Saturday, April 10, 2004

from this show of photographs of children an untitled Sander portrait
& a Rodchenko, among many others.

(thanks gmtPlus9)
via the mighty Plep this splendid Victorian Anthology
Brit indy band drummer on why hip-hop is bad lost me forever with "But perhaps the wittiest of the hip hop haters is black jazz critic Stanley Crouch... "

Friday, April 09, 2004

Drum Machine Dictionary refulgent 303!
Canuck mercenaries: "So, in order to stem the loss of these highly trained soldiers, the military is taking action. It's considering raising pay beyond the current annual salary of $60,000, plus $1,200 a month in danger allowance.
'We recognize that private security firms have highly attractive packages for highly skilled members, like JTF 2,' said Navy Lt. Kent Penney of the Department of National Defence.
'But beyond money issue, we're also looking at the other factors.'
Those other factors include job security, and appealing to the soldiers' sense of patriotism, reminding them that the satisfaction that comes from serving one's country is something that private security firms simply will never offer."
From Psalms to Seuss - what poetry can do for you: "Part of reclaiming poetry, though, is recognizing poets. We don't have celebrity poets in the United States as some other countries do. In Canada, poet Anne Carson is on magazine covers, with inside articles about what she wears and where she goes. "

Thursday, April 08, 2004

Dictionary of Condi "Historical: Communications that mentioned the past and were therefore irrelevant to the future.

Example: The Aug. 6 PDB [president's daily briefing] ...was not a particular threat report. And there was historical information in there about various aspects of al-Qaida's operations. ... This was not a warning. This was a historic memo."
Soldiers Choose Canada by Alisa Solomon: "Hughey did watch New York shut down Toronto in a fourth-quarter comeback that night--but on TV from St. Catharines, Ontario, where a Quaker couple has taken him in. He is the second American soldier who opposes the war to have applied for refugee status in Canada. As the occupation in Iraq drags on, morale among soldiers plummets, and talk of a post-election draft heats up, their cases will determine whether Canada will once again welcome young Americans resisting a questionable war. "
Eat your allsorts: Carbenoxolone could aid verbal memory.: "It may, for example, help people to remember random words or recall what they did at the weekend."
The Neal Pollack Invasion:

"A summary of her testimony follows:

Lie, lie, distortion, half-truth, pander, manipulation, pseudo-intellectual bombast. Dodge, dodge, feint, lie, dodge, avoid, subject change, lie, slander, pretentious generalization, character assassination, bald-faced lie.

Oversimplification, undersimplification, condescension, insult, insult, lie, avoidance of responsibility, avoidance of question about avoiding responsibility, cheap political point, utter, malicious lie.

Grimace, slither, dodge, lie, deliberate misinterpretation of history, nonpartisan character disparagement, narrative designed by public-relations experts to create maximum "connection" with American public. Appearance of professionalism, resoluteness, capableness, preparedness. Major omission of lie to create partial truth. Lie for political convenience. Lie for partisan gain. Lie to protect the economic interests of an incredibly small number of people. Reception of flattery. Dispersal of flattery. Abuse of good will afforbed by ten people who are trying to gather evidence without partisan bias. Backhanded dismissal of all criticsism. Denial of any responsibility in orchestrating what will almost certainly become the most tragic and bloody war of this generation.

Rinse and repeat. "
Blowin' in the wind fine Dylan review by Charles Taylor
Session greatTommy Tedesco: "We walked into his kitchen at one point; a radio was playing "A Taste of Honey" by the Tijuana Brass. "That's a record I was on," he said nonchalantly. The odds were good he could have said the same thing had we walked in five or 15 minutes later. Tedesco also played on "Good Vibrations," "Strangers in the Night," "Da Doo Ron Ron," Lumpy Gravy" and "MacArthur Park," and on the soundtracks of The Godfather, MASH and Bonnie and Clyde, among uncountable other tracks, songs, dates, jingles and sides--more than he could, or would want to, remember"
Claim vs. Fact: Rice's Q&A Testimony Before the 9/11 Commission - Center for American Progress

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

TV: The Urge to Purge : "Will she agree to give up that teddy bear collection? Will he freak out when his trophies are carted away? In both Clean House and TLC's Clean Sweep, the tag sale is the cathartic centerpiece around which the show pivots--a fantastic transaction which shifts junk from one clutter bug's house to another. "
London's Abandoned Tube Stations
Hearing starts 6 AM PST: "For one thing, at the outset of the new administration, Bush and Rice decided to keep Richard Clarke--a veteran of the first Bush and the Clinton administrations--in his job as National Security Council counterterrorism director. Second, in a break with past practice, the president insisted that Clarke report to him exclusively through Rice.

