Know When to Fold ‘Em: How Obama’s Move in Afghanistan is a Strategic Blunder that Plays Right into the Hands of, Among Others … China

Josh Schrei

“You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run…”
-Kenny Rogers, The Gambler

When I voted for Barack Obama, I was fully aware of his intention to focus America’s military efforts on Afghanistan rather than Iraq. Those who viewed Barack as the ‘anti-war’ candidate and are now wringing their hands at their beloved President and asking “How could you do this” should have paid more attention to his campaign speeches. His stance on Afghanistan hasn’t changed one bit.

What has changed is the global playing field. Once upon a time, even just a few years ago, an escalation in Afghanistan could have been seen as at least somewhat strategically sound from a military perspective — though I still would have viewed its merits as highly questionable. Now, with the US economy tanked, America’s standing in the world softened a bit, and another rising superpower with its own Islamic “problem,” there is absolutely no reason for this escalation.

It goes without saying that a troop escalation of this magnitude will empower and embolden the Taliban in Pakistan, in fact it already has. By pre-announcing the date of our withdrawal — the daft equivalent in poker of betting all your chips while simultaneously showing your opponent your hand — we have in effect told the enemy that if they can ride this escalation out for 18-months, they will have won. Such a move is not only strategically unsound, it telegraphs everything the world already knows about the current state of  America — it says: we can get involved, but not too deeply; we can take a risk, but not too much of a risk; Its worth lives, but it will cost us the election is it goes poorly; we are hurting for cash, so this really can’t go on too long…  To say that it empowers the enemy is an understatement: to a society of warlords whose way of life is armed conflict its totally laughable.

Just as al-Qaeda grew in rank and strength the minute we invaded Iraq, so too will the anti-American sentiment spread with this troop escalation, not necessarily within Afghanistan itself, but certainly in Pakistan,  the nesting ground of both the Taliban and al Qaeda. As someone who opposed Iraq, Obama should have learned this fundamental lesson – don’t needlessly turn the region into an even bigger recruiting ground for extremists. Soon, the Taliban will have 30,000 more targets — and 30,000 new ways to paint the US as the bad guy once again.

I say ‘once again’ because it is no exaggeration to say that there has been a sea change in global attitude towards the US over the last year. Since the economic crash and the election of Obama, the US has lost quite a bit of its ‘bad guy’ status. Of course there are those who always have, and will always, plot against us. But there is also a real sympathy towards America now — if you travel, you can hear it everywhere you go. The same Islamabad cab drivers who might have been shaking their fists at America two years ago have quite a different view today and will let you know it.

Just as people are quick to anger, they are also quick to forget. Extremists make use of hot sentiment to turn normal citizens into footsoldiers. The less reasons we give them to hate us, the less they will. The less targets we give them, the less people will get killed. The more we put our minds and our money towards constructive development, the more we will build.

Given the potential consequences — and in the absence of any clearly articulated short or long term security threat — there is absolutely no reason, to borrow another poker analogy, to go all in. To do so not only strengthens extremism, it plays right into the ongoing strategy of a country we should be far more concerned about  — China.

China’s long-term America strategy has always been to benefit economically from us and wait patiently while we run ourselves ragged in a costly ongoing war and milk ourselves dry through rampant overspending.

The strategy has worked. China — the owner of a huge percentage of our debt — is undoubtedly on the rise, and has been emboldened by America’s recent retreat in global standing. The PRC is now acting as a bully unleashed, making brash claims of territorial sovereignty in India, deepening their investments and arms deals into Africa’s most brutal regimes, buying out small governments (Nepal, Malawi) to build allies; and trying to position censored communication and cold war level domestic surveillance as a norm to western companies… in short, they are acting like the guy at the table with all the chips and no one to stop them from winning the pot.

But China, as a country with a massive restive Muslim population that has already erupted into violence once this year, as Pakistan’s neighbor, as a country that is pumping money into whatever corrupt Central and South Asian government they feel provides them the most strategic advantage, is clearly next on the list to inherit the ire of fundamentalist Islam, and this concerns them terribly.This has already played out this year, when al-Qaeda issued threats over  the Chinese repression of Muslims in East Turkestan. As superpowers rise and fall,  the extremists battleground will shift towards China. This is inevitable history.

As much as they may make grumblings about American interventionism, Beijing would like nothing more than for America to continue to deplete itself militarily and financially over an enemy that they know will soon be theirs. In the process, they’ll be happy to buy up more of that debt that we will incur fighting what is quickly becoming their war. And they’ll be happy to buy access after the fact to the resource pools that we free up with the lives of American soldiers. Why play into this? By upping our costs in Afghanistan and lowering our standard in the Muslim world yet again, we are empowering Beijing financially and militarily.

