a href="http://gramotunes.com/Falling_Stars.mp3"target="new"Sarah Siskind - "Falling Stars"/a It was through Bon Iver's self-damning a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8hnAY05A9PE"target="new"love/a for "Lovin's For Fools," the heartbreaking, "You Are My Sunshine"-jacking ballad by Sarah Siskind, that I learned of this talented songwriter. Sad music and production this present usually go together like tea and poison, though succesful meetings of the two are not without precedent. When, as a child, I first heard James Taylor's "Fire and Rain", I fell into an insufferable weeks-long funk that persisted until my father's repeated pleas of "It's just a song" finally made an impact. The impassioned, highly melodious babble of Al Green's "Simply Beautiful" has always floored me, despite its proper production, as have countless other soul tear-jerkers. Sarah Siskind avoids perfection's pitfalls by sullying her antiseptic sonic space with distortion and density and counterintuitive musical lines, and thus creates an ideal showcase for her pure, falling country cadences. [a href="http://www.amazon.com/Falling-Stars/dp/B001LEQF7G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8s=dmusicqid=1228357601sr=8-1"target="new"Buy/a] pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/saidthegramophone/stg?a=ktoXvl"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/saidthegramophone/stg?i=ktoXvl" border="0"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/saidthegramophone/stg/~4/474222740" height="1" width="1"/