That made Rice solely responsible for what the president learned about appraisals of terrorist threats from Clarke and others in the months before Sept. 11. She was also responsible for coordinating counterterrorism efforts, including ranking its priority relative to other threats and problems."
Pantaloons rounds up Scalapino, Champion & more--
"We know Scalapino is a bona fide avantast, and on whichever side we find ourselves in the Naropa Wars, the demeanor of a calming, enlightened refusal has likely rubbed off during her and our intake of an illusory simultaneity in the social imagination. Or don't know."
DiamondDead George Romero's back!!
free download of dj c's junglist bashment mix, which has been rattling the windows of the Manse for several days...

Tuesday, April 06, 2004

conossieurs of deep ick may want to check out Robert Christgau's "thanks for sharing" Janet Jackson review-- "Yet she exudes carnality, a desire to please and be pleased radiating from and to the mucous membranes, and the nipples too. And thus she moves blood to the groin, where it awaits deployment in socially useful endeavors—in my case, marital relations. "
Significant Trees of Ladysmith
review of my book "Hammertown" in the Georgia Straight!
Vancouver Cops: " "In Vancouver it is not just a case of a few renegade officers, but an underlying problem of the Vancouver Police Department attacking poor and working class people all across city," says Bundock. "It's clear that it's not just one demonstration but an escalating role of the VDP in the service of the provincial government that is really attacking people across the province.""
Daph says they could see the smoke from town: "A spectacular fire damaged a 35-metre wooden trestle on the E&N Railway at Nanaimo late Monday afternoon, forcing the suspension of freight and passenger service north of that city."
Oor Wullie is top Scottish icon: "Oor Wullie has been appearing in the Sunday Post newspaper since 1936 and has legions of fans around the world.
Lulu, in fifth place, was the only woman who made it into the top 10. "
Nader Fails to Make Oregon Ballot: "'The ball game, it had to be the ball game,' Nader muttered as he climbed a stairway leading to the stage."
The art of pain: "Romero's films fetishise gore, but he always insisted that his animated corpses - sometimes greenly mouldering, on occasion freshly autopsied with sutures like zip fasteners from neck to pelvis, usually missing odd limbs after accidents - were exemplary citizens of contemporary America. He called them 'the silent majority', identifying them with the voters who elected Nixon in 1968 (and who may well re-elect George W. Bush this year). "
Draining the Language out of Color: "Kay and Berlin hit on color terminology in the early 1960s while comparing notes on their field research. Kay, a New York City-born, New Orleans-bred cultural anthropologist, had just returned from 15 months in Tahiti. Berlin, a linguistic anthropologist reared in Oklahoma, had been researching a Mayan language of southern Mexico. 'We found that in both our languages, all the major color terms but one were exactly like those in English, and in the one area of difference, they differed in exactly the same way.' (They grouped green and blue to form what Kay and Berlin called 'grue.') That two such profoundly unrelated languages should name colors alike seemed to point to some universal linguistic pattern. "

Monday, April 05, 2004

found, by accident, my village (edge node? suburb?) of South Wellington in the OED under the entry for "jitney"-- I wish those buses were still running!-- but the reduction of the service must coincide with the decline of the mines, even during wartime...

"2. bus, omnibus. An omnibus or other motor vehicle which carries passengers for a fare, orig. five cents. So, on account of the low fare or the poor quality of these buses, used attrib. to denote anything cheap, improvised, or ramshackle.