We need to change the long term strategy.

Were I America, sitting at the poker table with almost no chips, trying to play against someone with twice the stack I have over a pot that I know I can’t — and probably don’t even want to — win, I would do the logical thing.

In the words of Kenny Rogers, you’ve got to know when to fold ‘em.

Fold your cards, and pass the risk on to the next guy at the table. We all know who the “next guy” is… China.

America is still trying to act like the superpower in the room. Yet we have issues at home that need drastic attention, and only then will we start to rebuild that superpower status. What would be the disadvantage of using all of our resources to shore up our own economy, through massive green jobs investment and infrastructure overhaul, while leaving the overspending and the Islamic problem to the country that wants to play superpower? Why don’t we turn the tables on Beijing for a change? Why don’t WE ride it out long term, and let THEM deplete themselves. Let them get into debt. Let them be the bad guys… because — little secret — they ARE the bad guys.

Any immediate short term strategic losses in the Central Asian region we would incur by keeping the focus at home will be far outweighed by the long term strengthening of America domestically and the long term weakening of China internationally as it tries to make sense of its mess of a backyard. How many Pakistani’s will stand for China’s intervention into their government policies? How many more riots in Urumqi or anti-China protests in Africa until China’s Islamic issue becomes a serious game-changer? I say, its time for us to walk away, right now, during that tiny window where they don’t hate us quite as much.

President Obama, to summarize, this move of yours does not strike me as a gamble. It strikes me as a game of poker in which you’ve already showed your hand, you don’t have any chips, your wife and kids are sitting behind you saying: “Daddy, we have to go,” there’s a guy across the table with twice the stack  and the pot isn’t a pot at all –  its a damn powder keg. Not winnable. Ill-advisable. Poor strategy.

Fold. And walk away.

An Open Letter to My Favorite President Ever with a Pointed Message from a Cartoon Lion: You Can Do Better.

Dear President Obama:

In Walt Disney’s 1994 film The Lion King, there is a Kenobi-esque moment in which the deceased head of the pride — Mufasa — appears as an apparition before his reasonably accomplished yet somewhat misguided son Simba and utters the words: “My son, you are more than what you have become.”

I write to you today as someone who not only voted for you, but also actively championed you, campaigned for you, and called disgruntled old ladies in rural Pennsylvania for you on election eve. Simply put, I think the world of you. I think you have beaten all the odds, and you have shined every step of the way. I think the world is a better place with you as President, and I think your clearly demonstrated intelligence and leadership as Commander in Chief has not only elevated America’s standing in the world, it has set the bar for nations for years to come.

That said sir, with all due respect… and I recognize that there is indeed a lot of respect due, I write to tell you that you can do better.

Barack, you can do better.

Don’t get me wrong, whatever you do with this Presidency, you’re still a Lion. You’re still — pardon the verbiage — a complete bad-ass.

But oh, Mr. Obama, you can be so much more.

The challenge, in the complex mix of factors you’ve inherited, is to not succumb to the lowest common denominator but to lead, truly lead, with purpose and with clarity of vision. We all face situations in this life where we make a choice to either live fearlessly according to our own truth or to accept what is possible… given the context.

Given the context of our economic crisis, it is understandable that you would make the choices you have on federal spending. Given the context of the egregious attacks of your malcontents, it is understandable that your beloved health care bill would have to be trimmed down to have a chance of passing. Given the context, it is understandable that you would seek a middle ground on climate change legislation. Given the context, it is understandable that you would stay the course of your foreign policy predecessors and make no significant changes in our relations with China.

All of this is perfectly understandable.

Yet those of us who voted you into office demand more of you. We did not vote you in to be perfectly understandable. I hate to invoke the “C” word, but sir, we voted you in because you PROMISED change.

Mr. President, there are two defining and pivotal issues on which you can truly shape the course of history. I speak not of education and health care, for which I will provide a simple equation and assume you know what your GOP counterparts seemingly choose to ignore — in order for us to stay competitive, everyone needs to have both. For free. That this is even a question in the 21st century truly boggles the mind.

Nor do I speak of Afghanistan, in which there are other simple formulas at work. No foreign invader has ever won a war there. And, well, as a rule — the less occupiers you have in a country, the less people get killed. Go figure. The more we give them a reason to fight us, the more they will.

