Don Chaffey's The Three Lives of Thomasina--the greatest cat movie ever--finally out on DVD. 

Reagan Pyramid Nears Completion
"'Buried with Reagan will be his finest treasures,' Meese said, 'including 2,500 MX intercontinental ballistic missiles, 15 stealth bombers, a golden chalice of jelly beans, and his most prized servant, former president George Bush Sr.'

Bush told reporters, 'It is my honor and duty to have my sinus passages ceremonially packed with sand before my still-living, pain-racked body is forever locked with my leader's within the Great Reagan's final resting place. Let us all praise Osiris.'"

heartiest congratulations to Jean Crowder, who Daph & I helped to vote in on Monday. She replaces the odious retiring Reform MP Reed Elley, who (having read the writing on the wall?) left office after mailing a bitter diatribe to his constituents. The only reason the NDP didn't get 50 seats was that their program was mostly co-opted by the Liberals. The main thing is that the Hard Right will never have a better shot at power in Canada, and they blew it. Those who enjoy the sight of sputtering conservative fury are urged to check out various columns at Nealenews.

Matt Taibbi
"If even one network, instead of cheerily re-broadcasting Pentagon-generated aerial bomb footage, had risked its access to the government by saying to the Bush administration, 'We're not covering the war unless we can shoot anything we want, without restrictions,' that might have made a difference. It might have made this war look like what it is--pointless death and carnage that would have scared away every advertiser in the country--rather than a big fucking football game that you can sell Coke and Pepsi and Scott's Fertilizer to."

"Sea Creature sighted between Antibes and Nice 1462" from Medieval Woodcuts Clipart Collection 

filmed interview with William Gaddis

William Gaddis on the Web

Fire the Bastards! Jack Green takes on contemporary reviews of William Gaddis' "The Recognitions"--little has changed, and this is still the best reverse primer on book reviewing ever.

review of The Open
"In 1964, Giorgio Agamben, then just twenty-two years old, played Philip the Apostle in Pier Paolo Pasolini's film The Gospel According to St. Matthew... "

I just watched this. Everybody in that movie looks like someone you know anyway. 

good review of Rev. Billy's book, which I also liked.

"Talen's belief in the power of literature and storytelling is rarely encountered in activist circles. Throughout "What Should I Do", he posits that our culture is constructed on a foundation of stories, but those core cultural myths are increasingly peddled and copyrighted by a few giant corporations: 'merchandising vehicles that...never have the qualities of a well-told story, because such a thing would compete with the selling of the products.' According to Talen, 'A really powerful story is not easily controlled as it passes into the rapt audience. A real story must have in it...the Unknown.' " 

the late Robert Urich as the vaguely Clintonesque Jake Spoon in "Lonesome Dove"
(Larry McMurtry on Clinton's book)  

scroll down at rob mclennan's blog for a review of Gerry Gilbert's "Moby Jane" 

very well done site devoted to every aspect of theFrench Broad River Watershed  

How the Bloc Will Save Canada
"They will hold the balance of power, and that will allow them to either block the Conservatives' Bush-like agenda, or force the Liberals to make good on some of their promises.

Either way, with separatism on the back burner, it's good news for the majority of Canadians."
 

Dictionary Don "Sources said another memo signed by Rumsfeld authorizes forcing detainees to stand for up to four hours at a time. 'I stand for eight hours a day,' scribbled Rumsfeld at the bottom of the page..."

Rumsfeld and the Dictionary

"'There is no wiggle room in the president's mind or my mind about torture,' he said.

'That is not something that's permitted under the Geneva Convention or the laws of the United States.

'That is not to say that somebody else couldn't characterise something in a way that would fit what I described,' he added.
He noted that some have described the indefinite detention of suspected al-Qaeda and Taleban fighters at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as a form of mental torture.

'Therefore, that word is used by some people in a way that is fair from their standpoint, but doesn't fit a dictionary definition of the word that one would normally accept,' Mr Rumsfeld said. "


from the OED:

TORTURE

1. The infliction of severe bodily pain, as punishment or a means of persuasion; spec. judicial torture, inflicted by a judicial or quasi-judicial authority, for the purpose of forcing an accused or suspected person to confess, or an unwilling witness to give evidence or information; a form of this (often in pl.). to put to (the) torture, to inflict torture upon, to torture.

