was - was kept short by roving bands of cattle, sheep and other livestock. Any further trimming that was needed was done by hand with sickles and scythes. And for most people who wanted a lawn of any sort, this is the way it was maintained.

For that reason, lawns were usually the province of the wealthy and the powerful and came to be a symbol of same.

It is no accident that the first exclusive residential neighborhoods in Columbus were built near Statehouse Square and to the immediate east of town where the Blind and Deaf Schools were located. Their large and well-maintained grounds were really the equivalent of parks in a city that that did not have a public park until Lincoln Goodale gave the city one in 1851.

Over the years, lawns came to be identified with success in American life. So it should not be surprising that a new middle class - created by 20th century enterprise - and possessed of suburban space, ample water and a motorized lawnmower - should try to make their lawns attractive as well.

Thus was born the great postwar ritual of suburban America - On most pleasant Saturday mornings in America, half the population can be seen cutting its grass - while the other half is washing its cars.

In recent years, many people have become convinced that the immense amounts of effort given to America's lawns might be better applied elsewhere - to housing the homeless or feeding the hungry. Looking about me on any recent Saturday and watching America's homeowners start their engines, it would appear that the lawn is not in any danger of imminent demise.

Finally - More than a pretty face

Hey Folks -

I don't know about you, but for a long time I've been damned sick of the burgeoning incidence of air-headed face girls "doing" the news. If they "looked good" they were deemed qualified to jabber at us, spouting the wasted pablum that passes for "news" in this godforsaken nation.

Imagine my utter surprise and joy upon viewing this clip from the Daily Show - beauty, brains, and the courage to speak out about the truth !!

http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=173871


- Uke Man

High Livin' on Legal Drug Money

Support Our Money-Grubbers!!

Hey Folks -

Call me a silly uke man, but:

THIS is what ALWAYS happens to the TROOPS that our MASTERS tell us to support. If we don't SUPPORT the TROOPS, we HATE AMERICA !!

Of course, if we don't SUPPORT our masters' abuse of OUR TROOPS to make $$$$$$$$$$$,
then, WE HATE AMERICA !! We HATE OUR FREEDOMS to make money abusing little Americans.

Well, I know where I stand.

- Uke Man



Mentally unstable veterans recruited for questionable drug trial

or

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=8357171&ch=4226713&src=news

How Does One CHOOSE to be Gay or Straight ??

Hey Folks -



Here's some more data adding to the mountain of scientific, sociological, and rational evidence that homophobes, not "homos" have a problem.



- Uke Man



p.s. The Uke Man knows who God, if there were one, would hate, and it ain't "fags."





Gay men, straight women share brain detail: report

LONDON (Reuters) - Gay men and straight women share some characteristics in the area of the brain responsible for emotion, mood and anxiety, researchers said on Monday in a study highlighting the potential biological underpinning of sexuality

Brain scans also showed the same symmetry among lesbians and straight men, the researchers wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The observations cannot be easily attributed to perception or behavior," the researchers from Sweden's Karolinska Institute wrote. "Whether they may relate to processes laid down during the fetal or postnatal development is an open question."

A number of studies have looked at the roles genetic, biological and environmental factors play in sexual orientation but little evidence exists that any plays an all-important role. Many scientists believe both nature and nurture play a part.

Brain scans of 90 volunteers showed that the brains of heterosexual men and homosexual women were slightly asymmetric with the right hemisphere slightly larger than the left, Ivanka Savic and Pers Lindstrom wrote. The brains of gay men and heterosexual women were not.

Then they measured blood flow to the amygdala -- the area key for the "fight-or-flight" response -- and found it was wired in a similar fashion in gay men and heterosexual women as well as lesbians and heterosexual men.

The researchers added that the study cannot say whether the differences in brain shape are inherited or due to exposure to hormones such as testosterone in the womb and if they are responsible for sexual orientation.

But this is something they plan to look at in a further study of newborn babies to see if it can help predict future sexual orientation.

"These observations motivate more extensive investigations of larger study groups and prompt for a better understanding of the neurobiology of homosexuality," they wrote.

(Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by Will Dunham and Ralph Boulton)

Terrorist Wolf Huffs & Puffs

Be afraid! Be afraid! Be a fraid!!

Be Afraid - Very, very . . . verrrrrry Afraid !!!

Hey Folks -



Below is a story about the outlandish fears stimulated by an unexpected darkness in the days of George Washington.


Many were afraid, afraid, afraid!!!


Are we still as easily driven to irrational dread? (is that a terrorist right behind you???).


Maybe the November election will answer that for us.


- Uke Man





Science : Discoveries
May 19, 1780: Darkness at Noon Enshrouds New England
By Randy Alfred - May19, 2008

1780: In the midst of the Revolutionary War, darkness descends on New England at midday. Many people think Judgment Day is at hand. It will be remembered as New England's Dark Day.
Diaries of the preceding days mention smoky air and a red sun at morning and evening. Around noon this day, an early darkness fell: Birds sang their evening songs, farm animals returned to their roosts and barns, and humans were bewildered.

Some went to church, many sought the solace of the tavern, and more than a few nearer the edges of the darkened area commented on the strange beauty of the preternatural half-light. One person noted that clean silver had the color of brass.

It was darkest in northeastern Massachusetts, southern New Hampshire and southwestern Maine, but it got dusky through most of New England and as far away as New York. At Morristown, New Jersey, Gen. George Washington noted it in his diary.

In the darkest area, people had to take their midday meals by candlelight. A Massachusetts resident noted, "In some places, the darkness was so great that persons could not see to read common print in the open air." In New Hampshire, wrote one person, "A sheet of white paper held within a few inches of the eyes was equally invisible with the blackest velvet."

At Hartford, Col. Abraham Davenport opposed adjourning the Connecticut legislature, thus: "The day of judgment is either approaching, or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause of an adjournment; if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty."

When it was time for night to fall, the full moon failed to bring light. Even areas that had seen a pale sun in the day could see no moon at all. No moon, no stars: It was the darkest night anyone had seen. Some people could not sleep and waited through the long hours to see if the sun would ever rise again. They witnessed its return the morning of May 20. Many observed the anniversary a year later as a day of fasting and prayer.

Professor Samuel Williams of Harvard gathered reports from throughout the affected areas to seek an explanation. A town farther north had reported "a black scum like ashes" on rainwater collected in tubs. A Boston observer noted the air smelled like a "malt-house or coal-kiln." Williams noted that rain in Cambridge fell "thick and dark and sooty" and tasted and smelled like the "black ash of burnt leaves."

As if from a forest fire to the north? Without railroad or telegraph, people would not know: No news could come sooner than delivered on horseback, assuming the wildfire was even near any European settlements in the vast wilderness.

But we know today that the darkness had moved southwest at about 25 mph. And we know that forest fires in Canada in 1881, 1950 and 2002 each cast a pall of smoke over the northeastern United States.

A definitive answer came in 2007. In the International Journal of Wildland Fire, Erin R. McMurry of the University of Missouri forestry department and co-authors combined written accounts with fire-scar evidence from Algonquin Provincial Park in eastern Ontario to document a massive wildfire in the spring of 1780 as the "likely source of the infamous Dark Day of 1780."

Source: The Weather Doctor

The People divided shall always be defeated

Hey Folks -

How long before we wise up?? The People divided shall always be defeated.

The facts of how the vampire ginks at the top of the economic order manipulate us to keep us down is directly below in Leonard Pitts Jr.'s column. Further evidence is provided below the column in my letter to Mr. Pitts and the quotation from Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

- Uke Man


Race alone won't explain the vote in West Virginia
Tuesday, May 27, 2008 2:55 AM
By Leonard Pitts Jr.

I keep thinking I should be mad at West Virginia.


Not because Barack Obama was recently beaten like a red-headed stepchild -- to use my father's expression -- in that state's primary. No, I'm thinking I should be upset about "why" he was beaten. According to exit polls, two out of every 10 voters said race was a major factor in how they cast their ballots.