I speak of China and the Environment.

On the Environment, I will be brief. Suffice to say this: your “small government” critics apparently have absolutely no concept of what is coming. Small government, when it comes to the necessity of remolding ourselves to meet the environmental challenges ahead, will soon be utterly obsolete. Governments will be forced to spend huge dollars to deal with climate change, water shortages, rural depletion and urban overpopulation. What is needed, now, is a massive restructuring and an an equally massive investment in environmental technologies, green jobs, and alternative energy. And I mean massive. This is not about “clean coal”. This is about turning entire industries — like one in Michigan I could mention — into sustainable propositions.  If we lag behind on this, the consequences… well sir, the consequences will not be as dramatic as a Roland Emmerich film, but neither will they be as boring.

I recently returned from the Himalayas, where everyone, from humble villagers to guest house owners to tour guides, is visibly shaken from the lack of snow. The aptly named third pole — the 80,000 strong glacial matrix of the Tibetan plateau that is the source of life for literally half of the world’s population — is in total peril. This is scientific fact.

Which brings me to China and Tibet.

The Tibet issue is not one of “human rights.” It is a defining issue of our age. It is about the fundamental right of human beings to live unfettered.  Millions upon millions of people died in the second world war so that our global community could unite on a simple principle: everyone has the right to freedom. Freedom to think, express, congregate, build, elect, share, move…. And now — because of our short term ignorance, greed, and hubris, the emerging world superpower is one that honors none of these freedoms. To say that this bodes darkly for humanity is a massive understatement. We have sold the sacrifice of our grandparents down the river. Sold it. And that sir, is an utter abomination. No nation should be allowed China’s violations of freedom. It is utterly unacceptable. And President Obama,  you must take them to task for it, while anyone still can.

As a lifelong Tibet supporter, I have endured 15 years of meetings with Senators, Representatives, and Chiefs of Staff and have been told roughly the same thing in every single meeting. We have to engage. We have to give them what they want. We can’t upset them.

Suppose for a minute that on the occasion of my first meeting I had a newborn son. And suppose that child had been raised solely according to the philosophy of those meetings. “We can’t upset him. We can’t offend him. His feelings get hurt when we ask him if he’s cleaned his room….”  What would I have now? A 15-year-old, overly-entitled, spoiled rotten, immature, selfish, brutal bully with the keys to the car. Beijing’s leaders deserve none of the leeway we have given them. None of it.

Today, I saw the statement you gave after the meeting you had with China’s Hu Jintao. To call it a statement would be to give you far too much credit.  Sir, they invoked your ethnic heritage and your love and study of one of the greatest men in modern history and used it to justify one of the greatest abominations of the modern era. Where is the outrage?

You are more than that tepid diplomacy. You are MORE than the man who stands idly by while lovers of truth and justice are slaughtered. You are meant to be their champion. And if not you, in this rapidly declining world, then who? Who???

If the United States of America does not rise to meet its potential now — if YOU do not rise to meet your potential– in this time, the time when we are MOST challenged, then you of all people know the consequences. You know that we may not in fact get another opportunity.

This briefest of windows is your time. It is your time to not just be remembered as America’s first African-American President who did what he could, given the context. It is your time to become — in the words of my favorite cartoon lion — what you are. What you were born to be. A truly great man.

I am counting on you. We are counting on you.

With love and respect,

josh

Hey, PRC, you don’t know Lincoln from shit

“Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.”
– Abraham Lincoln

The Chinese Government’s most recent abomination — comparing Abraham Lincoln’s war on slavery to the PRC’s brutal invasion and occupation of Tibet (and wrapping it all up with a ‘you-should-understand-slavery-because-you’re-black’ message to President Obama) — is only worth commenting on because there may be those uninformed unfortunates that actually give pause to the PRC’s stance.

Fundamentally, there is no comparison. Yes, President Lincoln declared war on secessionists. He also strongly championed the values of individual liberty and freedom and took considerable political risks to ensure that all people were entitled to these freedoms. None of the freedoms that Lincoln championed are on display in Tibet or China. And drawing reference to one of the great champions of individual liberty from a government that has no interest in such liberty is — to any student of American history — insulting. Lincoln’s name should not even be mentioned in the same sentence as Beijing’s current cronies. Luckily, most thinking people know this.

President Obama, we will not insult your intelligence — as your current hosts have –  by explaining to you why it is racist, colonialist, and utterly unfounded to make comparisons between the Confederate South and Tibet.  I’m sure you are as shocked and outraged as we are, as is the entire world community.