1914 Let. 28 Nov. in Nation (N.Y.) (1915) 14 Jan. 50/3 This autumn automobiles, mostly of the Ford variety, have begun in competition with the street cars in this city [sc. Los Angeles]. The newspapers call them ‘Jitney 'buses’. 1915 N.Y. Even. Post 16 Apr., The jitney wears out the streets and should contribute to their repair. 1916 Daily Colonist (Victoria, B.C.) 6 July 4/5 The daily jitney service between Nanaimo and South Wellington has been discontinued. Hereafter cars will run on Saturdays only and the fare has been raised from 25 cents to 50 cents. 1916 H. L. Wilson Somewhere in Red Gap ii. 59 He+sells these jitney pianos and phonographs and truck like that. 1917 E. Frost Lett. (1972) 13, I hired McGrath, the jitney driver, to bring us home. 1919 M. A. von Arnim Christopher & Columbus xxxi. 400 He had come in the jitney omnibus to the nearest point. 1920 [see Daiquiri]. 1921 Daily Colonist (Victoria, B.C.) 25 Mar. 2/4 The decision of the Provincial Legislature to prohibit the sale of near beer will affect 58 jitney bars in this city, according to City Licence Inspector Charles Jones. 1923 F. Parsons Everybody's Business 215 All the jitney operators on the line. 1925 Amer. Speech I. 152/1 That bastard word ‘jitney’ is still used in outlying places, where a ‘jitney dance’ means a nickel dance. 1933 N.Y. Herald Tribune 5 Dec. 17/3 We refer to the jitney economists, the boys who play the money tunes only by ear. 1946 E. O'Neill Iceman Cometh (1947) i. 36 He never worries in hard times because there's always old friends from the days when he was a jitney Tammany politician. 1947 E. A. McCourt Music at Close 108 He would go to the jitney dance held in the big open space behind the town hall unless an outdoor floor had been set up. 1967–8 Bahamas Handbk. & Businessmen's Ann. (ed. 7) 197 There are jitneys on New Providence+which travel over unscheduled and not necessarily prescribed routes picking up and dropping off passengers. 1973 Philadelphia Inquirer (Today Suppl.) 7 Oct. 8/2 From the museum a jitney carries visitors to the Mills. "
"There Goes the Neighborhood" : "Greenspan knows, perhaps better than anyone, that this economy is perched nervously on top of a wobbly, Dr. Seuss-like tower."
Berlin Mitte. Explorations of an Urban Conversion
download for free the best American movie of 1968---Night of the Living Dead
Battling back against the 'human jackals': "Most are no strangers to violence, having served as special forces soldiers in countries such as Afghanistan, Bosnia, and other places they usually politely decline to name. Yet as the men working for US company Blackwater Security learned the hard way, working without a uniform on can be even more dangerous. As mercenaries in the world's dirtier conflicts have known for centuries, captured guns-for-hire cannot even expect the right to a dignified burial. "
Happy Birthday Fragonard!
Maintaining the Vista: "While busy urban border crossings such as the ones in Niagara Falls and Detroit may be the most common image, much of the Canada/U.S. border stretches through forests, mountains and prairie. It is along these vast stretches of uninhabited and occasionally rough terrain that 'maintaining the vista,' as the commission calls it, has been challenging."
Bioluminescence
Metrorama - Photos panoramiques du metro de Paris

Sunday, April 04, 2004

cassettes picked up at the dollar store today

1. Shabba Ranks--Rough and Ready vol 1 (was there a vol 2?--big slick sound, though, David Morales worked on it) (later--pretty good beats throughout)
2. PM Dawn--Jesus Wept (their third, never before heard by me, playing now & good, forget how much I miss that compressed but fat bass sound on late-era ('95) cassettes--and the big fold outs!) (great acoustic cover of 1999 just came on!) (which just segued into "once in a lifetime", wild!) (...then nilsson's coconut??--odd medley--wonder what they're up to now?)
3. Strictly Bass Too--"nonstop dance mix" odd Canadian compilation--has dance mixes of U2 but Chaka Demus & Pliers too--last days for the Muchmusic utopia?? (later--rather good--had forgotten how close dancehall came to the mainstream back then)
4. Strictly Bass Three--more Chaka Demus but also Ashley MacIsaac and Jann Arden
5. Bim Skala Bim--Tuba City--Boston Ska band I'd never heard of on Celluloid (called here "skaloid") from 88--has cover of "sunshine of your love" though
6. Don Sebesky--Moving Lines--14 minute big band fusion version of "malaguena"!(best tunes here were the versions of "cherokee" and "skyliner"--he should have done a whole album of charlie barnet)
7. Herb Jeffries--The Four Winds & the Seven Seas--great Ellington crooner and cowboy movie star, uncertain vintage (later--use of echo chamber and booming hifi mono sez 50's for sure), has "its easy to remember" and the self-penned "sunday isnt sunday anymore" only ten songs, though
8. Rhythm Formula Essentials vol 4.--14 full length extended club mixes--lots of big mid-90's pophouse mixes compiled in Montreal or Toronto--includes two versions of the mildly smutty "disco's revenge" by Gusto, todd terry mixes as well
massive cache of Literature for Children