ALT.RANT.OWENF

1:19pm:

10:30pm: Owen F
...now officially kickbanned from LJ-Political_Macro

2:59pm: More wedding photos.
http://gallery.me.com/mrpommer#100052&bgcolor=black&view=grid

2:46pm: Copy'd from political_macro: Since it's been suggested that I set myself on fire...

11:29am: FROM THE DESK OF THE MICROSOFT
COORDINATOR {MICROSOFT GLOBAL E-MAIL LOTTERY}
INTERNATIONAL PRIZE AWARD DEPARTMENT

LONDON,NW10,ENGLAND,UNITED KINGDOM

FILE REF:HL/8121/31/11/MICS

BATCH: MC44/707/3PDH /EU




OFFICIAL WINNING NOTIFICATION:

Dear Internet User,

It is obvious that this notification will come to you as a surprise but please find time to read it carefully as we congratulate you over your success in the following official publication of results of the E-mail electronic online Sweepstakes organized by Microsoft, in conjunction with the foundation for the promotion of software products, (F.P.S.) held on the 11th of July 2009, in United kingdom.

Wherein your electronic email address emerged as one of the online

winning emails in the 1st category and therefore attracted a cash award of GBP£2,000,000.00 (Two Million Great British Pounds Only) which your file falls in our South African Claim office in Johannesburg

Our winners are arranged into four categories with different winning prizes accordingly in each category. They are arranged in this format below:

CATEGORY NO.OF WINNERS WINNING PRIZES

1st. 2 GBP£2,000,000.00 each

2nd. 8 GBP£800,000.00 each

3rd. 13 GBP£470,000.00 each

4th. 27 GBP£170,000.00 each

We write to officially notify you of this award and to advise you to contact the processing office immediately upon receipt of this message for more information concerning the verification, processing and eventual payment of the above prize to you.

It is important to note that your award information was released with the following particulars attached to it.

(1) Award numbers: NL 62/7811
(2) Email ticket numbers: NL901/33/65
(3) Batch numbers: MC44/707/3PDH /EU
(4) The file reference numbers: HL/8121/31/11/MICS

{5} Serial Numbers:McST/030/NL0981

For verification purpose be sure to include:

(1) Your mailing address.
(2) Your Tel/Fax numbers.

(3) Your Nationality/Country.

{4}Your Full Names

To file for your claim, Please contact your Validating Officer for VALIDATION of your winning within Twenty-nine working days of this winning notification. Winnings that are not validated within Twenty-nine working days of winning notification are termed void and invalid. You are required to mention the above particulars
of your award in every correspondence to enable the Agent in South Africa validate your winning
CONTACT:

*******************************************************

NAME MR. Richard Rich

TEL:+27780531122

FAX:+27865377269

E-Mail:richardrich@gala.net

*******************************************************
The Microsoft Internet E-mail lottery Awards is sponsored by our
CEO/Chairman, Bill Gates: and a consortium of software promotion companies. The Intel Group, Toshiba, Dell Computers and other International Companies. The Microsoft internet E-mail draw is held periodically and is organized to encourage the use of the Internet and promote computer literacy worldwide.

Once again on behalf of all our staff,

CONGRATULATIONS!

Yours faithfully,

Dr.Greg Taylor.
MICROSOFT E-MAIL LOTTERY PROMOTION COORDINATOR.

4:41pm: Further to my last post.
So I tried to cash out the bank draft I was given by our old landlord, only to have TD inform me that they don't trust TD money orders to clear.

4:55pm:

10:24am: 2009-10: owenf "possibly down by the river" tour. Pre-booking announcement.
Come August my contract is up and my lovely wife and I will be on tour promoting my book, driving west across Canada and then south on the west coast, living in our van, possibly down by the river. We are looking for people to hang out with and possibly mooch shelter from in Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Regina, Calgary, Edmonton, Kamloops, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles and all points in between. Doubleextragood if you know some local bookstores I can send reading requests and promo packages to.

See you then, possibly down by the river.

11:58am: Our Wedding Soundtrack
Our wedding soundtrack is now available as an .mp3 torrent for your downloading pleasure:

http://www.mininova.org/tor/2672691

10:53am: Auschwitz survivor: "I can identify with Palestinian youth"
Adri Nieuwhof, The Electronic Intifada, 2 June 2009

Hajo Meyer (Christiane Tilanus)

Hajo Meyer, author of the book The End of Judaism, was born in Bielefeld, in Germany, in 1924. In 1939, he fled on his own at age 14 to the Netherlands to escape the Nazi regime, and was unable to attend school. A year later, when the Germans occupied the Netherlands he lived in hiding with a poorly forged ID. Meyer was captured by the Gestapo in March 1944 and deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp a week later. He is one of the last survivors of Auschwitz.