Jon Stewart of The Daily Show ran a clip of a white woman who explained her refusal to vote for Obama thusly: "I guess because he is another race. I'm sort of scared of the other race 'cause we have so much conflict with 'em." She spoke in the vaguely shamefaced, what're-you-gonna-do? voice of someone who knows she should stick to her diet or stop smoking, but just can't help herself.


You'd think this would have me in a state of high dudgeon, fingers blazing the keyboard in righteous rebuke of attitudes so atavistic and wrong. But I can't. Oh, it's disappointing to see bigotry in Appalachia so vividly displayed. Yet I find it doesn't make me angry.


It just makes me sad.


I feel sorry for them. If that sounds patronizing, I apologize. That's not how it's meant.


It's just that, if the headline here is that Obama was rejected by whites on the basis of race, I submit that's not the whole truth. Pollsters say he was actually rejected on the basis of race by whites who lack college degrees and whose household income is less than $50,000 a year. In other words, he was rejected by the poor and the less educated.


Which is a description that fits many in Appalachia -- and also a vast swath of black America. So for me, the story here isn't simply the old, familiar tale of the nation's stark racial divide, but also another tale, just as old, less often remarked, of how the white poor and the black poor have long been kept at one another's throats as a means of keeping them from looking too closely or clearly at the ways both are manipulated by the forces of money and power.


And here, let me tell you what I am not saying. I'm not saying all bigots are poor or all the poor are bigots. I'm not saying everyone in Appalachia is poor, or less educated, or atavistic about race.


But I am saying this: the white poor have been victims of a con job going back at least as far as the Civil War, when poor white men were used as cannon fodder for the right of rich white men -- I repeat: rich white men -- to keep slaves. They were told they fought for state's rights.


From then till now, the white poor have often been the front line of white supremacy. You think people with college degrees and six-figure salaries are out there marching around under pointy white hoods, burning crosses? Hardly.


My point is that race has often been used as a means of distracting and diverting the white poor. They had little in life, nor any realistic expectation of having more. But the one thing they did have -- or so the con went -- was whiteness itself. Which meant they had someone to be better than. Someone to look down upon.


This, even though they did menial work under menial conditions, earned menial pay, sent their kids to menial schools, were subject to menial indignities, made do with menial health care and lived menial lives hemmed in by want, ignorance and hunger. Exactly like those they had been taught they were better than. Exactly like those they had been taught to look down upon.


There are those in positions of political power who can and should be held to answer for the meanness and narrowness of poor people's lives. But they can't and won't be so long as those who should be standing together to demand those answers are kept busy fighting one another over superficialities of color and culture.


Those are differences that too often obscure commonalities -- of need, of hope and of cause. Over the years, many of us have figured that out.


In West Virginia, at least, two in 10 of us have not.


Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald.
lpitts@miamiherald.com





Dear Mr. Pitts,

Another great column.

You are probably already aware of Mark Twain's views in regard to rich and poor whites in the South around the time of the Civil War. In case not, I have included it below.

You are absolutely right about the "divide and conquer" routine of the wealthy class. For myself, hoping to raise consciousness, I have modified a familiar protest chant to say:

"The people divided shall always be defeated."

Yours - Tom Harker, "Ukulele Man"

Chapter 30 – Note:The Yankee and the King come upon a burning Manor house and a mob of peasants busy chasing down and hanging other peasants suspected of having killed the oppressive lord and burning his manor.



The painful thing observable about all this business was the alacrity with which this oppressed community had turned their cruel hands against their own class in the interest of the common oppressor. This man and woman seemed to feel that in a quarrel between a person of their own class and his lord, it was the natural and proper and rightful thing for that poor devil’s whole caste to side with the master and fight his battle for him, without ever stopping to inquire into the rights or wrongs of the matter. This man had been out helping to hang his neighbors, and had done his work with zeal, and yet was aware that there was nothing against them but a mere suspicion, with nothing back of it describable as evidence; still neither he nor his wife seemed to see anything horrible about it.



