A strike against democracy
"The governments have sent a powerful message to trade unions, one which will have ominous future repercussions: You can negotiate all you want, but when push comes to shove, unless you agree to what employers want, we will bring the full force of the state against you and impose what employers want." (thanks Ruth) (link to Globe and Mail doesn't work but you get the point)

Larry Wilkerson in the WaPo "'I call them utopians,' he said. 'I don't care whether utopians are Vladimir Lenin on a sealed train to Moscow or Paul Wolfowitz. Utopians, I don't like. You're never going to bring utopia, and you're going to hurt a lot of people in the process of trying to do it.' "

The Tyee: After the Deal

"So good to see all the union leaders coming out with one voice - 'we stood up for you!' 'we forced the goverment to back down' 'don't blame us, it was the government' - This is the bigest sell-out of working people since jack munroe went to bill bennet on bended knee. When will we learn? There's just one union in this province - Sinclair, heyman, worboys, allnutt and co - better known as the middle-aged white guys club - small membership but great fringe benefits. Did any of these guys just once say they would take any personal risk? I don't see Sinclair offering to take a 15% pay cut in support of his brothers and sisters. These so-called unions are simply another arm of the power elite, hand-in-hand with the bosses -- toss them out on their well-fed asses and find someone whose going to stand up for us. And don't give me that 'divided we fall crap' That BS line has been used by the porkchop squad to hang onto power for years. The only reason these guys still have jobs is because we have adbicated responsibility. The house of labour needs a good cleaning."

Leave those forsythias alone!

Craig Baldwin's mighty Spectres of the Spectrum is out on DVD--

"The year is 2007, the "Eve of the Solar Eclipse, Las Vegas, Nevada" according to an informative title. BooBoo, an "epileptic telepath," is the granddaughter of scientist Amy Hacker, who died with a secret on her lips that BobBoo must uncover if she's to save the planet. She's part of a small group of revolutionaries fighting "electromagnetic control" by a shadowy entity called the "New Electromagnetic Order" (NEO) that, after decimating the earth, plans to erase the memories of every living creature on it. Abetting her is her father Yogi, an ex-intelligence guy who transmits anti-NEO propaganda from his bunker/Airstream trailer. BooBoo is immune to the devastation that's been wrought; the mind-control efforts of the NEO have no effect on her. Her plan is to travel back in time to retrieve her grandmother's secret and rescue the world from "the electronic miasma" that's annihilating it. This process allows her--and viewers--to survey America's apocalyptic past and the "heroes and martyrs" of "electromagnetic history" in the 19th and 20th centuries. "

too much good stuff to steal any one thing from wood's lot today--especially the Gottfried Benn and Novalis

Terry Eagleton on fascism
"For all their crafty appeals to lower-middle-class grouses, fascist regimes left existing patterns of property and social class largely intact. The disgruntled petite bourgeoisie were taken for the longest ride in their unenviable history. "

Turning the Pages splendid shockwave enabled versions of Leonardo's Notebook, Diamond Sutra, etc

(thanks to Coudal Partners)

The Tyee: Mayday

The Face of Jim Sinclair: "'All of us know it is not good enough,' Sinclair said. 'We're not celebrating tonight.'"

or: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Jim Sinclair: "'This deal saved thousands of jobs,' said Sinclair. 'We also got the employer to limit its plans to privatize public health care services. That's a major victory for public health care and union members because the government had very clearly stated they'd never do that.'
"

Pockets of defiance greet B.C. labour deal sold out by the leadership again

Forthright's Phrontistery: Obscure Words and Vocabulary Resources
(thanks Metafilter)

O My Cod!!: "Scientists studying the huge cod -- which can measure more than a metre in length and weigh as much as 26 kilograms, many times the size of cod now found in the sea -- say the fish are cannibals with voracious appetites that eat almost anything that crosses their path, including prickly sea urchins, each other, and -- in at least one case -- an entire loon."

TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
"The picture he draws of Abu Ghraib is one in which Army regulations and the Geneva conventions were routinely violated, and in which much of the day-to-day management of the prisoners was abdicated to Army military-intelligence units and civilian contract employees. Interrogating prisoners and getting intelligence, including by intimidation and torture, was the priority. "

Fifty Fantasy & Science Fiction Works That Socialists Should Read by China Mieville

China Mieville tremendous British SF writer

Acadians to get apology from Queen Elizabeth: "'This is a royal proclamation, and it involves two very important things for Acadians everywhere,' Euclide Chiasson, president of Canada's National Society of Acadians, based in Moncton, New Brunswick, said Thursday afternoon. 'This is important because it makes historic records a fact, and the Crown is admitting it caused irreparable damages to the Acadian people."

this very difficult to sing song a great favorite of Dad's--


Mountain Greenery--Lorenz Hart (music Richard Rodgers)

On the first of May
it is moving day--
Spring is here
so blow your job,
Throw your job
away!

Now’s the time to trust,
To your wanderlust,
In the city’s dust
you wait,
must you wait
Just you wait.......!

In a mountain greenery,
Where God paints the scenery
Just two crazy people together,

While you love your lover,
Let blue skies
be your cover-let,
When it rains
we’ll laugh at the weather,

And if you’re good,
I’ll search for wood,
So you can cook...
while I stand look
in’

Beans could get no keener
reception
in a beanery--
Bless our mountain greenery home!

(Mosquitoes here,
Won’t bite you dear,
I’ll let them sting
me on the finger!)

We could find no cleaner
retreat from life’s machinery
Than our mountain greenery home.

Kennebec-Chaudiere International Corridor - tourism, heritage, history, Quebec, Maine

Evangeline, Longfellow's poem

"On the banks of the Teche, are the towns of St. Maur and St. Martin.
There the long-wandering bride shall be given again to her bridegroom,
There the long-absent pastor regain his flock and his sheepfold.
Beautiful is the land, with its prairies and forests of fruit trees;
Under the feet a garden of flowers, and the bluest of heavens
Bending above, and resting its dome on the walls of the forest.
They who dwell there have named it the Eden of Louisiana! "

ACADIAN - CAJUN Genealogy & History

more Acadiana
"KATC-TV has begun airing a summary of its weather forecast in Cajun French at 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. each weeknight"

Outrage Knits Defiant Unions

"As calls rose for a General Strike in B.C.... "

Contracting out torture
"Titan, based in San Diego, describes itself as a 'a leading provider of comprehensive information and communications products, solutions and services for national security'. It recently won a big contract for providing translation services to the US army."

Thomas "Fats" Waller's centennial coming up, cats!

can't argue with Patrick J. Buchanan!

"The Old Right curmudgeons who warned us against giving these vagabonds food, shelter and a warm place by the fire were right. We should have put them back out on the street.
President Bush should have listened to his father, who kept the neocons at some remove, and he had best beware, because they have a major card yet to play. That card is escalation.

With the situation in Iraq deteriorating, the neocon agenda is to widen the war into Syria, Iran and perhaps Saudi Arabia, and convert it into 'World War IV,' the war of their dreams, a war of civilizations, an Armageddon, with America and Israel on one side and Islam on the other.

Exiting Iraq with honor and avoiding the wider war for which the neocons are even now scheming is the first duty of patriots."

Hey Ya! not as good as the Peanuts one, but the dancing banana....

Acadians in Maine--"Nos Histoires de L'Ile (Our Stories of the Island) is not only the title of our book, but also the organization that has been created by current and former residents of French Island to preserve the unique story of our French community. "

Hubert Selby, Jr. 1928-2004

"Couteau: You're at the gates of heaven because that can be the next step? Or ... ?

Selby: Let me put it this way: I think we're always striving for this perfection of our own being, to realize our own perfection. To realize and be consciously at one with this thing that created us, that we always have within us. I mean, we always have it in its entirety. It's my belief that says, "I don't." And it seems to me that, periodically, the closer I get to the conscious awareness of my oneness with this creative power the more insane the human ego becomes. And I'm defining "ego" as the lie of separation. The lie that says I'm separate from this thing that I can never be separate from. I'm separate from me; I'm separate from you. It starts to feel really threatened, and it just becomes outrageously vicious -- at its best, [laughs] it's vicious. And so, I can just feel so twisted and turned, that I can't move; I just don't know what the hell is going on. But my experience has proven to me that when I'm feeling that way it's because I'm really knocking at the gates of heaven. You know, to use a phrase. And if I can just find some way of letting go of my fear, which usually means surrendering right into the middle of the fear -- in other words, just sitting and saying: Okay, you fucking dragons, you demons, here I am, eat me up alive, you fucking punk. Then I become aware of being at the gates of heaven. But, boy, it's not easy. [laughs] "

gratefully received: IDC's "Top 20" and David Perry's
New Years

He fought for...something
"One of the things about football is that there is always another team you have to defeat. War is permanent. This is the central fact of the game. You want a guy who always fights because you always have to fight. Who does he have to fight? The other guy, naturally--it doesn't matter exactly who.