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/69710?ns=guardianpageName=Stage%3A+%27My+whole+life+has+been+a+black+comedy%27ch=Stagec3=The+Guardianc4=Theatre%2CCulture+section%2CJoe+Orton+%28Playwright%29%2CStage%2CTelevision+%28Culture%29c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CTelevision+Media%2CTheatrec6=Catherine+Shoardc7=2008_12_04c8=1128305c9=articlec10=GUc11=Stagec12=Theatrec13=c14=h2=GU%2FStage%2FTheatre" width="1" height="1" //divpIt has been a while since Doon Mackichan was last hung, drawn and quartered for laughing at the suffering of children. There was a week in August 2001 when you couldn't pass a newsstand without seeing her handsome, sparrowhawk face, forehead partially obscured by the word "evil" or "depraved"./ppThe Brass Eye paedophile special is now mostly remembered as virtuoso satire, so it's easy to forget what a stink it caused at the time. And it was Mackichan, who played TV presenter Swanchita Haze, who bore the brunt of it. People expected that sort of thing from Chris Morris, but Doon was a woman with - gulp - children of her own. "[Mackichan] had seen herself as a major comedy force in the making," wrote the Mail. "She even dreamt of becoming a film star. But with the Brass Eye disaster as her epitaph, all those plans lie in tatters."/ppLooking back, it's hard to say her career didn't suffer. There were two more seasons of Smack the Pony, the girly Channel 4 sketch show with Sally Phillips and Fiona Allen, but to diminishing returns. There were wifely roles in ropey sitcoms. There was theatre. Then came a two-year break for unhappier reasons (of which more later). And now she's back, in a play that, well, laughs at the suffering of children. Adults, too. Especially those six feet under. /ppJoe Orton's Loot, like Brass Eye, is comedy that sets out to shock. Don't be fooled by its age; although the play was first performed in 1965, Loot has weathered better than, say, a TV parody of late-90s news shows. Death doesn't date as a cultural taboo; likewise religion. Rereading Loot is like having a shower when you hadn't realised the boiler's broken: unexpectedly shocking./pp"Yep, it's full on," says Mackichan, eating a tuna sandwich between rehearsals in London. "There's this one line about a really great brothel run by Pakistanis who pimp out their kids for Mars bars." She smiles: an attractive smile, heavy on the lippy. "I'm like, 'Oh we'll cut that, won't we?' Well, no, we can't, because what about all the other things people might find offensive? Cut them all and you won't have much of a play left."/ppOther lines trouble her. Orton's gleeful description of a sexual assault, complete with tooth-breaking detail. "That specific image is just really horrible. Do you lose a portion of your audience when you leave that in? Do people stop thinking it's a great play? Or as my mum would say, 'Ooh, Orton's so kinky; yes, I love all that.' " /ppDoon plays Fay, an Irish Catholic home nurse and a prolific serial killer (87 in one week alone). She has lately buried her seventh husband and has her eighth in her crosshairs, having just dispatched his wife with a syringe of poison. Loot takes place on the day of the wife's funeral, and charts the power struggle between Fay, Hal (whose mother is being buried), Dennis, Hal's boyfriend, with whom he has robbed a bank and put the money in mum's coffin, and Detective Truscott, the sinister inspector who comes calling. /ppOrton's stage instructions put Kay in her late 20s; other than that Mackichan, 46, is a good fit. She is Celtic, by nurture at least. She grew up in Surrey but moved to Fife with her family when she was nine. She survived the transition, she says, by acting, specialising in "posh bitches". This is something she still does: she is a natural authoritarian, physically pneumatic, temperamentally tough - a few years back she swam the English channel with a team of paratroopers. /pp"Yes, I could kill someone," she says, without thinking too hard about it. "It must be so easy to just nip a needle in, or hold a pillow over an old person's face. The power and the buzz you'd get." She has been boning up on True Crime magazine to further understand her character's homicidal motivation. "But I just can't read the books. There's such an orgasm about they way they're written. 'Women who kill! Viciously!' When it comes to sex and violence, we're an island of obsessives. I mean, how does it help people to know the details of how someone was physically tortured?"/ppTen years ago, Mackichan got her fingers burned over an Anglican sketch on her Radio 4 show, Doon Your Way, but it hasn't left her any more on-message when it comes to religion. "It's been extraordinary finding out what Catholics actually believe!" she says of the research process. "All the rituals and superstition. The whole voyeurism of talking to someone behind a little screen. The idea that you can think, OK, I'll be a bitch, then on Sunday I'll say, 'Oh, I was a bit of a bitch' and then feel great!"/ppShe is not religious herself, "but I don't think I'm in an atheistic universe. I do think there's a higher power". Has she ever prayed? "Oh, I've been down on my knees many times." She pauses and then roars with laughter - it's a genuine, accidental Orton-ism. /ppIt turns out that Mackichan has had an extremely tough few years. Her father recently died. She is in the process of getting divorced from her husband, Common As Muck actor Anthony Barclay, with whom she has three children, India, 11, Louis, 10, and Ella-Rose, four. And, three years ago, Louis contracted leukaemia. Much of the past three years has been spent with him in hospital. He is now in remission, but shadows still hollow out her face. She wells up frequently, and there is something frayed behind the raucous laugh and actorly tics. "I do find authority hard to deal with now," she growls, after an assistant gives us a 10-minute warning that she needs to get back to work. "I feel a bit of an anarchist. I don't think I could work for someone who was an arsehole any more." She gulps down some fruit juice. "I can't actually have confrontations with people. It's too much. I'm a single muvva with three kids and a show to do." She laughs but she's dead serious./ppWhen things were at their worst, she says, her monopoly on heartache was hard to handle. "People would tut behind me in a supermarket queue and I'd have to go, 'Please, go ahead of me, you've obviously got somewhere to go. I'm just going back to the children's cancer ward.' I once had an actress telling me her hair was falling out because of her new kitchen and I thought, I'm not going to say anything, because this is quite interesting, because I remember how I was before it all." And how was she before it all? "Quite selfish, neurotic. Up my own arse. It's made me very tough. I do think I have endurance beyond the pale." /ppWhen Louis was well enough, Mackichan took her children with her to Africa to shoot a BBC2 series, Taking the Flak, loosely based on John Simpson's reporting from poverty-stricken, war-ravaged places. After such harrowing experiences, how she can cope with her relatively comfortable existence? "You walk into your house and you go: I'm a millionaire. I'm a princess; I live in a palace. And you think: I don't have a lot of shoes, but I do have too many shoes. You look at yourself and think: Party's over, mate. Time to be useful."/ppAnd yet she is not an aid worker in Africa. She is in north London, rehearsing a play. "I did think, I can't go back to acting. It's too vain, too ridiculous. I was going to retrain as a play specialist in Louis' cancer ward. But this is what I've done for 20 years. It's what I do." /ppShe's right. Mackichan is a natural born thesp, right down to her floaty black blouse and stripy woollen leg-warmers. Slice her in half and you would see "actor" written right through the middle of her. "I have a real mission now to be in work that will be cathartic for people. [Work] that's really honest about just how fucking hard it is to stay afloat."/ppLoot isn't exactly what she had in mind, she admits, but its no-nonsense attitude to tragedy has been cathartic. "My whole life lately has been a bit of a black comedy." She snorts. Might she consider turning it into one? "There's a lot of mileage in a children's cancer-ward comedy. All the opening curtains and waving at people being sick into bowls. You could set it in the tiny coffin-like kitchen where only the adults are allowed. You see these little bald children running past the window. It was like suddenly being in a war."/ppCould she really bear to return there, even imaginatively? "I don't know. They haunt me, those nighttime corridors. The characters, too: the carers and nurses and staff and the petty quarrels. And getting high on Quality Street till 3am. But I would like to." /ppstrongmiddot; /strongLoot is at the Tricycle, London NW6, from December 11. Box office: 020-7328 1000./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatre"Theatre/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/orton"Joe Orton/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/television"Television/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/lAQCNb9eC0BbtenHfBz0jZUDjxo/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/lAQCNb9eC0BbtenHfBz0jZUDjxo/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

POISON singer Bret Michaels' bed frame — as seen on MTV's Cribs program — is up for auction at his official web site.

