Heading east this morning, destination Dallas to see family and friends. Will return on Monday, as will this site.

Last night ended The Shield, ostensibly a cop drama—and a brilliant one at that—but in reality an unflinching look at human nature’s dark side, sadly (and innately) present within us all . . . Is there any other reason we rooted over seven brutal seasons for Machiavellian cop Vic Mackey, around whom the show revolved, to escape what we nevertheless knew he deserved?

Starting with episode one, when Vic murders fellow cop Terry Crowley, a tiny bit inside us rooted for him all the way down to the bitter end, when Vic watches his last friend Ronnie Gardocki being taken into custody, victim of Vic’s final betrayal.

“You’re goddamned sorry?” Ronnie asks Vic and for a while we think, we hope, he is.

In the last scene, however, as Vic walks out of the cubicle farm purgatory in his new desk job suit, lured by the wail of nighttime police sirens, pistol in hand, we realise he isn’t . . . that he doesn’t have the capacity. He feels pain, though, and the only way Vic can alleviate that pain is to transfer it physically to someone else. And in that, Vic shows us just how terribly human he is, why we still feel something for him.

If only we could learn to dispense the same forgiveness we show fictional characters to their real-life counterparts.  

In praise of (big) books:

It bears remembering that a book, no matter how long and complicated, doesn’t require you to read it all in one go, nor does it force you to watch commercials. In this respect, other media are becoming more booklike, not the other way around. TiVo, Netflix, and iTunes enable you to consume what you want, when you want it, in or out of sequence. Take a break if you like—but only if you like.

And, yes, I’m still reading 2666; it makes for compulsive (and, at times, repulsive) reading.

As my father once said, some people are born football fans; it is for football they live and nowt else.

Liverpool’s Fernando Torres met one such fan:

“I will never forget a man crossing the street I met a short time after I got [to Liverpool]—he said to me that he worked all week just to think of the pleasure that would be waiting for him at the stadium.”

Future owners of British football clubs need to know how deep the passion runs and then ask themselves not if they can match that passion (for they can’t) but if they want the added responsibility of also owning the clubs’ heartbeat.

Where would we be without dissent? (PDF)

To focus on the chimera of human-caused greenhouse warming while ignoring the real threats posed by the natural variability of the climate system itself is self-delusion on a grand scale.

Oh, how doomsayers love to work on a grand scale.

This year, a couple dear friends—Eric Byro and Michael Landino—finally convinced me, after years of hemming and hawing on my part, to invest a few bucks and an hour in Porcupine Tree.

One listen to In Absentia made me a convert. (I now own almost their complete catalogue.)

Permit me to return the favour: Riverside, a Polish band with similar prog-rock/hard rock/metal tendencies (for lack of a better label, neo-prog). I bought their 2005 second album, Second Life Syndrome, a couple weeks ago. Yesterday, I bought their 2007 third album, Rapid Eye Movement. Won’t be long before I’m spinning their début, Out of Myself.

Hats off to the boys from Poland . . . I’m impressed, which is a lot for this forty-three-year-old ex-musician and lifetime cynic to admit, especially given the state of today’s music.

Common sense from down under?

The Carbon Sense Coalition today called on the Queensland Government to follow the lead of New Zealand and initiate a complete review of the science and the cost-benefits of the proposals to levy a new tax on coal and petrol usage.

“All over the world, three factors are triggering a revolt against the lemming-like rush led by the Anglo-Saxons to commit carbon suicide via emissions trading schemes,” said Viv Forbes, Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition.

My new year’s resolution: to expand my carbon footprint.