But in life? When you're fighting with guns and bombs? Well, it kind of matters who you're fighting; one ought to know who the enemy is--at the very least. But does anyone know whom Pat Tillman was actually fighting when he was killed? Not according to the news reports. As far as I could tell from most of the breathless paeans that appeared last weekend, the former Arizona State star died protecting our freedom from--a bunch of unidentified guys."

King of New York out on DVD

Luc Sante on Nick Hornby and Geoffrey O'Brien
" The shock of the new is something they sought between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four, if at all; now, however, a pop song should be like a cold beer on a hot day, with a bit of uplift worked into the transaction. Just as Hornby sets up a straw pop star--who in Eighties fashion applies heavy makeup, among other torts --when he needs a hissable villain to contrast with one of the hard-working, unaffected singer-songwriters he admires, so he crumples everything he finds emotionally or intellectually difficult into a wad and labels it with the damning adjective 'edgy.' Whatever kinds of music this advertising cliche might be applied to Hornby is content to represent it all as assaultive screeching with lyrics about murder, against which he can propose something or other by Teenage Fanclub, 'packed with sunshine and hooks and harmonies and goodwill.' So no problem, then. For that matter, he seems to think that jazz is that velveteen-textured pap you hear in commercials, and classical music is 'something that makes the room smell temporarily different, like a scented candle.' "

The Tyee: Recalling the Mounties Major Minor Legend
"When you come right down to it, there is no excuse for walking a batter," Bamberger told Boyd back in 1958. "It's accepted as normal, but it isn't normal; it's a mistake. If you throw four bad pitches, you have made four mistakes. There is no other sport where you can survive making that many mistakes."

Mantis shrimp may have swiftest kick in the animal kingdom
"The high-speed video revealed other interesting aspects of the strike, including bubbles generated at the point of impact. The researchers suggest that the shrimp is taking advantage of a physical process called cavitation - the destructive effect of exploding bubbles - to break snail shells. The bubbles are created by negative pressure near the point of impact, either during the swift strike or as the heel of the appendage pulls back afterward. The popping bubbles also generate sound, and perhaps even light."

interview with African Head Charge etc. drummer Eskimo "Mus'come" Fox

(thanks gmtPlus9)

documentary about Vancouver painter Attila Richard Lukacs

"Vaisbord: 'What did he do for painting?'
Sokolowski: 'I think he tried to show that Canadians could be more than people with good manners...you know, it's the school of eight thing.'

V: 'The Group of Seven?'

S: 'The Group of Seven. If I were to fault Attila and Diane (Farris), they sort of wanted to play with fire but they weren't willing to get burnt.... You just can't take loaded symbols and say, `Oh, I'm just play acting.'... You know, Saturday afternoon Sodom and Gomorrah.'"

The Avalon Project at Yale Law School : Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy

ID card trials to start next week
"'What has anybody to worry about having their true identity known?' he said. "

Trouble for the Tories in BC?
"What was once a populist Western protest movement has revealed itself to be an old style Political Party just like the Liberals and, yes, the Conservatives. Voters who deserted the NDP a decade ago for the Reform Party are taking a look and don't like Reform's metamorphosis into Conservatives. "

Nanaimo Lakes Road

farewell Lennie Briscoe

Pantaloons on Mike Scharf's "Verite"-- " 'colloidal asphyxiates,' 'cathexes,' 'pulvery,' 'Axl Rose,' 'numbkin,' 'McKenseying,' 'fuckball,' "