1551 Acts Privy Counc. (1891) III. 407 Assisting to the sayd Commissioners for the putting the prisoners+to suche tortours as they shall think expedient. 1593 Shakes. 2 Hen. VI, iii. i. 131 You did deuise Strange Tortures for Offendors. 1608 D. Price Chr. Warre 21 To punish the bad, and to prouide some sharpe and fearful tortors for them. 1653 H. Cogan tr. Pinto's Trav. iv. 10 We put the Captain and Pilot to torture, who instantly confessed. 1708 Act 7 Anne c. 21 §5 After [1 July 1709] no Person accused of any Capital Offence or other Crime in Scotland, shall suffer, or be subject or liable to any Torture. 1769 Blackstone Comm. (1830) IV. xxv. 326 They erected a rack for torture. 1838 Thirlwall Greece III. xxv. 393 Pisander moved that the persons+should be put to the torture, that all their accomplices might be known. 1849 Macaulay Hist. Eng. i. (1871) I. 16 According to law, torture+could not+be inflicted on an English subject. 1882 Gardiner Hist. Eng. (1884) VI. lxv. 359 note 2 Torture had been allowed [in England] by custom as inflicted by the prerogative, but not by law.+ Torture was inflicted as late as 1640 by prerogative.

2. Severe or excruciating pain or suffering (of body or mind); anguish, agony, torment; the infliction of such.

c1540 tr. Pol. Verg. Eng. Hist. (Camden) I. 269 Doe you preferre the horrible tortures of warre beefore tranquillitee? 1593 Shakes. Lucr. 1287 And that deepe torture may be cal'd a Hell, When more is felt than one hath power to tell. 1612 Woodall Surg. Mate Wks. (1653) 185 Pain and torture of the intestines. 1659 H. More Immort. Soul ii. x. §6. 220 Who would bear the tortures of Fears and Jealousies, if he could avoid it? 1734 Bp. Petre Let. in E. H. Burton Life Challoner (1909) I. 93 He wasted away by degrees under the torture of the Strangury. 1744 M. Bishop Life & Adv. 52 They were in such great Torture, wishing they had never come to Sea. 1797 Mrs. Radcliffe Italian ii, He determined to relieve himself from the tortures of suspense. 1878 Browning La Saisiaz 353 As in one or other stage Of a torture writhe they.

The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland Scanning Project (thanks wood s lot) 

Canada 2004 - Election Prediction Project nice to see they agree with my call on Nanaimo-Cowichan...

2004 Federal Election - Links to Use and Amuse

The Naked Maja has a thoughtful (I'd never made the "Sunday Morning"/"Northern Sky" celeste connection, for instance) list of favorite British records including the song that haunted my fifth year, until replaced by Gary Lewis & the Playboys "This Diamond Ring".

"The Tornados' "Telstar," number one everywhere in the autumn of 1962, seemed to come from a place that the Shadows were unable to reach; unquestionably futuristic, slightly threatening but ultimately one of the saddest pop records ever made."

I could never quite hate Margaret Thatcher as much when I heard it was her favorite record, too. (more on "Telstar" auteur Joe Meek ) here. 

Arctic explorer tabby cat honoured
" Mrs Chippy, who became the ship's mascot, took great delight in leaping across the kennel roofs of the sledging dogs, tantalisingly out of reach. " (thanks Daphne) 

aeroplastics 

Chapagetti has wonderful thick potato-based noodles and a strong, sweet fermented brown broth & also comes with a wee envelope of onion oil. All for less than a dollar. 

The Early Days of a Better Nation

"When the President claims for himself powers outlawed in every country issuing from the English Revolution, and last exercised when James the II & VII personally supervised the splitting of Presbyterian shins, I guess we have to admit that in the long run the English Revolution failed.

Oh well. Freedom can always choose another people. "

a Fred Neil kind of day around the Manse... 

numerous & cool Roadmaps (via) 

Ed Dorn on Milton at Black Mountain--

ED DORN: I'm glad you noticed that, because aside from the literature I got there--and I've had to go back, frankly, and really repair leaks in the plumbing, because at Black Mountain it wasn't a thorough education, it was a fanatical education. It did cover a lot, but there was a lot also they didn't cover. Nobody had heard of Milton there, for instance. You get out in the real world of literature, and you haven't read Milton, it's like a joke.