December 1st is observed around the world as AIDS Day and the occasion is largely publicized. Unlike the attention World AIDS Day receives, World Disability Day barely registers on the world media’s radar.

Circle of friends by Flickr user Jimee, Jackie, Tom and Asha and used under a creative commons license

Celebrated every year on December 3rd, World Disability Day honors the contribution made to our world by those with physical and mental handicap. In case of South Asia, there is severe stigma attached any kind of physical and mental handicap. World Disability Day is an opportunity to spread awareness about the rights of the handicapped and that being differently able is not a sin or something to be ashamed of.

In India, activist Javed Abidi, the country’s leading advocate for the rights of the handicapped, will lead an event called “Dilli Chalo” or “Lets go to Delhi” to mark the occasion. It will be held at the historic India Gate.

Mr. Abidi says that India has made some progress in securing rights of the disabled but more needs to be done.

“Now, in India, as we are aware, we have had the Disability Act for the last 12 years. Last year we thought was a momentous year for two reasons. One was that our country ratified the UN Convention, and the second was that we also got the XI Plan. And in the XI Plan.....for the first time, there is a distinct chapter or a section on disability. And we thought that things were going to change. ......if we were look at the last one year, we find that things have not really moved the way we had expected them to move....”

Along with addressing legal issues related to the rights of the disabled and the opportunities they deserve, efforts are also needed to help those living in abject poverty because of their physical condition.

A news report published by the The National shows how urgently India’s poor disabled citizens need their government to take steps to insure that they are able to live in dignity.

Shaikh Azizur Rahman reported this November that an elderly father taking care of two severely disabled bed ridden daughters has asked the Indian President that they be allowed to be euthanized. He said that he is too poor to take of his daughters who need round the clock care and attention. Fatema, one of his daughters, says that she too wants her life to end.

“I told my father many times to bring poison for me. Nobody is helping me to kill myself.”

Across the border in Pakistan, there is still the mountain of odds facing citizens with disability. Writing for Dawn, Zahid Abdullah, who works for the Center for Peace and Development in Islamabad, says that country still has a long way to go before those with different ability can feel that society values them too. He also expresses frustration at slow pace of legal reform regarding the rights of the disabled.

Like in India and Pakistan, the society in Nepal too views physical and mental handicaps as a result of past life’s sins. Handicapped are usually treated as sub human; they have very limited access to education and meaningful employment. Often you can see a person with physical disability begging on the streets to sustain life.

Meen Raj Panthi says that families hide those with a disability to protect their honor and prestige:

“The notion that people with disabilities have equal rights and duty as any other individual, is largely absent from the popular mindset.”

Children are most vulnerable to discrimination. National Disabled and Helpless Upliftment Association in Nepal cites an example of a little girl named Manisha held captive by her parents because she is blind:

“While her parents work at fields, she is often locked in her own room and tethered with rope by her parents because she has no one to look after her at home. But her elder brother and sister go to school.”

Thumbnail image by Flickr user Shizhao and used under a creative commons license

International

She mustacute;ve fallen in poison ivy or something, with the way she keeps scratching her arse. Yeah, donacute;t mind the cameraman following you around. Just pretend heacute;s not there.

Nigeria is flying in an antidote to stem the deaths of babies poisoned by a teething syrup.

Nigeria is flying in an antidote to stem the deaths of babies poisoned by a teething syrup.

L’Affaire des affaires sera un des albums incontournables de janvier 2009. Et pour cause, tout ce qui parle de près ou loin l’Affaire Clearstream est décortiqué par la presse, la classe politique sans oublier les adeptes du “tous pourris”. Surtout que cette adaptation en bande dessinée de la vie du journaliste d’investigation Denis Robert est chapeautée directement par l’intéressé, aidé au scénario par Yan Lindingre.