What we do question is why the world community continues to legitimize, fund, and coddle a dictatorship that is so dangerously out of touch with the norms of modern society. The Chinese government is positioning itself as — and quickly becoming — the next great world superpower, and we are busily helping them. It is high time this stopped. You did not meet with the Dalai Lama before you left for China. But you can make a difference now. We urge you to publicly distance yourself from the Chinese Government’s recent statements and to push for immediate improvements in Tibet, where the people enjoy no freedom of speech and are still suffering the results of a brutal crackdown after last year’s March protests. As someone who respects Lincoln’s name and has an understanding of his politics, this is the least you can do.

The simple truth is that the people of China and Tibet have no freedom, and the fundamental issue is the right of people to determine their own future, which our President Lincoln was a champion of to the end. In the absence of that right — and in defense of the repression of it — mad minds make ludicrous claims. Comparing Lincoln to the current leadership in Beijing is a violation of all that we as Americans value. We trust that — as our President — you will respond accordingly.

Christopher Hitchens is Absurd.

Christopher Hitchens’ hack scholarship on the subject of religion is utterly inexcusable, and his latest absurdity on Huffington Post firmly cements him as having no place in serious theological debate.

Hitchens’ first and most egregious gaffe is his statement that all religions view the history of humankind as starting several thousand years ago.

“Alas, no religion of which we are now aware has…made any allowance for the tens and probably hundreds of thousands of years of the human story.”

Any two-bit religious scholar knows that Buddhists and Hindus count time in kalpas, or  segments of millions of years, and that they firmly believe the earth was created billions of years ago. There are many prominent Hindu scholars, in fact, who posit that some of the best loved Hindu legends from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana are in fact tales from Neanderthal times. The religious cosmology of the Ancient Mayans included a mathematically accurate calendar spanning hundreds of thousands of years. Vast areas of history and religious experience are completely overlooked because — like most atheists — Hitchens is incapable of understanding that for most of human history and in most cultures, science and religion were actually one pursuit.

Hitchens classic argument — that science brings us good things like reason and light and objectivity and human rights and newborn puppies while religion keeps us shackled like slaves in the dark –  is an obtuse track that does no justice to the vast and varied history of global theology. Human rights, for example, which Hitchens assumes to be a result of western science and reason, first took root in recorded history in the Mauryan Buddhist monarchy of King Ashoka, in which torture was outlawed. The adherents of Jainism, a religion which Hitchens is probably woefully unaware of, practice non-violence and non-harming to an extreme measure. Ethical practices have always been intertwined with religious faith. Conversely, atheistic power structures — from barbarian hordes to Stalinist Russia and Maoist China — have been responsible for nearly as many atrocities as the religious structures Hitchens condemns.

But the fundamental problem with Hitchens argument is not in his vilification of the power structures of world religions — for god knows (sic) that these structures could use an overhaul — but in the classic and perennially obtuse atheist’s argument that they have science on their side and religion doesn’t.

Only in the western mind does the existence of deity contradict science, and truth be told, not even there. There is nothing in western scientific thought that denies deity.  Most scientists, from Newton to Darwin to Planck to Oppenheimer, believed in deity. And there are clear — and ever more defined — places in quantum physics where religious thought and scientific thought overlap. Modern-day atheists, however, have come to assume that if one is “rational” or “scientific” it means that one does not believe in god. Victims of the western Church-Science split, these atheist casualties are so spooked by the atrocities of religious power structure that they are unable to do any serious study of the history of human thought on God.

In many traditions, religion and science have always been and do remain inextricably linked. Indian history, for example, contains a vast body of incredibly sophisticated scientific/academic literature on god, concepts of god, consciousness at it relates to god, the human body and human thoughts and emotions in relation to god… and, in the case of Kashmiri Shaivism for example, quantum physics as it relates to god. The concept of spanda in Kashmiri cosmology is one of the most intellectually complex and sophisticated views on divinity ever put forth. Abhinavagupta — the brilliant architect of much of Indian thought–  penned theistic texts over 1,000 years ago that contain scientific truths that physicists are just now confirming.

Most atheists I’ve encountered, Hitchens included, have an extremely limited concept of what God might even be, as they exist in reaction specifically to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic god as revealed by through current religious power structures.

I am all for reforming religious structures. But the logical leap from reform of religion to abolishment of all belief in deity is a fool’s leap. Sadly, in many of his writings, this is a leap that Hitchens takes all too often. I do believe that somewhere lurking beneath the gas and bile is a genuinely smart person — would that he would take the time to afford his subject matter the care, attention, and multiplicity of voice that it deserves.

