COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

When I Paint My Masterpiece


When I Paint My Masterpiece
Bob Dylan

Oh, the streets of rome are filled with rubble,
Ancient footprints are everywhere.
You can almost think that you're seein' double
On a cold, dark night on the spanish stairs.
Got to hurry on back to my hotel room,
Where I've got me a date with a pretty little girl from greece.
She promised that she'd be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece.

Oh, the hours I've spent inside the coliseum,
Dodging lions and wastin' time.
Oh, those mighty kings of the jungle, I could hardly stand to see 'em,
Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb.
Train wheels runnin' through the back of my memory,
When I ran on the hilltop following a pack of wild geese.

 Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody
When I paint my masterpiece.

Sailin' 'round the world in a dirty gondola.
Oh, to be back in the land of coca-cola!

I left rome and landed in brussels,
On a plane ride so bumpy that I almost cried.
Clergymen in uniform and young girls pullin' muscles,
Everyone was there to greet me when I stepped inside.
Newspapermen eating candy
Had to be held down by big police.
Someday, everything is gonna be diff'rent
When I paint my masterpiece.

21 comments:

  1. You can almost think that you're seein' double on a cold, dark night on the Spanish stairs

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  2. I think The Band's final concert tour is rated as the #1 music/concert dvd you can buy.

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  3. Ziggy Stardust might be #2, as I recall.

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  4. It also deleted the word “classified” from a description of the kinds of material it accepts. And it dropped an assertion that “Submitting confidential material to WikiLeaks is safe, easy and protected by law,” now saying instead: “Submitting documents to our journalists is protected by law in better democracies.”

    WikiLeaks is also taking steps to position itself more squarely as a news organization, which would it easier to invoke the First Amendment as a shield. Where its old submissions page made few references to journalism, it now uses “journalist” and forms of the word “news” 23 times.

    Another new sentence portrays its primary work as filtering and analyzing documents, not just posting them raw. It says its “journalists write news stories based on the material, and then provide a link to the supporting documentation to prove our stories are true.”


    Conspiracy by WikiLeaks

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  5. "I told him how people all over the world, in all sorts of countries, were standing up with placards and screaming out for his freedom and justice and he was very heartened by that," she said. "As a mother, I’m asking the world to stand up for my brave son."

    There was some confusion last night about who was contributing the bail money - £200,000, with another two lots of £20,000.

    ...

    Mr Assange is accused of having unprotected sex with a woman, identified only as Miss A, when she insisted he use a condom. He is also accused of having unprotected sex with another woman, Miss W, while she was asleep.


    Back to Prison

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  6. I think the first half of being human is the ability to say --

    "I'm sorry, I was wrong"


    And the other half is the ability to say --

    "I accept that, you are forgiven."

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  9. U.S. Tries to Build Case for Conspiracy by WikiLeaks

    Justice Department officials are trying to find out whether Mr. Assange encouraged or even helped the analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, to extract classified military and State Department files from a government computer system. If he did so, they believe they could charge him as a conspirator in the leak, not just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them...

    Since WikiLeaks began making public large caches of classified United States government documents this year, Justice Department officials have been struggling to come up with a way to charge Mr. Assange with a crime. Among other things, they have studied several statutes that criminalize the dissemination of restricted information under certain circumstances, including the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986...

    But while prosecutors have used such laws to go after leakers and hackers, they have never successfully prosecuted recipients of leaked information for passing it on to others — an activity that can fall under the First Amendment’s strong protections of speech and press freedoms.
    By bringing a case against Mr. Assange as a conspirator to Private Manning’s leak, the government would not have to confront awkward questions about why it is not also prosecuting traditional news organizations or investigative journalists who also disclose information the government says should be kept secret — including The Times, which also published some documents originally obtained by WikiLeaks...


    What Can We Charge This Guy With?

    .

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  10. I can't reconstruct the 'masturbatory malice' sentence from memory, allen. I know it pertained to methods of persuasion.

    And I do remember that your response was, "No, Trish. There's no one here to be persuaded."

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  11. Quirk asked if I didn't mind if he used it at another time, on another website.

    "Without attribution, of course."



    Said I'd get full credit in the Bosco Awards.

    Which like horoscopes I avoid.

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  15. .

    I think the first half of being human is the ability to say --

    "I'm sorry, I was wrong"


    And the other half is the ability to say --

    "I accept that, you are forgiven."


    .......


    An observation.

    After a while, people get tired of saying "You are forgiven."


    A purely rhetorical question.

    At what point does forgiving turn into enabling?

    .

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  16. Il semble que vous soyez un expert dans ce domaine, vos remarques sont tres interessantes, merci.

    - Daniel

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