I can’t believe Bush’s arrogant and bombastic defiance in the face of revelations that he authorized completely illegal spying on U.S. citizens without any congressional approval process whatsoever!

What other crimes will he attempt to justify using 9/11 and the threat of future terrorist attacks? How many more outrages will the American people (not to mention the rest of the World) take? Surely he has to be impeached now!

Perhaps even more shocking is the fact that some Democratic senators, for example Nancy Pelosi, were informed (although not consulted) about the spying program, and did nothing other than express strong concerns.

Two days after getting the welcome notice, and I have the real thing — I now have a Green Card! And it’s white…

Today is a red letter day. After a wait of over 5 years, today I received an I-181 Welcome Notice from the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services – which I’m reliably informed means that my Green Card application has been approved, and I will shortly have both the elusive card and Resident Alien status!

According to some Italian scientists, romantic love is caused by an increase in the amount of a protein in the brain called nerve growth factors, and typically only lasts for about a year.

I wonder if this means that a cure is on the horizon?

Here’s a quick plug for my friend Djurdja Watson’s website, where she showcases her high fashion jewellery collections. Djurdja’s jewellery is regularly seen in magazines and at fashion shows, and various celebrities frequent her boutique shop on London’s Portobello Road.

I just revisited the website of Banksy, self-professed “art terrorist,” and it was a very entertaining 5 minute web browsing session. Check it out.

Last Friday (11/11) I went to see Bauhaus at the Nokia Theater in Times Square. Bauhaus were a band that I listened to in the mid eighties when I was a goth, and although they were never my favourite goth band, they were pretty much the archetypical goth band, so I thought that it would be fun to take a trip down memory lane.

It was actually fairly entertaining. Pete Murphy had a pretty good stage presence, although his voice wasn’t always as strong as it could have been, and although still suitably skinny and gaunt, with age he reminded me a bit of my Uncle Derek. The Nokia Theater was packed, as both nights were completely sold out.

After a suitably spooky intro, the band came out onto the dark stage and the excellent lightshow started. The sound quality was also very good. They played a bunch of old numbers, such as Hair of the Dog, Kick in the Eye, She’s in Parties, A God in an Alcove, Hollow Hills, In the Flat Field etc., some of which I hadn’t heard for twenty years. They played for about an hour, then went off stage until the crowd brought them back for the first encore. This included a version of Telegram Sam that wasn’t that great, and ended with Ziggy Stardust, after which they left the stage again.

But the house lights stayed down, and the crowd started demanding another encore, shouting “Bela! Bela! Bela!” until they came out one last time and played their biggest and best hit, Bela Lugosi’s Dead. This was a great track to end on, and I was surprised to notice/remember how much dub reggae influence was evident on the track.

Overall, it was an interesting gig.

Had to post this cute picture of me with my godson Oscar on the promenade at Brooklyn Heights last month (the Statue of Liberty is just about visible in the distance).

According to the Pakistani government, the death toll from the recent earthquake has reached 73,000 now, and looks set to increase further as winter approaches and millions of people are left without shelter. Some villages have not even received any aid yet, almost a month after the earthquake hit, because the roads no longer exist and there are not enough helicopters.

And yet, it seems to me that public awareness of this disaster, at least here in the U.S., is shrinking to approximately zero. The difference in public attitudes to this disaster and the Asian tsunami at the beginning of the year, which resulted in an outpouring of support, is quite striking.

Is this a simple case of disaster fatigue, or is Pakistan just a little too close to Afghanistan to be on Americans’ sympathy radars?

This week my friend Nan visited me from Sheffield in the UK, and we took a little road trip up to New England to see the World-famous fall foliage — an activity described on talk radio as “leaf peeping.”

We spent the first night in Brattleboro, Vermont, in the Latchis Hotel, an interesting art deco hotel and cinema that unfortunately caught fire as we were getting up the next morning, forcing us to evacuate and forage for breakfast at a nearby bagel shop (Nan still wearing her pajamas!).

We spent the second night in Bennington, Vermont, in a lovely old late Victorian B&B called the South Shire Inn. Fortunately there were no fires there.

On the way home, we stopped off at Mass MOCA in North Adams, which had several of the most interesting contemporary art exhibitions I’ve seen in years — I particularly liked Inopportune Stage One by Cai Guo-Qiang, a series of nine white Ford Crown Victoria cars suspended tumbling at various angles from the ceiling of a 300′ long gallery with flashing illuminated rods emanating from them. The Becoming Animal exhibition was also good, although some of the pieces featured live animals (rats and birds) and were quite disturbing.

High points of the trip were playing pool with the locals in Brattleboro, driving down windy country roads in the Fall foliage, and Mass MOCA. The low point was definitely the weather — the tail end of Hurricane Wilma conspired with another weather system in the Atlantic to dump heavy rain for almost the entire duration of the trip. But we still had lots of fun!