The Batey.

*The word Batey traditionally signifies a neighborhood comprised of Haitian sugar workers in the Dominican Republic.  Now it is often used in the DR to refer to any rural Haitian slum.

Haitians experience the worst poverty in the Western Hemisphere. And the Batey I visited, on the outskirts of the village of Munoz, is no exception. There is little access to medical care, most of the inhabitants have no work, clean water is scarce, and hundreds of people are forced to share a handful of toilets. The dwellings are shacks, and the narrow alleyways run with open sewage.

Through the kind and generous people at SunCampDR, I was fortunate enough to visit the Batey and was allowed to photograph at will.  While I was met with some questioning stares, for the most part I was greeted with warm smiles and treated as a guest. I can’t say enough about the people.  Their dignity, beauty, and grace under the worst conditions truly inspired me.

Knowing that this place exists a quick three hour flight from New York City,  I’m determined to do what I can to help the people of the Batey.  More details to come soon.

Help Me Help the Poor Children of DR/Haiti.

Dear Friends and Family,

I will be spending this Labor Day weekend in the Dominican Republic volunteering in an impoverished village comprised mainly of Haitian refugees and sugar workers.

In addition to sending them basic supplies such as shoes, clothing, backpacks, pens, and notebooks, I will be working with the young people of the village on a film project in which they document their lives, their stories, and their communities themselves. I have worked on this type of film project before and the results are wonderful. The short film that we create will be used to create awareness of the situation in the bateys of the DR and raise further funds.

To get this project done I need to raise at least $500, quickly.  Please consider donating $10 or $20 dollars. If you want to help, donate here through my friends at the New Orleans Kid Camera Project.

We will know which donations came through this site from this time period, so the money will go to me.

Your contribution will help cover the costs of this film project and will buy much-needed supplies for the people of Munoz. Please note that your receipt will read as a donation to The New Orleans Kid Camera Project or to ‘One Bird’.

Steve Ross is the Anti-Christ.

I’m no yoga purist. I can handle the fact that the ancient disciplined practice I follow has morphed into more varieties than there are unnecessary flavors of Ben and Jerry’s or spin-offs of Law and Order. I can accept acro-yoga, hot yoga, yoga and chocolate workshops, and even yoga studio/wine bars (though someone has yet to explain to me the connection between clearing ones mind and dulling it.)  But at some point, somewhere, “yoga” ceases to be yoga.

Well, I found that point.

Whatever it is that is happening on Sundays at Maha Yoga in Brentwood, whatever bizarre, packed ritual it is that is being presided over by a man who bears an eerie resemblance to Frankenstein’s younger hippie brother in MC Hammer pants or to the guy who convinced those Nike-clad cult members in 1996 to down their cyanide applesauce so they could board the UFO, it sure as hell isn’t yoga.

I can handle botox-infused Brentwood housewives yammering about nothing as we wait in line. I can handle “righteous dudes” in frat necklaces and billabong gear jostling their way to the front of the line all the while smiling those fake “Its all good… but if I had a choice I’d stab you in the back and enjoy it” smiles that are so popular in Los Angeles. I can handle music cranked up to 12 and vague and barely audible “alignment” instructions that sound like they are being delivered by a ESL instructor with a speech impediment. I can handle the dude in front of me who thinks that this is his personal time to practice nothing but handstands even if he’s falling on other people’s mats. And I can even maybe handle the mid-class back massages that spontaneously erupt between students and the prolonged gooey hugs Ross inflicts upon his mostly female minions.

There is a point, however, where I draw the line. There is a point where I wonder what the difference is between this and some weird sweaty pit of self-congratulatory Southern Californian chaos. Half the class stops practicing whenever they want and “does their own thing”. The other half half-heartedly listens to the cult leader and loudly discusses what they’re going to do after class throughout the entire 90 minutes. And, true to character, Billabong dude has his blackberry out by his mat and is repeatedly pausing, mid-”pose” to send texts. Texts. Not to sound like a puritan, but that’s not yoga.

You might ask why get so incensed about a silly yoga class. Well first, as I said,  its not yoga. As many varieties of Yoga as there are, there is one binding and defining thread — a basic principle, illuminated 2,000 years ago (and now tattooed into my forearm) — yoga is the practice of stilling the mind.

Yoga is not texting, or talking incessantly, or saying: “look at me.” Yoga is not discussing what you are going to do later. You might be able to get a fine, sweaty workout doing any of those things, which is perfectly great. But you aren’t doing yoga.