rare photograph of Jefferson & Adams

blissblog

"The thing that IS offensive is the condescension to the hardcore Grime fans. They might mangle the Queen's grammar and use patois and sling slang and misspell words (deliberately, though, often), but surely it's OBVIOUS that the level of literacy in the better grime (or hip hop, or dancehall) lyrics is staggering? And therefore by implication and by definition the fans have extreme verbal skills. They're probably not bookworms (although that's just an assumption--for all I know D Double E's got library cards and overdue books all across East London) but they don't need to be--this is a post-literate literati, a voracious oral culture sucking in and chewing up stuff from across the mediascape. With a lot of these lyrics, the sheer comprehension skills needed to follow the twists, spot the allusions, and unravel the compressions, is staggering. You need skill to actually even ENJOY this stuff, the sheer linguistic sport of it. And that suggests to me that the people who are into it, the kids for whom it's their life, must be really sophisticated. When you read interviews with Dizzee and Wiley, they come across as very perceptive and insightful. What the Americans call EQ or emotional IQ, these guys score pretty high. I'd also venture that without having to read the Guardian or New Statesman or political blogs, the grime kids are probably pretty sussed in their grasp on what's fucked about the world. In that sense 'street knowledge' is as good (or better) an education as reading Fredric Jameson or some Routledge primer on late capitalism, postcolonialism etc etc. So yeah, as Matt concludes, tweak some of the words, translate a bit between jargons and idiolects, and you'll find that the bloggaz and the grimesters are speaking the same language. Gutterlectuals unite, down with middlebrow!"

"Some Pictures a friend brought back from Iraq"

the mikhail bakhtin manuscript smoking page

Mario Bava Web Page

Rhythms of Life: "There are two different rhythms which govern the day: the circadian drive for 'wakefulness', which reaches a peak towards midday - the best time for concentration and difficult decision-making - and the 'homeostatic drive' towards sleep. These two processes cross each other's path in the mid-afternoon, the time when sensible societies used to allow citizens to take a nap. "

MapMachine

The Discovery of Slowness: "Since it was first published in Germany in 1983, The Discovery of Slowness has sold more than a million copies and been translated into 15 languages. It has been named as one of German literature's twenty 'contemporary classics', and it has been adopted as a manual and manifesto by European pressure groups and institutions representing causes as diverse as sustainable development, the Protestant Church, management science, motoring policy and pacifism.
The various groups that have taken the novel up have one thing in common: a dislike of the high-speed culture of Postmodernity. Nadolny's Franklin appeals to them because he is immune to 'the compulsion to be constantly occupied', and to the idea that 'someone was better if he could do the same thing fast.' Several German churches have used him in their symposia and focus groups as an example of peacefulness, piety and self-confidence. A centre for paraplegics in Basle organises a regular Marsch der Langsamkeit (a 'march of slowness' or 'of the slow'), inspired by the novel. Nadolny has appeared as a guest speaker for RIO, a Lucerne-based organisation which aims to reconcile management principles with ideas of environmental sustainability. The novel has even become involved in the debate about speed limits on German roads. Drive down an autobahn today, and you will see large road-side signs proclaiming 'die Entdeckung der Gelassenheit' (Gelassenheit means 'tranquillity' or 'unhurriedness'), a slogan which deliberately plays off the title of the novel."

A Donegal Hedgerow

" This website is a documentary of one year's life in a Donegal Hedgerow. Day by day, the sights I see are presented in pictures and text. The pages take the form of a diary, and all photographs are placed in date sequence. The website therefore records as many of the encounters with wildlife as I can photograph or describe."

thanks Plep

if you haven't yet, do check out the new / U B U _ E D I T I O N S

"This year's titles range from the visually sophisticated Concrete poetry of Gustave Morin, a native of Windsor who spent 10 years on his 'novel' A Penny Dreadful, to an obscure volume of satirical translations of Baudelaire by the English poet Nicholas Moore, from the experiments in frame and format that Caroline Bergvall and designer Marit Meunzberg explore in their daring resetting of the poet's Eclat, to the equally daring, if entirely unscrupulous, logorrhea that is the 130 pages of another 'novel,' Name, by Toadex Hobogrammathon.

The big news this year might be the introduction of color into the pantheon of effects being used in our e-books: both Bergvall's Eclat and my own Alpha Betty's Chronicles rely heavily on it, in ways that would have been unsuitable to html and impossibly expensive to print in a book. Likewise, the volumes by Morin and Lytle Shaw - two of his uniquely low-tech Shark chapbooks - are primarily graphic works, while the titles by Craig Dworkin, Robert Fitterman and Larry Price attempt to re-conceptualize the page of an Adobe Acrobat file as a middle-space that ironizes the permanence of type (Dworkin's use of Courier fonts) or digital flow (Fitterman's box-like containers) as well as the 'writing on the wall' soixante-huitard-style (Price's poster-style typography).

