Flatley ah… that would be the 80,000 dollar flute - you mean the pakistani flute I sprayed with glitter and sold to him. Well I’ve spent the money so it’s too late. Besides I suspect some members of this board might be pretty high up in the flute ownership stakes - mentioning no names of course!
I think playing would have to be a major part of it so party political broadcasts would be musical in nature ( Which would be relief to everybody) Anything would be better than Holy Tony pretending to play that bloody guitar of his.
I need to add something offensive but can’t think of anything right now and the other bit is just daft and not properly political… oh well never mind.
Your self portrait I see on the left is quite offensive enough, thank you.
I’m guessing that that isn’t an actual self-portrait. You see, Treeshark is a graphic designer, and items from his his work that are pictured on his website are very interesting. I wish I had that talent in art. My art teacher in grade school said that I had better stick with music, where, at least, I could carry a tune.
Is that his portrait? Well, at least he’s happy.
5500 posts to C & F,
And no avatar,
I’m curious.
At least I know,
Glauber is a dog,
And Treeshark,
Is a friendly fish.
Who are you, Jim?
A computer idiot!
I guessed that as well, Mr Tipple, having just spent an hour talking to Treeshark on other matters.
Perhaps his avatar is something akin to an alcohohics anonymous confession ?
Not a self portrait alas, the reality is far worse.
To this you have to add 20 years of decline, a haircut and a beard!
Oh and very often a flute.
Except when I drink and turn into a jolly fish…
Thanks. Actually a pretty nice portrait.
Thanks Jim! It is a strange act painting ones own portrait, not altogether comfortable. It’s hard to view yourself dispassionately, or indeed if that’s the right approach as the person before you is one you are inevitably close to. It’s the same in some ways as recording yourself playing, it can differ from expectation.
Yes, I notice that I mentally re-arrange my image in the mirror,
so that I look rather like Paul Newman, slightly
frayed around the edges, but the handsome
young devil smiling through.
Then occasionally I see myself in a mirror
where I don’t know it’s a mirror, don’t know
it’s me, and I
think, What an obese geezer!
Very nice portrait you did. Well done.
Here are a few Jim Stones, according to Google:
(click on this one for full size)
Take your pick! 
No Glauber here he is:
Security cameras are the ones that get me, ‘who’s that fat bloke on that TV?’ I think before realising the awful truth.
What we really see in daily life is a sort of montage of what we expect and or hope to see. If we really saw and evaluated everything afresh that came before us in a day we just would not be able to cope.
Robert Burns wrote:
"Of all the gifts that God could gee us,
To see ourselves as others see us.’
Thanks anyway, I’d prefer a kazoo.
I should have known. Once I saw Jim with the baseball uniform and standing way out in right field, I recognized him immediately. Just kidding, Jim.
Ditto that glimpses of the stange looking guy in the bank security camera can be a little distressing. For years I worked on the other side of the counter, and all that the camera’s got was the back of my bald head.
I just finished listening to Mahler’s 2nd Symphony and Bruckner’s No.4. My chops are tired just listening to all of that brass, but the music is so moving. It almost makes me want to take up the trombone. My mother played in a marching band in the 1930’s. I think I have her horn around here somewhere.
I have always observed that the Americans I have seen travelling have had the gift of NOT seeing themselves as others see them ! It gives confidence, and a better night’s sleep.
I keep reading how the US media are misrepresenting , sanitising,and largely ignoring what has been done in Falluja.
For a more detailed analysis (maybe equally slanted ? ) see Counterpunch article :-
Mike Whitney
The US Media and Fallujah: How to Market a Siege.
in yesterday’s edition online.
Compulsive reading as always !
Could one of you influential people get your heroic and valliant President to sign something along the following lines please? ( around 100,000 copies ! ).
To the surviving family and friends of ( enter name of innocent Iraqi civilian man woman or child or unprotected policeman, or US serviceman or reservist shot,shelled, blown up,poisoned or bombed in Iraq in the past year or so ).
I have killed your Son/daughter/ child/ parent
a ) Because I COULD .
b ) Because my God is bigger tham your God, and my Crusade counts more than other peoples’ Jihad. If you were an Iraqi Christian you were the wrong sort.Our Christians think that mass murder of innocent foreigners is is their own interests, and to be worth voting for.Even when my war is quite illegal. What are you going to do about it , World ? Ha Ha.
c ) Because I hear the voice of God in my ear telling me to go out and commit mass murder, or was it the voices of those nice neoconmen ? or was it the voice of my controller I hear in my ear when I have the receiver unit on my back ? )
d) Because the neoconmen seem to work for the interests of the Israelis, and they seem to find genocide in Iraq handy.I like Israelis. I don’t like Palastinians and Iraqis.They are a nuisance.
e ) Because the war is convenient in boosting by billions the profits of the contributors to my election fund, and those nice friends of the vice-President, Halliburton, was it ? (even if they are incompetent and thieves ).
e ) Because you have more oil than we have,and it isn’t fair, and I want it !
f ) Because my daddy had a war and I wanted to have one as well to try and make me a real President, and that is what real Presidents do in my comics.
g ) Because the taxes were not high enough and I wanted an excuse to raise them by hundreds of billions of dollars.
h) Because that nice My Blair seemed to want a war - but I can never quite understand what he is waffling about.
i) Lots of reasons my superiors and controllers have not told me yet.
PS If you were an Iraqi child maimed or killed by one of my nice yellow delayed action cluster bombs it was your own fault for being out in your neighbourhood or playground instead of at home waiting to be poisoned, shelled or bombed. If you were one of the young boys of " gun bearing age "forced back into Falluja when you were trying to escape the bombings with your Mother, well, bad luck. I have no excuse, but I just didn’t like you, so there !
Goodbye Iraqis. Our family have vapourised 2000 tons of uranium over Iraq so you are all going to die early !!! Ha Ha
I am the President, and I approve this mass murder , ( and others).
Sucks to Glauber. He can’t vote, like all these billions around the world who hate what is being done.
I am the great Bush. Look on my works and despair !!!
Andrew ( I have to sign on as Andrewk because the silly system says Andrew is in use ! ).
Apologies to Jim, who seems to go along with all this. But I suspect I am quite misunderstanding his ideas/motives ).
As Bush said… "Nope, no weapons of mass destruction under this desk…: