last night's surprise "swept in on a speech" late ballot victory by "The West Wing"'s Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) reminiscent of the 1896 convention and William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold"--

"If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the gold standard as a good thing, we shall fight them to the uttermost, having behind us the producing masses of the nation and the world. Having behind us the commercial interests and the laboring interests and all the toiling masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold."
 

poet Meredith Quartermain will be doing a "Transparency Machine" lecture in Calgary tomorrow night at 7--

from her new "Vancouver Walks" (please excuse the reformatting)--

"Frances Street- –

four miles of straw-sacks at Scutari
4000 soldiers lying in gore-stiff uniforms
packed into place for 1700 candles stuck
in empty beer bottles
open sewer under the floor
no water, no soap, no linen
no forks, no knives
four hours to serve a putrid meal
for soap, bandages, food, 2000 in Barrack Hospital
die

Brilliant Doors & Co
Anglo-Canadian Automotive Supply
Foo Hoo Enterprises

diakonia from the verb diakonien to minister or serve
St. Luke xxii 27: I am among you as he that serveth: diakonon
Romans xvi 1: Phebe our sister . . . a servant (diakonos)
refuge to orphans, aged and sick

to the Right Honourable millionaire
for 75 miles of track,
two million acres (one quarter Vancouver island)
all mineral and timber rights
and 750,000 dollars
as per the Settlement Act

miners living in two-room shacks
funny how settlers couldn’t get
lots under the Settlement Act
till the track went in
and they had to pay Dunsmuir'’s price..."

searchable archives of great CBC radio science show Quirks & Quarks

(thanks Boing Boing) 

the Tyee is on the BC Election like delicious on doughnuts...

Uncovered

"What is so maddeningly dismaying is the way the cynical media's pose of hagiographic respect for the Pope amounts to an ungenerousness to the religion and to the world he leaves behind. To hear these shiny, modern, thoroughly secular talking heads speak about the Pope as though they were all sheep in his flock, as though they did not use contraception, or fornicate freely for pleasure, or enjoy same-sex relationships, or worship Yahweh or Allah or no divinity at all, was dreamlike. Their sudden, staged belief made you want to rub your eyes in disbelief. Once again, as with Ashley Smith story and Terri Schiavo, a story that should have been reported was being treated like an opportunity that had to be exploited."

see the scary trailer for the Tribeca-bound Bad Blood, a short film starring Alan Cumming, which was adapted from Irvine Welsh and produced by my bestest pal Peter Cummings...  

Peckinpah's Major Dundee partially restored--

"The evening of April 7, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson appeared on television to explain the "war of unparalleled brutality," which had escalated dramatically during the past few months. "Simple farmers are the targets of assassination and kidnapping," he said, "women and children are strangled in the night because their men are loyal to their government. And helpless villages are ravaged by sneak attacks." "Major Dundee" opened in New York that day and, in characterizing Vietnam, Johnson might almost have been describing the torched, corpse-strewn settlement with which "Dundee" begins, just as the movie imaginatively prophesied the geopolitical debacle that the war became.

The film's most sympathetic review called it "ugly," "brutal" and "gory." Just as liberal intellectuals were reversing themselves on Johnson, the candidate they supported in 1964, so Newsweek, which had named "Ride the High Country" the best movie of 1962, turned on Peckinpah: "Think of Yosemite Falls or suicides from the top of the Empire State Building, or streaking meteorites downward toward the earth and you'll get some idea of the decline in the career of Sam Peckinpah." The magazine noted that Peckinpah had been fired from his next movie, "The Cincinnati Kid," after a week."  

jokes from the sadly departed comedian Mitch Hedberg, a stand-up I was always glad to see--

"I like to play blackjack. I'm not addicted to gambling, I'm addicted to sitting in a semi-circle. " 

Robert Creeley, from "Words", 1967

The Mountains
in the Desert

The mountains blue now
at the back of my head,
such geography of self and soul
brought to such limit of sight,

I cannot relieve it
nor leave it, my mind locked
in seeing it
as the light fades.

Tonight let me go
at last out of whatever
mind I thought to have,
and all the habits of it.

raw spring growth from Adam Harrison's evolving 365 Sketches, which can also be seen in printed form for ten days beginning 6-9 pm Thursday, April 7, at Space Gallery on 210 Abbott St. in Vancouver.  

cgi version of Raymond Briggs' immortal Fungus The Bogeyman begins on CBC tonight (script by the "Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime" guy)--

"Fungus and Mildew are worried that their son is starting to behave like a human--he is beginning to wash."

spring magnolia & assortments.

spring magnolia & assortments., originally uploaded by posterBoi.

Here's the actual magnolia...

spring magnolia & assortments.

spring magnolia & assortments., originally uploaded by posterBoi.

finally using Flickr & found these lovely Nanaimo flowers instantly...

looked in vain for "Tusk" among these numerous MP3's of Wind Ensemble Music, but there is Percy Grainger and a "Lord of the Rings" symphony. via metafilter.

The Pentagon's Secret Stash

"'The Pentagon realizes that it's images that sell the story,' Aftergood says. 'The reason that there is a torture scandal is because of those photographs. There can be narratives of things that are much worse, but if they aren't accompanied by photos, they somehow don't register....The Abu Ghraib photos are sort of the military equivalent of the Rodney King case....And I hate to attribute motives to people I don't know, but it is easy to imagine that the officials who are withholding these images have that fact in mind.'"