Of the republications, we are happy to present the final section of Ron Silliman's The Age of Huts, The Chinese Notebook, probably the most influential of his early books outside of Kejtak, two small works by the increasingly-prized Jean Day, whose 1998 Atelos volume, The Literal World, woke so many up to her understated talents. Robert Kelly's quasi-fiction - yes, yet another 'novel' - called The Cruise of the Pnyx has long been one of my favorites of his, but has never appeared in another book, nor has the original Station Hill edition of 1979 been republished.

New writers include the playwright Madelyn Kent, whose Shufu plays - part Butoh, part Richard Maxwell-like deadpan, with a touch of Clark Coolidge -- are bound to become recognized as innovative theater, and Aaron Kunin, who is becoming known in New York and elsewhere as a writer of uncommon intelligence and tremendous technical precision. The English poet Ira Lightman drops in on the series like a lightning bolt, spreading his art in a sort of spirit of personal renaissance, while Barbara Cole's Foxy Moron - a text I see as existing somewhere between poetry and drama if only because she reads it so well in public - strikes a little lower, not so much toward "renaissance" as sexual catharsis, over and over again.

Lastly, we are especially happy to have Deanna Ferguson's long-awaited follow-up collection to her 1993 book The Relative Minor (which appears as a reprint in last year's series). Several of the poems in Rough Bush have already played parts in some of the signal poetics statements of the nineties; it's good to finally have such a stash of Ferguson's recent writings in one place.

Enjoy!


--Brian Kim Stefans "

Ten Key Questions on the Next B.C. Election

Clear Cut Press in the Village Voice

U.S. border officials apologize to McEwan: "Danielle Sheahan, spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection in Washington, D.C., said it's 'extremely rare' for the agency to issue apologies and said McEwan's rejection has been erased from its computers. "

The Pentagon as Global Slumlord

By Mike Davis

The young American Marine is exultant. 'It's a sniper's dream,' he tells a Los Angeles Times reporter on the outskirts of Fallujah. 'You can go anywhere and there so many ways to fire at the enemy without him knowing where you are.'

'Sometimes a guy will go down, and I'll let him scream a bit to destroy the morale of his buddies. Then I'll use a second shot.'

'To take a bad guy out,' he explains, 'is an incomparable 'adrenaline rush.'' He brags of having '24 confirmed kills' in the initial phase of the brutal U.S. onslaught against the rebel city of 300,000 people.

Faced with intransigent popular resistance that recalls the heroic Vietcong defense of Hue in 1968, the Marines have again unleashed indiscriminate terror. According to independent journalists and local medical workers, they have slaughtered at least two hundred women and children in the first two weeks of fighting. "

more... (thanks Metafilter)

PDF's by Jean Day, Deanna Ferguson & others up at / U B U E D I T I O N S

Press Action: How the "Mainstream" Media Enables the Bush Administration ...: "Furthermore, by accepting government officials as the most valued of sources, journalism implicitly promotes the idea that these officials have something valuable to say.

There's a scene in a 2002 episode of The Simpsons entitled 'The Great Louse Detective' where, after discovering that Homer Simpson has in the course of the series annoyed quite a few people to the point that they want to physically harm him, Sideshow Bob remarks, 'None of this seems odd to you?' The members of the Simpson family don't see anything odd about this, because there is nothing odd about it within the context of the show.

This clever joke is an example of what does not happen in media coverage of the Bush Administration, just as it did not happen to the administrations that held power before January 20, 2001. Those who produce The Simpsons can publicly poke fun at the absurd nature of the context in which the story of the show resides. Journalists, on the other hand, if they want to keep the game going, don't have this option. If they were to make the obvious fact that Bush's comments were a mix of simplistic rhetoric and non-answers into one of the dominant discourses of the press conference, the press would effectively be saying the whole event was a sham. There goes their importance, prestige and (perhaps most importantly) ratings and sales. They can't say what actually goes on, so the charade continues."