EFFIE MIHOPOULOS: Though you're probably better off, not having read Milton.

ED DORN: That was the point encouraged at Black Mountain, but I found that later to be quite untrue. Ignorance is NOT bliss.  

lovepundits

BROKAW: Tim, we've been pals and we've been colleagues, but I say this in the most unalloyed fashion. I'm really proud of you, and I'm especially proud of the book that you've done because it's a gift not just to your family, but it's really a gift to our time. And so congratulations.

RUSSERT: Thank you, pal.  

Happy Juneteenth! 

Penkiln Burn - Job No. 41: "Take a map of your locality. Draw a circle on the map. The circle can be any size. The centre point of the circle must be your home.

Then bake a cake. Travel to a home on the circumference of the circle taking the cake with you. Knock on the door. If there is no answer knock on a neighbours door. If the door is answered say "I have baked you a cake, here it is." They may think you are mad or bad. You are neither. Give them the cake. Go back home.

Bake and deliver cakes to different homes on the circle whenever you want. It's a friendly thing to do." 

Happy Birthday Gena Rowlands
"An aura, a demeanor, a port. And a walk. 'That's true, I know how to walk,' she chuckles. " 

<$Xvarenah$> "Imagine, though, that this were a Commons--an ecosystem--in which variety itself is seen as a benefit. We might even put up with a slightly less efficient economy, just to hang on to things we care about for themselves. Yeah, think of that."

pseudopodium on Ulysses-- "We lose all sense of perspective. We might even come to believe that there was some innate possibility for beauty and joy in the mere inescapability of human limits and plasticity of human vision. Almost like we wouldn't mind being one ourselves. "

Feverfew Pyrethrum Parthenium (Sm.). Featherfew. Featherfoil. Flirtwort. Bachelor's Buttons.  

The audience is the enemy
"'One day people love you more than they've ever loved anything in the world. And the next, you're in front of a courthouse dancing on top of a car.'

In case the audience didn't get the reference to Michael Jackson, he said, 'You know why Michael Jackson's had so many surgeries? He wanted you to like him more.'

Chappelle, obviously, will not pander to his fans. 'You guys are the worst listeners in the country,' he told the Sacramento audience. 'It's like 'The Silence of the Lambs.' Without the silence.'"

the peerless Edmund Wilson reviews Ulysses: "At his worst he recalls Flaubert at his worst--in L'Education Sentimentale. But if he repeats Flaubert's vices--as not a few have done--he also repeats his triumphs--which almost nobody has done. Who else has had the supreme devotion and accomplished the definitive beauty? " 

a special treat for conossieurs of deep ick--Peggy Noonan at the Gipper obsequies.

"The cortege was coming toward the steps. We looked out the window: a perfect tableaux of ceremonial excellence from every branch of the armed forces. Mrs. Thatcher watched. She turned and said to me, 'This is the thing, you see, you must stay militarily strong, with an undeniable strength. The importance of this cannot be exaggerated.'

To my son, whose 17th birthday was the next day, she said, 'And what do you study?' He tells her he loves history and literature. 'Mathematics,' she says. He nods, wondering, I think, if she had heard him correctly. She had. She was giving him advice. 'In the world of the future it will be mathematics that we need--the hard, specific knowledge of mathematical formulae, you see.' My son nodded: 'Yes, ma'am.' Later I squeezed his arm. 'Take notes,' I said. This is history."

Edna O'Brien on Joyce--
"WB Yeats, who had met Joyce in Dublin in Joyce's scalding youth, said he resembled 'a soft tiger cat'. " 

Kitten on a Motorbike

Mount Benson Preservation Society trying to save as much as they can of our local mountain, in the process of being privatised, logged and subdvided. 

