A full month since the great exercise of our democracy and still I have not adequately responded. Mumbai, the sparkling jewel of India, has been struck by a startlingly ruthless and effective terror assault, yet I have said nothing. The shuttle Endeavour challenged the heavens and returned her crew safely to Earth, with an fortnight spent in the merciless vacuum of space, but you'd never know it from all I wrote, curse my bones. Please know that I wish to comment, to opine, perhaps even to pontificate, fully and at length, but 'tis no exaggeration to say the demands on my time are presently more severe than they have been in years, and I have yet to develop a successful coping strategy. The problem was compounded in the last week by the disruptive influence and lingering bitterness of the holiday weekend. But again I rededicate myself to gifting you with The Secret Base you deserve, and extend my sincerest thanks for your treasured readership.

Bear ever in mind the following as both promise and threat: as long as I draw breath, my friends, you will never be rid of me.

This episode of "The Explorers Club" is dedicated to The Guy, with jeers and hisses.

The Explorers Club
No. CV - Vasco da Gama (1460-1524), who at long last fulfilled Henry the Navigator's ambition to reach India by sea and thus thwart the Venetian trade monopoly.






When I was a lad, a social studies project introduced me to Vasco da Gama, and I became a life-long admirer of Portugal's methodical approach to exploration as opposed to far-famed, blundering exploits of the Spanish. (That said, I still revere, though I know it to be out of fashion and politically incorrect, the Italian-born Admiral of the Seas as a giant of Western Civilization.) Between my old appreciation for da Gama; a pair of Portuguese references during the final rounds of "Who Used To Own It?" - The Guy claimed never to have known of the voyages of the man of the hour, Vasco da Gama, while Skeeter was puzzled over Taiwan's alternate and poetic Portuguese name of Formosa and yet having never been a Portuguese possession - ; an obsession with the beauteous flag of Ceuta (below), which is based on the flag of Lisbon; the enchantingly exotic and seemingly fanciful Empire of Brazil, about which I know almost nothing; and the surprising longevity of the Portuguese Empire, ending only in the last half century with the return of Goa to India and Macau to China, I find myself in the midst of a jones to cure my general ignorance of Portugal's history, both internally and globally. Were I you, I'd anticipate in the not too distant future an "Explorers Club" series about Portuguese exploration, innovation, colonization, and conquest.





Gyronny!

Project TROIKA
"No one who speaks German could be an evil man." Dezember ist die Zeit für Panik!

Grow or die. (I don't want to die!)

The Rebel Black Dot Songs of the Day
Johnny Cash, "Personal Jesus" from American IV: The Man Comes Around (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: This past summer's "Duffmania," a bizarre and inexplicable infatuation with the actress/singer Hilary Duff, is long since past, but today indifference was molded into passionate hatred. A musical atrocity has been perpetrated with Miss Duff's new single, "Reach Out," which pillages and defiles samples from Depeche Mode's immortal "Personal Jesus." Instead of "Reach out and touch faith," the lyrics have been bastardized as "Reach out and touch me." Not for all the tea in China, you chord-rustling trollop. This usurpation I cannot abide.

Smug beggar that I am, I enjoy no other sensation in quite the same way as indignation.

Dienstag, 2 Dezember
The Ataris, "The Radio Still Sucks" from Short Music for Short People (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: Two years hence, when I was a blue-collar hero at Delphi, a dues-paying member of the U.A.W., the only F.M. station that came in clearly was 105.5, the local "top forty" (I have no idea if that's even a valid phrase anymore) station. And yet, as contemptible as I found then-current popular music to be, it was preferable to laboring in silence (save for the sound of the machines, of course). 'Twas the first time in years that I'd heard more than fleeting snatches of the music then at the top of the charts. It was horrifying. Nevertheless, perhaps out of some morbid curiosity, since that time I have periodically checked in with top forty radio to discover what dreck the kids are putting on their iPods. I had heard the name Taylor Swift, but until yesterday I'd never heard, at least not to my knowledge, any of her music. Music, sadly, is a charitable description of what I heard. Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, the girl simply cannot sing! Not in the slightest! I've heard some incredibly lame "singing" over the years, but this set a new standard for sheer lack of ability. Wow! (And not the good kind of "wow.")

The entirety of the lyrics to "The Radio Still Sucks," which, true to form for Short Music for Short People, clocks in at twenty-eight seconds:

"I'm really fucking sick
Of Beck and 311,
And Marilyn Manson.
I wish someone would break his fucking neck.

And what about Bush?
And lame-ass Oasis?
And talk about pretentious,
Why don't they just blow England off the map?

Every now and then
I turn it on again,
But it's plain to see that
The radio still sucks!

Every now and then
I turn it again,
But it's plain to see that
The radio still sucks!"

The bands may have changed, but the radio still sucks.