The Tyee: Eating Contests: "Coast Salish eating contests were as personal as the ones Jacobs entered. The difference is that only one person or one team ate, and it was always the guests. The object was, literally, to eat the host out of house and home. Drop by my house at the right time, and this could take less than 15 minutes - which was of course, the point. The eater's boast: "My power can consume everything you own." The host's implicit reply: "I am so rich, I have so much food, that I can feed your eating power until it can't eat any more"--which is a serious malfunction in an eating power. "

The Washington Monthly

"....The Army is just making things worse for the coalition. The Army is intent on having its presence seen and felt in Iraq because they think that will make everyone think they are in charge. What they don't seem to realize is that a large military presence is the one thing, pretty much the only thing, the Iraqis can't tolerate. Despite reports by the news media to the contrary, Iraqis don't resent the humanitarian projects, or the rebuilding effort, or even the U.S. being in control of the government until the transition. Sure the Iraqis want to be in charge, but the majority can tolerate the situation until a transition happens, even if it's months down the road. But what they can NOT tolerate is waking up every day and seeing army tanks and Bradleys rolling through their towns and villages. And they can't tolerate being stopped by endless Army checkpoints on the highways, which were set up by commanding officers who think terrorists and insurgents haven't figured out a way yet to avoid those checkpoints. That's what the Iraqis resent and can't tolerate, along with a thousand other ways the Army makes its presence felt (and I didn't even mention having your door kicked in at 2 am because of some 'hot Army intel')."

Nanaimo Chinatowns Website

Roy Moxham, historian of Tea & the Great Hedge of India

The Dominion Daily Weblog: "The corporate media in Canada and the US, meanwhile, has made a obfuscating and distracting from the siege of Fallujah and the resulting human disaster. I know of no systematic study, but there has been a distinct emphasis on 'kidnapped' foreigners while war crimes, massacres, murder, and the continuing illegality of the occupation ignored or heavily marginalized." (many links)

Common-place: Round Table Discussion of "The Crucible of War" I'm halfway through the book.

The Electric Company Digital Archive

Rogue cattle are causing big problems for Mayne Island : "'They're like hippies -- they sleep all day and roam all night,' said Robson on Friday. 'I got to keep an eye on them. They go quite a ways at nighttime. I spend quite a bit of time looking for them.'"

Where did all the (Edinburgh) Italians go?

some West Coast jazz from Drew

"The cliff line looks like a turkey on a slicer. The Red-winged Blackbirds doing legato notes with a curious timbre. Bright orange shoulders. The sound a combination of machine and cat. Excellent group riffing.

Sparkling early evening sunlight on ocean waves."

more pet sounds @ Million Poems:

"MONO/STEREO

Wouldn't it be nice
Be nice if we were
Were older then we
We wouldn't have
To wait to wait so long

And wouldn't it be
It be nice to live together
In the kind of world
Of world where we belong

You know it's gonna
It's gonna make it
Make it that much better
Much better when we
When we can say good
Night and stay
And stay together

Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray
Maybe be then there wouldn't be a single thing

And then we'd be happy
You know it seems the more
The more we talk about it
It only makes it worse
It worse to live without it
But let's talk about it
But wouldn't it be
Good night baby sleep

Nice
Stay
Morning
New
Spend
Close
Through
Times
Kiss
Maybe
Run
Then
Single
Do
Could
We'd
Be
Seems
Talk
Worse
Without
But
About
It
It
It
It
It
It

Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba"

If a Dissertation Proposal was like Bush's Articulation of Foreign Policy...

"This is an important dissertation I will write. It will be long. It will use words. My wife knows books, and knows words. She is an asset. This will be an important dissertation. It has far-reaching consequentialisms. It will be difficult, but the department must continue to give me fellowship support. I cannot predict how long it will take me to write this. I will use a computer. First I will write notes. I may read a few books. I will take breaks to bale hay (at least when the press is around), and to go jogging, since a Mens sans corporatam fiduciam ... I can't remember how the whole Latin American version of that healthy body healthy mind thing goes. Its unimportant. What is important is my dissertation. I am determined to write it. I will remain determined to write it. Those who doubt my resolve only give aid to my doubters. This is too important a dissertation for there to be doubts. Let there be no doubt. I will write this dissertation. This will be an important dissertation. God bless my undertaking."

Get Out the Led : "Here Bonham captures the true sound of the drums he hears in his head, and not the 'biscuit tin' sound of drumming in a studio, by moving the microphones away from his kit so that 'what you hear on 'When the Levee Breaks' is not just the sound of Bonham's drumming, but the way in which the drums react to the acoustics of the room they were in.' "

big review roundup from The News includes nice words about "Hammertown"

Moribundia: "This is where England most truly excels: in all the characterful shabbiness of its drizzled parks, soiled launderettes, frayed tailors, abject chemists, sparse barbers, bare foyers, dun pubs, weary Legion halls... and cowed solitary cafes."