A Report on Pigeon Aerial Photography 

Happy Bloomsday!  

lovely Victorian Bookbinding 

EJ Hughes & The BC Landscape 

acronym of the month from otherwise infuriating (on both sides) "Let the Poor Smoke" article in the Guardian-- "Forest (Freedom of the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco) "

a painting by Hughes of Nanaimo's Departure Bay (not this one, of Ladysmith Harbour) recently fetched $322,000 at auction. 

short article on Malaspina: the Hotel, the Murals & the Madness of Modernity with no illustration of said murals (by EJ Hughes and others)sadly...
"Early in February 1927, the directors organized a competition, with a prize of $25, for a suitable name for their new hotel. Hundreds of contestants responded, offering names such as the Alhambra, Bayview, Gibraltar, Hub City, King George, Lucky Strike, Majestic, Pleasant, Rio Grande, and Unity. But among a long list of names, Malaspina was the clear favourite: indeed, so many contestants submitted the winning name that the directors were in a quandary as to how to divide the prize money. "

Animals Dream by Jerry Pethick: "The bee-hive like pattern (I later learned was referred to as hexagonal stacking) had always seemed to me to be a satisfying formulation of like parts, marbles on a tray, loose ball-bearings rolling together, BB pellets piling themselves in a box; the pattern, we would learn later, that made up the fly's eye, and the honey-comb. This last holds a fascination with the bees' social organisation, with its reduced individualism depending on the similar traits of component parts being of the same importance, same scale, same shape. The architecture of a society, the near order of swarming bees." 

Fruit Dots, an old poem of mine, derived from a Dover edition of "How to Know the Ferns" by Frances Theodora Parsons, borrowed from the Britannia Library in East Vancouver, late 80's. 

"Interesting contrast created by the convergence of the San Francisco Bay (top right), Cargill Salt Ponds (right) and a more natural wetlands area (left)."
(from Kite Aerial Photography) 

Martin's Strange "Dream" includes ex-NDP premier Ujal Dosanjh

"Hazen Argue was never forgiven for bolting to the Liberals after he lost the NDP leadership to Tommy Douglas. Dosanjh faces a similar shunning. Wearing the C of captaincy on a political sweater brings with it certain expectations, even if one's ardour for the party wanes: Bite your lip, step away from the fray, pay your annual membership, and await your federal sinecure. "

also: Hazen Argue is my favorite name for a politician EVER.

Campi Phegri "Eruption of Vesuvius at Night 1776" from Accent on Images: The Language of Illustrated Books (thanksPlep) 

Garfield - corporate whore?
"In the late 1980s, Garfield plush toys with suction-cup feet were so popular than criminals broke into cars to steal them and sell them on the black market. Davis, protective of his creation's unobjectionable blandness, knew he had to act fast before people began to hate Garfield. 'We accepted the royalty checks, but my biggest fear was overexposure,' he told Entertainment Weekly in 1998. 'We pulled all plush dolls off the shelves for five years.'" 

Bloomsday fry-up:
"'He left in disgust, for Christ's sake', says John Waters, author and Irish Times political columnist. ' Ulysses was about Ireland but it was not for Ireland. You could even say that it was against Ireland because Joyce was alienated from, and by, Ireland. That seems to have been conveniently overlooked in all the Bloomsday blather. It's as if we can reclaim him by cooking the mother of all fry-ups in his name.' " 

William Basinski: The Disintegration Loops: "But as the tape winds on over the capstans, fragments are lost or dulled, and the music becomes a ghost of itself, tiny gasps of full-bodied chords groaning to life amid pits of near-silence. " 

Peter Schuyff (thanks Caterina) 

Julianne Swartz 

Jimmy Breslin--Reagan should be on a $3 bill
"The great American news industry, the Pekinese of the Press with so much room and time and nothing to say, compared Reagan to Lincoln and Hamilton, they really did. This is like claiming that the maintenance man wrote the Bill of Rights. And almost all the reporters agreed that Reagan was the man who brought down Russia in the Cold War.

Just saying this is absolutely sinful. The Cold War was won by a long memo written by George Kennan, who worked in the State Department and sent the memo by telegram about the need for a 'Policy of Containment' on Russia. Kennan said the contradictions in their system would ruin them. Keep them where they are and they will tear themselves apart. We followed Kennan's policy for over 40 years. The Soviets made it worse on themselves by building a wall in East Berlin. When they had to tear it down and give up their system, Kennan was in Princeton and he sat down to dinner"