Adri Nieuwhof:What would you like to say to introduce yourself to EI's readers?

Hajo Meyer: I had to quit grammar school in Bielefeld after the Kristallnacht [the two-day pogrom against Jews in Nazi Germany], in November 1938. It was a terrible experience for an inquisitive boy and his parents. Therefore, I can fully identify with the Palestinian youth that are hampered in their education. And I can in no way identify with the criminals who make it impossible for Palestinian youth to be educated.

AN: What motivated you to write your book, The End of Judaism?

HM: In the past, the European media have written extensively about extreme right-wing politicians like Joerg Haider in Austria and Jean-Marie Le Pen in France. But when Ariel Sharon was elected [prime minister] in Israel in 2001, the media remained silent. But in the 1980s I understood the deeply fascist thinking of these politicians. With the book I wanted to distance myself from this. I was raised in Judaism with the equality of relationships among human beings as a core value. I only learned about nationalist Judaism when I heard settlers defend their harassment of Palestinians in interviews. When a publisher asked me to write about my past, I decided to write this book, in a way, to deal with my past. People of one group who dehumanize people who belong to another group can do this, because they either have learned to do so from their parents, or they have been brainwashed by their political leaders. This has happened for decades in Israel in that they manipulate the Holocaust for their political aims. In the long-run the country is destructing itself this way by inducing their Jewish citizens to become paranoid. In 2005 [then Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon illustrated this by saying in the Knesset [the Israeli parliament], we know we cannot trust anyone, we only can trust ourselves. This is the shortest possible definition of somebody who suffers from clinical paranoia. One of the major annoyances in my life is that Israel by means of trickery calls itself a Jewish state, while in fact it is Zionist. It wants the maximum territory with a minimum number of Palestinians. I have four Jewish grandparents. I am an atheist. I share the Jewish socio-cultural inheritance and I have learned about Jewish ethics. I don't wish to be represented by a Zionist state. They have no idea about the Holocaust. They use the Holocaust to implant paranoia in their children.

AN: In your book you write about the lessons you have learned from your past. Can you explain how your past influenced your perception of Israel and Palestine?

HM: I have never been a Zionist. After the war, Zionist Jews spoke about the miracle of having "our own country." As a confirmed atheist I thought, if this is a miracle by God, I wished that he had performed the smallest miracle imaginable by creating the state 15 years earlier. Then my parents would not have been dead.

I can write up an endless list of similarities between Nazi Germany and Israel. The capturing of land and property, denying people access to educational opportunities and restricting access to earn a living to destroy their hope, all with the aim to chase people away from their land. And what I personally find more appalling then dirtying one's hands by killing people, is creating circumstances where people start to kill each other. Then the distinction between victims and perpetrators becomes faint. By sowing discord in a situation where there is no unity, by enlarging the gap between people -- like Israel is doing in Gaza.

AN: In your book you write about the role of Jews in the peace movement in and outside Israel, and Israeli army refuseniks. How do you value their contribution?

HM: Of course it is positive that parts of the Jewish population of Israel try to see Palestinians as human beings and as their equals. However, it disturbs me how paper-thin the number is that protests and is truly anti-Zionist. We get worked up by what happened in Hitler's Germany. If you expressed only the slightest hint of criticism at that time, you ended up in the Dachau concentration camp. If you expressed criticism, you were dead. Jews in Israel have democratic rights. They can protest in the streets, but they don't.

AN: Can you comment on the news that Israeli ministers approved a draft law banning commemoration of the Nakba, or the dispossession of historic Palestine? The law proposes punishment of up to three years in prison.

HM: It is so racist, so dreadful. I am at a loss for words. It is an expression of what we already know. [The Israeli Nakba commemoration organization] Zochrot was founded to counteract Israeli efforts to wipe out the marks that are a reminder of Palestinian life. To forbid Palestinians to publicly commemorate the Nakba. ... they cannot act in a more Nazi-like, fascist way. Maybe it will help to awaken the world.

AN: What are your plans for the future?

HM: [Laughs] Do you know how old I am? I am almost 85 years old. I always say cynically and with self-mockery that I have a choice: either I am always tired because I want to do so much, or I am going to sit still waiting for the time to go by. Well, I plan to be tired, because I have still so much to say.