Coach House Books has reprinted Gerry Gilbert's 80's classic Moby Jane, for which I wrote a blurb (my only one so far) that was printed on a bookmark!

Hepster's Dictionary--comes on like gangbusters, creeps out like the shadow...

Great character actor Victor Argo ( After Hours/Bad Lieutenant/Crimes And Misdemeanors/Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai/King Of New York/Last Temptation Of Christ/Mean Streets/Smoke/Taxi Driver/True Romance) 1934-2004

(thanks drew's blog-o-rama)

Ancoats, Manchester's Little Italy

(thanks Plep)

Mexperimental "Culture is to the beginner a karoake. The beginner just came in. What's old is new to him or her. Even him or herself. He or she is innocent. He or she can afford going into stage fright. The karoake makes this possible. A culture that has ended but that we barely know. This is our first time experiencing it or how we show we came to be one with it. The beginner sings, close enough to the real lyrics, close enough--giggling--to the original voice, its harmony. To the beginner culture is pure joy. Karoake helps when we know the culture we live in is no longer ours. We transform this alienation into a fun pain, an adventure into being seen by others, a funny shame or a singer's security; how we perform how we would behave or look life if this culture we live in was ours."

Bush's necktie produces TV wardrobe malfunction: "His selection, navy with small white dots, produced a moire (pronounced mwa-RAY) effect. Simply put, that's when a pattern being photographed interferes with the grid pattern on television screens, creating an eerie, shimmering visual. "

thanks languagehat for these Corporate Etymologies

Talking Points Memo: "I saw a man on autopilot, and a pretty crude autopilot at that. "

from the archives of the Coach House Press---The Pre-Linguistic Heights/ Golders Green/ The LSD Leacock/ Borders/ Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada

(thanks ::: wood s lot :::)

Wonkette: "Short Bush News Conference: If my answers cannot distract you from the miserable failure that is the Bush foreign policy, perhaps my tie will.

Apparently, Bush and Gorelick have the same wardrobe consultant. How can we trust people to run the country if they can't dress for television?"

kudos to 2003-2004 BCHL Champions, Nanaimo Clippers Junior A Hockey Club: "On April 10, 2004, the 2003-2004 Nanaimo Clippers captured their first BCHL title in 26 years with a 3-2 victory over the Salmon Arm Silverbacks in Game 5 of the BCHL Finals. " Last time they won it, Kev was still in town!

Rumsfeld Looking Forward To Secretary's Day: "'I know it's just a silly Hallmark holiday,' Rumsfeld said of the annual event now formally known as Administrative Professionals Day. 'Even so, I have to admit that seeing that bouquet of flowers on my desk... Well, it makes me feel real good.'"

The Early Days of a Better Nation: "The uprising could fizzle. Already, however, it has revealed that the US-led occupation of Iraq is built on sand. The Fallujah insurgents and the Army of the Mahdi, few in themselves, have drawn mass - not necessarily majority - support. What must be far more worrying for the US is what props to its rule the insurgents have kicked away. The IGC puppet government, to which a very nominal 'sovereignty' is supposed to be handed at the end of June, is scurrying to dissociate itself from the US military's handling of the situation; hence the IGC negotiations with the insurgents. Given how unwelcome to the US military these negotiations must be, one can imagine what pressures the IGC must have brought to bear. Perhaps the whole arrangement might have been on the point of collapse. The IP, ICDC, and even the Iraq Armed Forces, built up over the past year, are not just unreliable but in many cases actively hostile. Of the allied troops, the least reliable are the ex-commies, with the possible exception of the Poles, who were never very commie in the first place. Bulgarians, Ukrainians and Kazhaks are unlikely to be called to the imperial colours again any time soon. Gestural allies with symbolic contingents are vulnerable to hostage-taking and other casualties, and therefore a liability. Second and third tier imperialist forces - Spain and Italy - are militarily solid but politically weak. Their troops will fight until they're withdrawn. The Spanish are leaving in a month or two. The Salvadorans are basically US colonial troops, blooded in occupying their own country for decades, and therefore sound. And then there are the Brits, reliable militarily and politically but privately shaking their heads, if not holding their heads in their hands, at the sight of a counter-insurgency strategy derived from that splendid positive role model of a winning approach: Israel.
"

Matt Taibbi--The real Vietnam Syndrome is amnesia. : "While Democrats and Republicans fight over who best to stick with the blame for our Southeast Asian ass-whipping, both sides remain completely blind to the fact that Vietnam was not really Johnson's or Nixon's Vietnam, any more than Iraq is Bush's Iraq. Vietnam was, first and foremost, Vietnam's Vietnam--and the current absurd debate about the comparison between the two wars has proven that the vast majority of Americans still have trouble grasping that fact"

Equanimity: "It's leaf-casing-on-the-sidewalk day in Between the Uptown Parks."