Mark Ames
"But what if the Truth is that Americans don't want to know the Truth? What if Americans consciously choose lies over truth when given the chance?and not even very interesting lies, but rather the blandest, dumbest and meanest lies? What if Americans are not a likeable people? The left's wires short-circuit when confronted with this terrible possibility; the right, on the other hand, warmly embraces Middle America's rank soul and exploits it to their full advantage. The Republicans know Americans better than the left. They know that it's not so much Goering's famous 'bigger lie' that works here, but the dumber the lie, the more they want to hear it repeated. " 

listening to Traffic & Jimi 

Cahiers de Corey is blogging through the "Cantos" of Ezra Pound (here with Jane Heap and Mina Loy) 

demos and unreleased recordings by Judee Sill  

redone Philip Whalen page at EPC 

Send for the cloud,
with the silver linin'
take me to paradise...

Show me that river,
take me across,
Wash all my troubles away,

Like that lucky old sun
give me nothing to do
but roll around heaven
all day...



 

Picnic time for teddy bears,
The little teddy bears are having a lovely time today.
Watch them, catch them unawares,
And see them picnic on their holiday.
 

Bear Snacks on Sub
"It took a bite out of the rudder and, finding it inedible, stayed around the area of broken ice around the rudder for a while, apparently thinking a seal (the bears favorite food) might use it as an air hole. The bear finally left when he heard the noise of an approaching helicopter. When an officer first looked around outside via the periscope, he noted that his sub was being stalked by a hostile polar bear. The periscope cam was turned on, and these photos of a polar bear chewing on the subs rear rudder resulted. The damage was said to be minor" 

Whiskey Bar on Ashcroft

"LEAHY: Has there been any order directed from the president with respect to interrogation of detainees, prisoners or combatants, yes or no?

ASHCROFT: I'm not in a position to answer that question.

LEAHY: Does that mean because you don't know or you don't want to answer? I don't understand.

ASHCROFT: The answer to that question is yes."

(thanks Sharp Sand) 

Teen walks in on snacking Bear
"I've heard bears are pretty smart, but this one was really sharp,' said Sherry Walsh of her son Brett's close encounter on Tuesday night. 'He punched a hole in the screen mesh and put his paw through and unlocked the catch and then slid open the door.'

The animal, drawn, Walsh suspects, by a pot of bacon grease she had left on the stove, also helped itself to some ketchup and a package of goldfish food." 

$Xvarenah$
"The Neoformalists have failed to imagine farther back than Frost; they have no more use for Pope than for Ginsberg."

Not just the neocons, sadly.

Memo on Torture Draws Focus to Bush

" McClellan called the memo a HISTORIC or SCHOLARLY review of laws and conventions concerning torture. 'The memo was not prepared to provide advice on specific methods or techniques,' he said, 'It was ANALYTICAL.' "

Gordon Burns on Norman Mailer's "The Executioner's Song": "Brenda was six when she fell out of the apple tree. She climbed to the top and the limb with the good apples broke off. Gary caught her as the branch came scraping down. They were scared. The apple trees were their grandmother's best crop and it was forbidden to climb in the orchard. She helped him drag away the tree limb and they hoped no one would notice. That was Brenda's earliest recollection of Gary.' "

Transit of Venus 

Mammatus Clouds over Mexico (from Astronomy Picture of the Day) 

Boswell cuts up at the theatre with rhetorician Hugh Blair, from his "Tour to the Hebrides"--

At Mr Tytler's, I happened to tell that one evening, a great many years ago, when Dr Hugh Blair and I were sitting together in the pit of Drury-lane play-house, in a wild freak of youthful extravagance, I entertained the audience PRODIGIOUSLY, by imitating the lowing of a cow. A little while after I had told this story, I differed from Dr Johnson, I suppose too confidently, upon some point, which I now forget. He did not spare me. "Nay, sir," said he, "if you cannot talk better as a man, I'd have you bellow like a cow." "

[Note: As I have been scrupulously exact in relating anecdotes concerning other persons, I shall not withhold any part of this story, however ludicrous.-I was so successful in this boyish frolick, that the universal cry of the galleries was, "Encore the cow! Encore the cow!" In the pride of my heart, I attempted imitations of some other animals, but with very inferior effect. My reverend friend, anxious for my fame, with an air of the utmost gravity and earnestness, addressed me thus: "My dear sir, I would CONFINE myself to the COW!"]