Steve Ross, whose surprisingly well-written book — which he clearly didn’t actually write — is called: “Happy Yoga” might argue that yoga is about doing whatever you feel in the moment as long as it makes you happy. I’m sure that’s an argument that his Los Angeline flock would love to hear. Nothing pumps up a crowd of Angelinos more than being told that doing whatever they want whenever they want is not only ok, its actually spiritual. Steve Ross’s class is spiritual in the same way that buying a $20 million “green” estate actually helps the environment — i.e. it isn’t, and it doesn’t.

Everything that was reinforced in Ross’s class — having no concern about those around you, having no discipline or inner quiet, paying no attention, and doing whatever you want whenever you want — runs completely contrary to yoga. Its the yoga of “dammit I deserve that SUV,” the yoga of checking your daily yoga class off your to do list, the yoga of “hey guess what, I’m doing yoga, OMG, what are you doing LATER?”

So yes, Steve Ross is clearly the anti-Christ. Not because of the crazed and vacuous grin that can only be the result of some form of spiritual ice-pick administered directly into his frontal lobe.  Not because of that godawful picture from Steve’s website of him leering in front of a pastel mandala — though that certainly adds to the case. I choose the word ‘anti-Christ’ very specifically because the values that are on display on Sundays at Maha Yoga are the exact opposite of humility, self-reflection, awareness, serenity, kindness, and respect.

Given current global conditions, the philosophy of do whatever you want whenever you want is quite possibly soon to be an endangered species. And if that’s a scary thought, which it probably is to most in the greater Brentwood area, then I have a great suggestion: go do some yoga.

I write this in all seriousness, because I hope somewhere, pre-apple sauce Steve knows this is true and will start actually teaching yoga again.

_____

Final note. Before you start wincing about the excoriation I just delivered and actually start feeling bad for the man, please take into account the following:

1) He’s above it all.

Anyone with that kind of enlightened smile probably doesn’t care about a silly internet twit like me writing derogatory things about him. Whatever I write simply passes through that spiritual sieve of a mind like fluffy hairballs passing through a high powered British vacuum cleaner.  So I might as well write exactly what I want, as I know there is no way that anything I write will have even the smallest effect on a master like Steve.

2) He’s a millionaire.

I don’t really have the bank account stats to back it up, but the man has his own Oxygen network show, Yoga Studio, and throngs of fans who line up down the block for his Sunday classes. If for some reason he is devastated by this article, he can easily take solace in his coven of silicone-enhanced Brentwoodettes.

3) This isn’t really about Steve, its about Los Angeles. And America. And something we probably should get through our thick heads sooner rather than later.

Perhaps it is the Mother of 10,000 things.

Never mind the fake beard and sasquatch references… I call it great.

RIP DC.

Tahina Spectabilis

CNN posted an article this morning detailing the top new species of plants and animals discovered in 2008. Among them, a dime-sized seahorse, the worlds longest insect, and a pale, ghostlike slug from Cardiff Wales. (An ex-girlfriend of mine once took off with a man from Cardiff, Wales who had the complexion and physique of an albino slug, so this one seemed somehow fitting.)

But topping the list in my book is Tahina Spectabilis, a species of palm tree from Madagascar that flowers only once in its long lifetime… but that flowering is so spectacular, bold and exhaustive that the plant dies from the effort shortly after.

Call me a tragic-romantic, but who can’t relate?

That’s all. Now excuse me, I’m going to go listen to Nick Drake and Kurt Cobain all day.

Street Art Revelation #16: Deranged Midgets with Guns.

Technically Herve Villechaize was a dwarf, not a midget, but Deranged Dwarves with Guns doesn’t sound as compelling and after Lord of the Rings the word Dwarf is pretty much reserved for bearded and armored mountain dwellers. For those who are unfamiliar with the sad tale of this diminutive Filipino sidekick/drunk/depressive/chanteur, you can read more here.  Basically, after too many years of alerting Ricardo Montalban to the impending arrival of fictional aircraft, Villechaize cracked and became a depressed drunk. And in one infamous incident, he held up his own agent with a pistol. Seriously. Not to belittle little people, but if a midget pulls a gun on you isn’t it almost impossible not to crack up laughing? I wonder if the death rate during incidents where little people pull guns on people is higher because the victims just don’t take the sight of a midget with a gun seriously.

Anyway, glad I came across this tribute to Herve. And for those who want a little more…