Corot A&A: Three landscape sketches

Constable Sketch (undecipherable, possibly hills or clouds) (verso)

A Break in the Road - Luke Whittaker download and mix the sounds of the city....

how come no one told me about this terrific Daniel Nester poem?

"ARRAIGNMENT OF A BEACH BOY

Mike Love has ruined America. He has made ours a primitive boring land,
Censoring Brian Wilson, our country's only attempt at art song.

And now Mike Love rests comfortably in California, hawking Kokomo burgers
With his orangutan eyes, orange Republican beard, and fake west coast Alan Watts Buddhism.

He has deprived us of songs beautiful enough to mark our conception,
Thus making us all less intelligent. He has exiled our Mozart to a room with quarts of chicken fried rice.

Mike Love, who blundered Beach Boy harmonies all his life,
Who toured the world with comb-over hairdos and Andy Cap hats.

I condemn him for slurring this century's only true melodist,
Now writhing at a piano with a stroke victim voice.

Mike Love, who sang exactly what he was told for five years, then rebelled,
Exiled his god to a quarter century of carbohydrates, mind control, air filters,

This is the traitor to the state, this is the war criminal who rhymed vibrations with the excitations,
Ruining a symphony, who fucked up the theramin part in Germany,

Mike Love rests comfortably, like some dictator in his dotage.
Who will accuse the happy goat on the cover of Pet Sounds

For not serving its country, biting the hands off the second guy from the right?
These were the hands of a man who turned the knobs down in the studio,

Who asked a genius, What's the bottom note? What's the bottom note? What's the bottom note?
And now Mike Love rides the gravy train to state fairs, Desert Storm rallies,

Endless Summer greatest hits packages, duets with The Fat Boys and John Stamos.
For ruining America, I summon the spirit of William Carlos Williams,

Who endured Eliot, the wasteland that set American poetry back 20 years.
I summon Santayana, who exposed our fake gentility with queeny aplomb.

I order every long-haired Englishman who jacks up the price of vinyl
To repent. I call Mike Love to a tribunal, assembled to condemn his quashing sins,

All the songs that could have been written after Mike Love, all the babies born stupid after him,
All those fallen asleep to his misdeeds."

jane dark's sugarhigh!--Down with the quickness
"By editing out the human pauses of theatre, of mise en scene, and cutting relentlessly from one creaturely burst to the next, the moments in which the human gathers itself, composes itself, are excised from the screen and disallowed for the audience. As a film, it is absolutely filmic; of its viewers, it requires total creatureliness. This may explain its multiple nods to Sam Peckinpah (particularly Pat Garrett), or why the only character allowed much characterization ('Steve Marcus') is pointedly the creep. Nothing, I fear, can explain the Richard Cheese lounge-against-the-machine version of 'Down With The Sickness' mid-film (genius) or do justice to the apparition of Jim Carroll's 'People Who Died' (weepingly le choix juste) during the closing credits, before it dissolves into the original of 'Down With The Sickness' and the last burst of speed overtakes the tale entirely."

Carrie Snodgrass, 1946 - 2004

Will I see you give more than I can take?
Will I only harvest some?
As the days fly past will we lose our grasp
Or fuse it in the sun?

Hey, What Happened to My Jesus?: "Although I choose not to attend the Christian church anymore, I'm still culturally Christian; it's hard to shake. I know all the stories and the names of the characters from my time reading the Bible as a child. A personal favourite was Taylor's Bible Stories, a weighty tome given to me by my grandmother, where bearded, ZZ Top-esque dudes could be found herding sheep in their 900th year.

If I find my fantasy version more comforting than Mel Gibson's blood-soaked interpretation, please, Lord, forgive me."

<$Xvarenah$>: "Von Trier is a true Gnostic; & he is just as disagreeable as one of them would be if transported to the 21c."

Started this blog a year ago today.

MARSHMALLOW PEEPS IN OUTER SPACE!