 

Stardust and Black Coffee: "Sarah Vaughan's 'Stardust', written by Lucky Roberts, and 'Black Coffee', written by Paul Francis Webster and Reginald (Sonny) Burke are beautiful songs. Listening to them, I noticed that they were basically in the same tempo and seemed to have other relations also. So I cut them both into loops to see how they intermixed together. "
 

"Die Walkure" (Parker Bros. 20's) one of many splendid Old Jigsaw Puzzles (much more at Sugar 'N Spicy)  

American homeland security
"Somewhere in central Los Angeles, about 20 miles from LAX airport, there is a nondescript building housing a detention facility for foreigners who have violated US immigration and customs laws. I was driven there around 11pm on May 3, my hands painfully handcuffed behind my back as I sat crammed in one of several small, locked cages inside a security van. I saw glimpses of night-time urban LA through the metal bars as we drove, and shadowy figures of armed security officers when we arrived, two of whom took me inside. The handcuffs came off just before I was locked in a cell behind a thick glass wall and a heavy door. No bed, no chair, only two steel benches about a foot wide. There was a toilet in full view of anyone passing by, and of the video camera watching my every move. No pillow or blanket. A permanent fluorescent light and a television in one corner of the ceiling. It stayed on all night, tuned into a shopping channel. "

lots on Joyce and Zukofsky at the new FLASHPOINT... 

Alan Turing, whose reward for inventing the computer and winning WWll was homophobic persecution, belatedly honoured. 

the terrific Like Anna Karina's Sweater (who remembers "Puzzle of a Downfall Child"!)--has a list of film blogs... 

Robert Quine
"I play with singers/songwriters and one thing that's crucial is that I LISTEN TO THE LYRICS. Like with Lou Reed's 'Waves of Fear,' if it had been about making an egg cream, my solo would be different than a guy having a nervous breakdown. It's really obvious to do this but it's important."

Pasticceria... 

A place in the sun: "Lampedusa's book has become a morbidly seductive guidebook to the island, its glamour and despair; the sensual revelling in decrepit palaces, burnt landscapes studded with temples, sugary pasticceria (Lampedusa spent a lot of time in cake shops) and the magnificent ball in a gilded Palermo salon that is so gloriously visualised in Visconti's just re-released 1963 film of the book, make you breathe Sicily." 

Robert Quine 1942-2004 

"House" by Andrea Baker, sections on Scalapino and O'Sullivan, etc in new HOW2 

Alterman in 2000--Where's the Rest of Him?
"Reagan showed a similar indulgence toward the terrorists in El Salvador. The President and his equally immoral advisers consistently behaved as if they were hired public relations agents for the murderers of children, nuns, priests and peasants. Not long after these killings reached the amazing level of more than 200 per week--in a country with just 5.5 million people--Reagan mused aloud that they were not the work of 'so-called murder squads' on the right, but of 'guerrilla forces' who think they 'can get away with these violent acts, helping to try and bring down the government, and the right wing will be blamed for it.' In fact, only days later, Vice President Bush flew to San Salvador to insist that 'every murderous act' committed by 'right-wing fanatics...poisons the well of friendship between our two countries,' and that 'death squad murders' could cost the killers 'the support of the American people.' Didn't Reagan know what Bush knew? Does anyone care? After the war, the Catholic archdiocese in San Salvador documented the number of killings on each side. The tally: military and government-assisted death squads, 41,048; left-wing guerrillas, 776. Reagan was off by almost 5,500 percent. Liar or moron? You tell me."

Laura Sinagra on Alanis 'n Avril
"Yes, it's a special kind of labored playfulness that births lines like 'You make the knees of my bees weak.' (She has bees??) "

The Leopard on DVD
" If at times he seems remote, not fully present in the life swirling around him, it's simply because he suffers, as the great 19th-century poet Giacomo Leopardi did, from a too acute and too constant awareness of transience. 'We were the leopards, the lions,' he tells an earnest politician, and 'those who take our place will be jackals, hyenas.' But even that bitter-sounding statement isn't offered as a defense of his class, for he continues: 'And all of us--leopards, lions, jackals and sheep--will go on thinking ourselves the salt of the earth.'" 