Adri Nieuwhof is consultant and human rights advocate based in Switzerland.

11:33am:

11:14am:

4:41pm:

12:14pm: Starting to sell my library
So, as we're moving to smaller environs, I'm having to sell parts of my library. I'm going to list stuff here first, for my friends, and, if nobody wants it, I'll list it on the ebay.

First up is my antique gynaecology library, pictured here:




Included in the library are:

Surgery of the Ambulatory Patient, by L. Kraeer Ferguson, 645 Illustrations. 1st edition/date unknown (see pictures 1950s?)

The VD handbook, published by The Handbook Collective, Montreal, 1972

The Birth Control Handbook, 2nd Edition, 2nd Impresasion, The Students' Society of McGill University 1969

The Birth Control Handbook, Revised Edition, 3rd Impression, The Students' Society of McGill University 1970

Physiology and Anatomy, Esther M. Greisheimer, 6th Edition, with 478 illustrations including 52 in colour.J.B. Lippencott & Company. Includes many (compleete) fold-out pages and diagrams. 1950s?

Gynecology for Nurses, by George Gellhorn, 1st edition, with 145 Illustrations, W.B. Saunders & Co. 1930

Public School Physiology and Temperance, by William Nattress, authorized by the education department (ontario) 3rd edition, ~1920?

Uterine Haemorrahage, by Samuel Cameron and John Hewitt, Macmillan Company, ~1915?

The Canadian Mother and Child, by Ernest Couture,director of the child and maternal hygiene division ~1925?

Gynecological Diagnosis and Pathology, by A.H.F. Barbour and B.P. Watson, 2nd edition, with eight colour plates and 202 figures, William Green and Sons, 1914.

Operative Gynecology, By Howard A Kelly, with 11 plates and 703 illustrations, 2nd edition, Appleton and Company, 1906

A pocket Gynecology, S.G. Clayton, 2nd edition, heavily marked up (see photos)

Pathology of Labour the Puerperium and the Newborn, McCormick, date/edition unknown.


I'm looking for $350 US or $400 Canadian for this lot, which includes shipping to wherever you happen to be. That works out to about $30/book. Make me a counter offer if you think that's excessive.

More detailed photos are here if you want to check them out (large images!)
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10:56am: Knives update.
Well, time for an updated picture of the knives I'm using. I tried to lay out this one as more of a still life.

11:26am: Honeymoon shopping...


Best $80 I ever spent...

From left to right:
1.5 lb Morbier, 2 lb Blue Shropshire, 1.5 lb Cambozola, 1 lb Manchango, 2 lb Leidse kaas, 1 lb 7-year-old Cheddar with Caramelized Onions, 1.5 lb Paprika Friulano.

11:21am: from lj_user=Yokes


(click for photos)

11:26pm:

11:36am: These are the daves I know I know...

10:51am: Wedding Blog.
I wanted to invite all you wonderful LJ peoples, but the hall only holds 100 and most of you are in other lands. Here is the wedding blog, tho, for those who are interested:

www.glitt3rbomb.com

3:41pm: I am now on twitter as Owen_Ferguson - I am not going to follow anybody else's twits, just so you know.

4:35pm:

9:59pm: that only song titles thing.
Monkees FTW:

# Are you a male or female: Daddy's Song
# Describe yourself: I'm A Believer (Mono)
# How do you feel about yourself: What Am I Doing Hangin' 'Round?
# Describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriend:Sweet Young Thing (Stereo)
# Describe your current boy/girl situation: (Theme From) The Monkees (Stereo)
# Describe your current location: Kellogg's Jingle (Bonus Track)
# Describe where you want to be: Porpoise Song (Theme from Head)
# Your best friend is: Peter Percival Patterson's Pet Pig Porky
# Your favorite color is: Nine Times Blue
# You know that: That Was Then, This Is Now
# What's the weather like: Shades Of Gray
# If your life was a television show what would it be called: Can You Dig It
# What is life to you: Do I Have To Do This All Over Again
# What is the best advice you have to give: Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You, A
# If you could change your name what would it be: Swami

11:59am:

12:20pm: Yahoo?
So what's up with Yahoo? I haven't used them since like 2000, as google is much better for mindless browsing, but today I had to find a list of different vendors of online ticketing software so naturally I went to Yahoo, which is supposed to be a categorical indexing of major sites by topic. Instead, I get this quasi-google string based search that doesn't help any more than google did.

Hey Yahoo: quite dickeing around with free email and news and groups and other nonsense not in your purvue, and get back to your core competency if you ever want me to navigate your way again.