This was depressing – to a man with the dream of a republic in his head. It reminded me of a time thirteen centuries away, when the “poor whites” of our South who were always despised, and frequently insulted, by the slave lords around them, and who owed their base condition simply to the presence of slavery in their midst, were yet pusillanimously ready to side with the slave lords in all political moves for the upholding and perpetuating of slavery, and did also finally shoulder their muskets and pour out their lives in an effort to prevent the destruction of that very institution which degraded them.

Help the Uke Man win the Dog Poop Jingle Contest !!

Hey Folks!!

A while back a friend said I should enter a Jingle Contest about scooping up pet poop. So – you know me - I did.

I figured it would be a “learning experience” with my first video camera, and that would be it, and that would be good enough.

Well, it seems I made the big cut and am among the finalists. The winner, however, will be determined by on-line voters. Since my ukulele and I have made it this far, I’m asking for your help.

To vote for me (if you think I deserve it), go to:

http://www.petbutle r.com/pbx/ contest/jingle08 _contest. asp

as of right now, I’m called “Contestant #1”

Click in the “I like this one the best” circle (if you do [bet you do] )

Then, you just enter your email and zip code at the bottom and

Click “Vote Now !”

Your single vote could make the difference; but if, like me, you are a bit obsessive-compulsiv e, you’re allowed to vote as many times as you want.

Thanks for helping an old guy’s self esteem by choosing his dog poop jingle as the least poopy!!

Thanks - Uke Man

p.s. Even if you don’t vote, check out the video – it’s awesome (in a plain sort of way)

You can see it right here, but you can't vote here - please go back up and click away!!!

The Idiot Son of an Asshole

Hey Folks -

I wasn't in a real good mood when I got up. Then someone sent me an e-mail with this video linked:

http://www.bushflash.com/idiot.html

Now, I feel much better!!

- Uke Man

p.s. Dumb, Dumb, Dumb
****Dumb, Dumb, McCain

"I Like to Smoke" - I love this song!!

Hey Folks -

Here's a song my pal Ty and I performed recently at Englishman John's Stage. It's a song written by my friend and excellent song-writer Jeff Hartley.

I hope you like it as much as I do!!

- Uke Man

"One to hold the bulb and 100 to turn the trailer - he-he-he . . ."

White, Working-People in West Virginia voted for this guy Twice!!!

Hey Folks -

Have you heard about Dickie-boy Cheney's funny joke? Have you seen the tape?

Well, here it is.

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?rn=3906861&cl=8115894&ch=4226716&src=news

Maybe this will help sort out -in the November elections - whether West Virginians vote for people who "understand them and their values" or for people who aren't Black.

- Uke Man

Why Gasoline is High - Why Soldiers Die

Hey Folks -

Take a look at what Greg Palast has to say about Iraq, oil, and war (profiteering).

- Uke Man

Obama's Secret War Profiteering Tax

By Greg Palast for TomPaine.com/OurFuture.org
[ New York , May 22, 2008.]

I can’t make this up:

In a hotel room in Brussels, the chief executives of the world’s top oil companies unrolled a huge map of the Middle East, drew a fat, red line around Iraq and signed their names to it.

The map, the red line, the secret signatures. It explains this war. It explains this week’s rocketing of the price of oil to $134 a barrel.

It happened on July 31, 1928, but the bill came due now.

Barack Obama knows this. Or, just as important, those crafting his policies seem to know this. Same for Hillary Clinton’s team. There could be no more vital difference between the Republican and Democratic candidacies. And you won’t learn a thing about it on the news from the Fox-holes.

Let me explain.

In 1928, oil company chieftains (from Anglo-Persian Oil, now British Petroleum, from Standard Oil, now Exxon, and their Continental counterparts) were faced with a crisis: falling prices due to rising supplies of oil; the same crisis faced by their successors during the Clinton years, when oil traded at $22 a barrel.