Chuck D & Hank Shocklee
" A guitar sampled off a record is going to hit differently than a guitar sampled in the studio. The guitar that's sampled off a record is going to have all the compression that they put on the recording, the equalization. It's going to hit the tape harder. It's going to slap at you. Something that's organic is almost going to have a powder effect. It hits more like a pillow than a piece of wood. So those things change your mood, the feeling you can get off of a record. If you notice that by the early 1990s, the sound has gotten a lot softer."

How the bee got his knees
"'Bee's knees' is actually one of a set of nonsense catchphrases from 1920s America, the period of the flappers. You might at that time have heard such curious concoctions as 'cat's miaow', 'elephant's adenoids', 'tiger's spots', 'bullfrog's beard', 'elephant's instep', 'caterpillar's kimono', 'turtle's neck', 'duck's quack', 'gnat's elbows', 'monkey's eyebrows', 'oyster's earrings', 'snake's hips', 'kipper's knickers', 'elephant's manicure', 'clam's garter', 'eel's ankle', 'leopard's stripes', 'tadpole's teddies', 'sardine's whiskers', 'pig's wings', 'bullfrog's beard', 'canary's tusks', 'cuckoo's chin' and 'butterfly's book'. "

a stubborn lover of green hues: "Sir George also once asked the young artist whether he found it difficult 'to determine where you place your BROWN tree' in a painting. Constable's reply, wrote Leslie, was: 'Not in the least, for I never put such a thing into a picture.'" 

Dave Frieder's New York Bridges (thanks Metafilter) 

Reagan's death seems to have knocked D-day off the front pages.

Ronald Reagan, Party Animal - The man who taught Republicans to be irresponsible.
"Today, what does it mean to be a Republican? It means you can cut taxes indiscriminately and needn't worry about the debt you're piling up. It certainly doesn't mean that you want to shrink the federal government. Indeed, government spending under George W. Bush has increased faster than it did under Bill Clinton. Before Reagan, pandering was principally a Democratic vice. Today, it's principally a Republican vice. Ronald Reagan performed that transformation, and it remains his most enduring legacy."

Glen Baxter (thanks Bifurcated Rivets) 

dancin' Transformers 

Larry David, Nature Boy
"And nobody ever went hiking in Brooklyn. The only time you took a hike was when someone told you to go fuck yourself. Then you took a hike. Then you got the hell out of there in a hurry. 'You're right, sir. Perhaps it is time for a little afternoon stroll. I think I'll be moseying on.' There was nothing in nature we appreciated. Sunsets were mocked. The moon, in particular, held no fascination for anyone. I don't think I ever heard anyone even use it in a sentence. Nobody ever said, 'Hey, check out the moon!' We never gazed at it. We didn't do any gazing. Well, people never looked up in general. We were too busy traversing a minefield of dog excrement. That's why, to this day, I can't look anyone in the eye, because, after spending many an afternoon throwing my sneaker away and hopping home, I became fixated on looking down.

So as a result of my background, I've never done anything outdoorsy. I don't hike, I don't ski, I don't fish . . . I would if you could catch conservatives. I wouldn't throw them back so fast, either. I'd let them flop around on the deck for a while. 'It was wrong to lie about Saddam having nuclear weapons, wasn't it?' 'Yes, yes.' 'In fact, the whole war was a big mistake!' 'Yes, maybe.' 'No, not maybe! It was a mistake!' 'OK, it was a mistake. Throw me back. Please!'"

Kiki Smith (thanks gmtPlus9) 

Limecat says go to bed! 

Steve Lacy 1934-2004

"Not everyone, of course, likes to live 'on the edge' like that, and there have been very great defensive players, but the musicians that have made the music really move and grow have all been masters of 'brinkmanship'. Some like it hot."  

Alexander Mackendrick's unmade Mary Queen of Scots film. 

Meteor lights the sky above Snohomish
"The Hupe brothers are waiting for either a confirmed find from this local space invader, or else a fairly precise estimate of its trajectory after the explosion.
'As soon as we can get that, we're there,' Greg Hupe said.

Malone said further analysis of the seismic signal, along with whatever other evidence is out there (such as the meteor's velocity), might produce a trajectory for hunters such as the Hupe brothers.

'It's possible,' Malone said."

Good Luck Smarty! 

Double-Tongued Word Wrester: "A Growing Dictionary of Old and New Words "