Les éditions Dargaud viennent de mettre en ligne les 6 premières pages du premier volet qui en comptera 200, dessinées par Laurent Astier, auteur d’Aven et Cellule Poison. On y découvre un Jacques Chirac à 200 à l’heure – ça nous change – et des personnalités clefs de l’affaire Clearstream comme un Dominique de Villepin taillé au couteau ou un Nicolas Sarkozy surexcité – là, ça change pas. À en croire ces premières pages et la fameuse phrase du “croc de boucher” lancée par le ministre de l’Intérieur d’alors, le scénario risque d’être ponctué d’anecdotes, en plus d’un aspect pédagogique mis en avant par l’éditeur. Les auteurs devraient ainsi s’étendre sur les arcanes des banques offshores ou des paradis fiscaux.

Avec son côté thriller politique, L’Affaire des affaires devrait autant séduire les amateurs de polar que les passionnés de BD reportage. À moins que ce ne soit les fans de Jean-Jacques Beineix, persuadés d’y voir là une suite à la mémorable Affaire du siècle.




Les images sont © Dargaud-Robert-Lindingre-Astier.

POISON drummer Rikki Rockett married his girlfriend, singer/songwriter Melanie Martel, on October 18.

pstrong1984:/strong Poison gas leaks from a Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India. It spreads throughout the city, killing thousands of people outright and thousands more subsequently in a disaster often described as the worst industrial accident in history./p pUnion Carbide chose Bhopal, a city of 900,000 people in the state of Madhya Pradesh, because of its central location and its proximity to a lake and to the country's vast rail system./p pThe plant opened in 1969 and produced the pesticide carbaryl, which was marketed as Sevin. Ten years later the plant began manufacturing a href="http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/hlthef/methylis.html"methyl isocyanate/a, or MIC, a cheaper but more toxic substance used in the making of pesticides./p pIt was MIC gas that was released when water leaked into one of the storage tanks late on the night of Dec. 2, a href="http://www.bhopal.org/whathappened.html"setting off the disaster/a. Gas began escaping from Tank 610 around 10:30 p.m. although the main warning siren didn't go off for another two hours./p pThe first effects were felt almost immediately in the vicinity of the plant. As the gas cloud spread into Bhopal proper, residents were awakened to a blinding, vomiting, lung-searing hell. Panic ensued and hundreds of people died in the chaotic stampede that followed./p pAn exact death toll has never been established. Union Carbide, not surprisingly, set the toll on the low end at 3,800, while municipal workers claimed to have cleared at least 15,000 bodies in the immediate aftermath of the accident. Thousands have died since and an estimated 50,000 people became invalids or developed chronic respiratory conditions as a result of being poisoned./p pRegardless of the numbers, all a href="http://www.american.edu/ted/bhopal.htm"evidence pointed to Union Carbide/a and its Indian subsidiary, as well as the Indian government, its partner in the factory, being responsible, mainly through negligence, for what occurred. Despite the extreme volatility and toxicity of the chemicals in use at the factory, safeguards known to be substandard were ignored rather than fixed./p pIn the subsequent investigations and legal proceedings, it was determined, among other things, that:/p ul class="list1" lipStaffing at the plant had been cut to save money. Workers who complained about codified safety violations were reprimanded, and occasionally fired./p/li lipNo plan existed for coping with a disaster of this magnitude./li/p lipTank alarms that would have alerted personnel to the leak hadn't functioned for at least four years./li/p lipOther backup systems were either not functioning or nonexistent./li/p lipThe plant was equipped with a single back-up system, unlike the four-stage system typically found in American plants./li/p lipTank 610 held 42 tons of MIC, well above the prescribed capacity. (It is believed that 27 tons escaped in the leak.)/li/p lipWater sprays designed to dilute escaping gas were poorly installed and proved ineffective./li/p lipDamage known to exist, such as to piping and valves, had not been repaired or replaced because the cost was considered too high. Warnings from U.S. and Indian experts about other shortcomings at the plant were similarly ignored./li/p /ul pThe aftermath of the disaster was almost as chaotic. Union Carbide was a href="http://www.bhopal.com/ucs.htm"initially responsive/a, rushing aid and money to Bhopal. Nevertheless, faced with a $3 billion lawsuit, the company dug in, eventually agreeing to a $470 million settlement, a mere 15 percent of the original claim. In any case, very little money ever reached the victims of the disaster./p pa href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Anderson_(chairman)"Warren Anderson/a, Union Carbide's CEO, went before Congress in December 1984, pledging his company's renewed commitment to safety, a promise that rang hollow in India (and probably to Congress as well)./p pAnderson was subsequently charged with manslaughter by Indian prosecutors but managed to evade an international arrest warrant and disappeared. Investigators from Greenpeace, which has kept up an active interest in the case, found Anderson in 2002, alive and well and living comfortably in the Hamptons. The United States has shown no inclination to hand him over to Indian justice, and most of the serious charges against him have been dropped./p pUnion Carbide, meanwhile, was acquired by the Dow Corporation in 2001, which refused to assume any additional liability for Bhopal, arguing that the debt had already been paid through various court settlements. It did go on to settle another outstanding claim against Union Carbide, this one for $2.2 billion made by asbestos workers in Texas./p pA few outstanding legal claims from Bhopal remain to be settled, both in India and the United States, but most of the court wrangling is over./p pThe victims of the disaster, those who live on, continue dealing with various health problems — including chronic respiratory problems, vision problems and an increased incidence of cancer and birth defects — and an environment that remains contaminated to this day./p pemSource: Various/em/pbr style="clear: both;"/ a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:48cc9eb4b8a8482354ecc6b56f151739:kxhhkz4DUffnSCf8jv%2B7v44x8l4BKie%2FYRo4WeJY732GnQ4nDiD9BSvaR%2FQPx6QqXmVG%2FC4uDPtx5g%3D%3D'img border='0' title='Add to Facebook' alt='Add to Facebook' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/facebook.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:82d4523a8b02e3ad5a3995ca5fc1b80a:EqId8d3OpbVpu5JWckWNEKCSVVRnt0hq%2BaWV4fey0vi21Cfh7%2BMXf3MEEmEyIGm9e3q%2BakzFEHYE'img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:3e70225b1b8097a8e45bf4a0f1ec3f03:yaaCBCPr4Rb0oyJuBEhz5kWJYlyLLEYFk6mELMdBJdK9RvClF8CQSsBwFbqLfl%2FmsvR0IYczZDjw'img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:36a75e658ce232fbdd9cef6c864d7290:a7hJ2TLNUU1aJrJ1PeiO23adVkCz6dOjIxMmjfiP8xK%2B3QyQ%2FI6OAovRTJzMHk9aSvuehIeaQg5W'img border='0' title='Add to Google' alt='Add to Google' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/google.png'//a br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=d01f67d641f166da738dda1f9d2c8941p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=d01f67d641f166da738dda1f9d2c8941p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=d01f67d641f166da738dda1f9d2c8941" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/ pa href="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?a=8GVQjD"img src="http://feeds.wired.com/~a/wired/index?i=8GVQjD" border="0"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~4/473261698" height="1" width="1"/