The solution then, as now: stop the flow of oil, squeeze the market, raise the price. The method: put a red line around Iraq and declare that virtually all the oil under its sands would remain there, untapped. Their plan: choke supply, raise prices rise, boost profits. That was the program for 1928. For 2003. For 2008.

Again and again, year after year, the world price of oil has been boosted artificially by keeping a tight limit on Iraq ’s oil output. Methods varied. The 1928 “Redline” agreement held, in various forms, for over three decades. It was replaced in 1959 by quotas imposed by President Eisenhower. Then Saudi Arabia and OPEC kept Iraq , capable of producing over 6 million barrels a day, capped at half that, given an export quota equal to Iran ’s lower output.

In 1991, output was again limited, this time by a new red line: B-52 bombings by Bush Senior’s air force. Then came the Oil Embargo followed by the “Food for Oil” program. Not much food for them, not much oil for us.

In 2002, after Bush Junior took power, the top ten oil companies took in a nice $31 billion in profits. But then, a miracle fell from the sky. Or, more precisely, the 101st Airborne landed. Bush declared, “Bring’m on!” and, as the dogs of war chewed up the world’s second largest source of oil, crude doubled in two years to an astonishing $40 a barrel and those same oil companies saw their profits triple to $87 billion.

In response, Senators Obama and Clinton propose something wrongly called a “windfall” profits tax on oil. But oil industry profits didn’t blow in on a breeze. It is war, not wind, that fills their coffers. The beastly leap in prices is nothing but war profiteering, hiking prices to take cruel advantage of oil fields shut by bullets and blood.

I wish to hell the Democrats would call their plan what it is: A war profiteering tax. War is profitable business – if you’re an oil man. But somehow, the public pays the price, at the pump and at the funerals, and the oil companies reap the benefits.

Indeed, the recent engorgement in oil prices and profits goes right back to Bush-McCain “surge.” The Iraq government attack on a Basra militia was really nothing more than Baghdad ’s leaping into a gang war over control of Iraq ’s Southern oil fields and oil-loading docks. Moqtada al-Sadr’s gangsters and the government-sponsored greedsters of SCIRI (the Supreme Council For Islamic Revolution In Iraq) are battling over an estimated $5 billion a year in oil shipment kickbacks, theft and protection fees.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the surge-backed civil warring has cut Iraq ’s exports by up to a million barrels a day. And that translates to slashing OPEC excess crude capacity by nearly half.

Result: ka-BOOM in oil prices and ka-ZOOM in oil profits. For 2007, Exxon recorded the highest annual profit, $40.6 billion, of any enterprise since the building of the pyramids. And that was BEFORE the war surge and price surge to over $100 a barrel.

It’s been a good war for Exxon and friends. Since George Bush began to beat the war-drum for an invasion of Iraq , the value of Exxon’s reserves has risen – are you ready for this? – by $2 trillion.

Obama’s war profiteering tax, or “oil windfall profits” tax, would equal just 20% of the industry’s charges in excess of $80 a barrel. It’s embarrassingly small actually, smaller than every windfall tax charged by every other nation. ( Ecuador , for example, captures up to 99% of the higher earnings).

Nevertheless, oilman George W. Bush opposes it as does Bush’s man McCain. Senator McCain admonishes us that the po’ widdle oil companies need more than 80% of their windfall so they can explore for more oil. When pigs fly, Senator. Last year, Exxon spent $36 billion of its $40 billion income on dividends and special payouts to stockholders in tax-free buy-backs. Even the Journal called Exxon’s capital investment spending “stingy.”

At today’s prices Obama’s windfall tax, teeny as it is, would bring in nearly a billion dollars a day for the US Treasury. Clinton ’s plan is similar. Yet the press’ entire discussion of gas prices is shifted to whether the government should knock some sales tax pennies off the oil companies’ pillaging at the pump.

More important than even the Democrats’ declaring that oil company profits are undeserved, is their implicit understanding that the profits are the spoils of war.And that’s another reason to tax the oil industry’s ill-gotten gain. Vietnam showed us that foreign wars don’t end when the invader can no longer fight, but when the invasion is no longer profitable.