Home, home on the web…
Recession is biting in the US with pawn shops around the country reporting a ‘dental gold rush’ according to this story in The Times:
“People are really cashing in. If a dentist passes away, their kids come in with a big pile of gold teeth,” said Scott Taber, owner of Taber Coins
Another great find on Flickr - Denise’s short set of photos taken only 10 days ago on the Park Springs Ranch, Anton Chico, New Mexico.
My favourite picture is ‘Heading out across the Chaperito Trap‘ - certainly beats the London commute any day of the week.
I’m feeling tired today so I’m in the mood for some Johnny Cash to smooth the day away and what better song to listen to than one of the great man’s final recordings on the American IV: The Man Comes Around album, his cover of the Nine Inch Nails song ‘Hurt’.
The song won the Country Music Award for Single of the Year in 2003 and was voted Country Music Television’s top video for 2003.
If you haven’t seen the video before I’ve embedded a YouTube clip below - it’s a truly superb short movie about Cash’s life condensed into 4 minutes directed by Mark Romanek:
If, like me, you’re trying to learn the guitar I’d recommend ‘Easy Songs for Beginners # 24‘ on the Guitar Noise website which has chord progressions for the Hurt song and - if you have the voice - sing along with the lyrics below. Enjoy!
I hurt myself today
to see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
the only thing that’s real
the needle tears a hole
the old familiar sting
try to kill it all away
but I remember everything
what have I become?
my sweetest friend
everyone I know
goes away in the end
and you could have it all
my empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
I wear this crown of thorns
upon my liar’s chair
full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
beneath the stains of time
the feelings disappear
you are someone else
I am still right here
what have I become?
my sweetest friend
everyone I know
goes away in the end
and you could have it all
my empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you hurt
if I could start again
a million miles away
I would keep myself
I would find a way
Cameron Wilson gives Middle East bound travellers an insight into the heritage and top tourist destinations in Wyoming for this story on the EmiratesBusiness24|7 website:
My visit to Wyoming began in pursuit of a cattle rustler named Robert LeRoy Parker and his sidekick, Harry Longabaugh. A little more than a century ago, the pair achieved fame for carrying out a string of robberies of banks, trains and mine payrolls… Men such as these are not well-suited to prosaic names like Robert and Harry, so it was as Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid that the pair rode across the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming for a decade, beginning in 1889
Wilson’s journey takes in the Occidental Hotel in Buffalo, the five museums that make up the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming and then he moves on to nearby Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.
The story ends with Wilson ruminating on the possibility that “our roguish heroes may not have died in Bolivia at all”, with Butch dying as an old man in the 1940s! A great read for a quiet Sunday.
Christmas is coming, it’s getting colder (well oddly not today) and milions of people this year in the UK are going to struggle to pay their heating bills.
Energy costs are soaring as fossil fuel stocks are depleted - peak oil is coming - and many would say there are companies out there looking to profit. Well that’s the opinion of Richard Bacon, the Tory MP for South Norfolk, quoted in the Telegraph:
Britain’s energy market is now a “wild west town in need of a sheriff” because the regulator, Ofgem, has failed to keep down gas and electricity bills, say MPs.
We don’t have the option of drilling for oil - not that I’m aware of anyway - but no wonder Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin was so popular with Republicans keen to exploit the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Will there be blood?
…to go meet Al ‘Sundance’ Gore?
The BBC reports on the “not-so-secret code names used by the US Secret Service” and reveals some corkers from the last 3 decades.
Remember Ronald Reagan in Cattle Queen of Montana? No me neither:
Well that western movie icon must have been pretty pleased with his ‘Rawhide’ codeword, whispered down many a sleeve by a buzz cut wearing bodyguard or 6.
Al Gore though as Sundance? I don’t see the likeness with the Sundance Kid. And as for poor Al’s daughter Karenna Gore - AKA Smurfette - well what can you say.