I guess it takes well over half a dozen greatest hits packages to land at “The Definitive”. And while the word does not get bandied about as much as “The Essential” it certainly implies some form of completeness to it. Unfortunately this latest Rod Stewart collection falls short in a few places. Conspicuously missing are entries from his insanely popular “The Great American Songbook” series and a stray hit here and there (”All for Love” was an international number one, wasn’t it). Despite its shortcomings the 2 disc set manages to cohesively get you from rockin’ “Rod the Bod” to the blue eyed soul of his early 90’s material. It occurred to me in listening to the set that I am clearly a fan of 70’s and late 80’s/early 90’s Rod and could live without hearing “Infatuation” ever again. That aside it was like revisiting an old friend listening to hits such as “Maggie May”, “You Wear It Well” and “Tonight’s The Night (Gonna Be Alright)”. Even “Da Ya Think I m Sexy?” got cranked up in the headphones.  The deluxe version of the set includes a DVD featuring 14 videos and more spandex and hairspray than a 1986 Poison concert. Far be it from me to keep all that goodness to myself so here’s two from the set.

Rod Stewart - Da Ya Think I m Sexy? (Video)

Rod Stewart - Tonight’s The Night (Gonna Be Alright) (Video)

Buy The Definitive Rod Stewart: Amazon | iTunes

Links: Official Site | on Last.fm | on MySpace

"At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore" (Ps. 16: 11)

Growing Dominion, Part 155

He that sendeth a message by the hand of a fool Cutteth off the feet, and drinketh damage (Pr 26:6).

Other proverbs have addressed the difficulty of getting good help. This addresses the same principle, but with a twist. In this place, we are not talking about competence employers afflicted by incompetent help. Rather, we are talking about a peculiar kind of employer incompetence. The fool who is entrusted with a message certainly has his own issues, and he ought not to be that way. But this proverb places the responsibility for the problems that follow with the one who entrusted the fool with the message in the first place. He is doing something that is counterproductive. He wants something done, and yet he asks a person to do it who, in fact, will not do it. The employer, not the messenger, is therefore in the position of one who cuts off his own feet, expecting that it will help him run faster, or who thinks that drinking poison as a pick-me-up will somehow work out for the best. The fool running with the message is therefore not the only one.