"Red" Robinson & Elvis in Vancouver, 1958

Vancouver Broadcasters is a surprisingly complete list of the people who brought and bring the news, weather, time, talk and music to the lower mainland & island...reminded me of how much radio I listened to as a lad...

Gary at E l s e w h e r e has one for me & Chris

"STEELY DAN BOUCHARD

I make a pact with you Ron Silliman:
I'll learn to play the saxophone
there where I used to stand.

This is the day of the expanding man,
jet fuel flows with ground water. Tomato,
that shape is my shade

the landscape passes beside the highway.
I'll play just what I feel
in a remarkable book burning era.

They got a name for the winners in the world:
if you would like to make a speech
drink Scotch whisky all night long.

For the love of all things found,
crawl like a viper thru these suburban streets
till sunlight slights the cold.

I'm ready to cross that fine line
by streetcar rail. Imagine there's no Lenin,
and die behind the wheel

or from parking lots behind a stretch of trees.
I want a name when I lose
my mood in tandem with a poet's book.

They call Alabama the Crimson Tide
whose root lies in the material conditions of existence.
Call me Deacon Blues." 

online versioning of one of my very favorites--Curiosities of Literature

"An incrementally-published online presentation of Isaac D'Israeli's book Curiosities of Literature, a compendium of book-lore originally published in six volumes between 1791 and 1834. "

(ta to wood's lot)

nice radio review of my "album of the year", the Albert Ayler box with useful snippets & examples...

(more info & downloads here) 

various boffins answer the question "What Do You Believe Is True Even Though You Cannot Prove It?"

Old school house sneaking back onto the decks?

"That experimentation lends itself properly to Phuture's 'Acid Trax,' Marshall Jefferson's 'Move Your Body' and Mr. Finger's 'Can You Feel It.' All of these classics have a raw energy completely lacking in the loungy house produced today. Here's to a house renaissance in the '05. "

Steve at Third Factory Notebook has very observant brief notes on recent and "holiday" films. Very good on Huston's "brusqueness", but he should give "Meet Me in St Louis" a few more chances.

gmtPlus9 has a download of the driving, catchy "Bar-b-q" by Wendy Rene, one of my favorite songs from the big Stax singles box, as well as "Starry Eyes" by the Records...

Shirley Chisholm 1924-2005 

omnibus review from "Canadian Literature" includes my Hammertown

"In short bursts this dizziness is quiet pleasing, but longer episodes induce sleep after all. "

from Willeford's cockfighter journal, about the making of Monte Hellman's adaptation, which starred Warren Oates

"Friday is the first day of the spring semester, and I'll be back in the classroom, back to mundane reality, teaching D. H. Lawrence to bewildered strangers.

The more I think about things, the more I admire Roger Corman and his intuitive mind.

Cockfighter, I am certain, is a winner. It will cause some controversy, pro and con, but we can't lose with this film. Because audiences can see an illegal sport legally, they will come to see the film out of curiosity, and then will spread the word about it because it has a good strong story. Frank is the first totally silent hero since Singer, in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, but Frank is willfully silent, not a deaf-mute. So Frank's stubbornness will appeal to anyone who talks too much, which includes writers like myself. " 

Charles Willeford's 'Cockfighter'

"The man who is unable to talk back is at the mercy of these people. He is like an inexperienced priest who listens tolerantly to the first simple confessions of impure thoughts, and then listens with increasing horror as the sins mount, one outdoing the other until he is shocked into dumbness. And, of course, the sinner takes advantage of a man's credulousness, loading ever greater sins upon him to see how far he can really go now that he has found a trapped listener who is unable to stop him. My ears had been battered by the outpourings of troubles, tribulations, aspirations and the affairs of broken hearts for two years and seven months. Only by being rude enough to leave the scene had I evaded some of my confessors."

Boswell and Samuel Johnson's Hodge--

"Nor would it be just, under this head, to omit the fondness which he shewed for animals which he had taken under his protection. I never shall forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat: for whom he himself used to go out and buy oysters, lest the servants having that trouble should take a dislike to the poor creature. I am, unluckily, one of those who have an antipathy to a cat, so that I am uneasy when in the room with one; and I own, I frequently suffered a good deal from the presence of this same Hodge. I recollect him one day scrambling up Dr. Johnson's breast, apparently with much satisfaction, while my friend smiling and half-whistling, rubbed down his back, and pulled him by the tail; and when I observed he was a fine cat, saying, "Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this;" and then as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, "but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.""

an immense trove of poetry sound files at Pennsound
(So far I've played Hugh MacDiarmid's "A Glass of Pure Water" and James Schuyler's "Hymn to Life", volume cranked, tucked up under a quilt in the dark for extra concentration. Pressed against my foot tabbycat Blinky seemed especially taken with the latter, even starting a little during Schuyler's recollection of his battle-scarred tomcat Hodge leaving traces of blood on the card table.) 

fantastic, downloadable Bird Songs and Training Records 

American Muslims Fingerprinted By U.S. at Canadian Border...

"Several of the Muslim citizens held at the border for up to six hours on Sunday night and Monday morning told CAIR they objected strenuously to being fingerprinted, but were informed by CBP representatives that 'you have no rights' and that they would be held until they agreed to the fingerprinting procedure. One person was allegedly threatened with arrest if she attempted to leave the detention area without being fingerprinted."

(Clinton, Ontario) thanks S/FJ for the link to a video about a special place where books are free! 

Life Without Trial

"The new prison, dubbed Camp 6, would allow inmates more comfort and freedom than they have now, and would be designed for prisoners the government believes have no more intelligence to share, the newspaper said.

'It would be modeled on a U.S. prison and would allow socializing among inmates,' the paper said. "

a happy and safe new year dear readers! 

The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami links to help sites

spaghetti

[It., pl. of spaghetto thin string, twine.]

1. a. A variety of pasta made in long thin strings. Occas., a dish of spaghetti.

1849 E. Acton Mod. Cookery (ed. 8) p. xxxii, Sparghetti [sic] Naples vermicelli. 1888 Mrs. Beeton Bk. Househ. Managem. §2952 Maccheroni, or Spaghetti, a smaller kind of macaroni, generally follows the soup. 1921 F. Swinnerton Coquette ii. xvi. 175 The waitress approached, bearing two large plates piled high with spaghetti. 1931 B. Starke Touch & Go iv. 51 A schoolteacher took us to lunch in Avon and showed us how to manage yards of spaghetti by rolling it up on our forks. 1949 J. More Land of Italy 4 A capacity to eat pasta is an essential requirement. The principal varieties are the rope-like spaghetti of Naples, the pipe-like macaroni, and the omelet-like cannelloni. 1956 N. de la Fère Italian Bouquet vi. 66 He slipped the menu under my eyes. I refused to admit that the only recognisable word was "spaghetti". 1965 C. K. Stead in N.Z. Short Stories (1966) 337 Julian came into Gomeo's and asked for a spaghetti. 1981 M. Nabb Death of Englishman ii. iii. 97 Old men munching slowly at their spaghetti with toothless gums.

1981
1965
1956
1949
1888 1931
1849 1921

b. fig. and transf.
1935 A. Huxley Let. 17 Feb. (1969) 391 Orlo Williams has read every inch of spaghetti that has ever emerged from the Italian presses. 1940 O. Nash Face is Familiar 195 And they give you a look that implies that your spine is spaghetti and your soul is lard. 1946 F. Hamann Air Words 50 Spaghetti, (1) electric wiring; (2) strings of sealing compound. 1960 Cooke & Markus Electronics & Nucleonics Dict. 446/2 Spaghetti, insulating tubing used over bare wires or as a sleeve for holding two or more insulated wires together. The tubing is usually made of varnished cloth or a plastic. 1973 C. Williams Man on Leash (1974) viii. 119 He was always experimenting and lashing up nutty pieces of electronic spaghetti. 1981 T. Barling Bikini Red North xiii. 276 His vasectomy could be reversed. New techniques. "We can join up all that miniature spaghetti with incredible accuracy."

1981
1973
1960
1946
1940
1935









4. attrib. and Comb. spaghetti house, joint, sauce, tongs; spaghetti-like adj.; spaghetti Bolognese, spaghetti served with a sauce of which the principal ingredients are beef and tomato; spaghetti bowl, a network of pipelines constructed to carry materials between petrochemical companies on the Gulf Coast of the U.S.; also transf.; spaghetti junction colloq., a complex junction of roads at different levels; applied spec. to a major interchange on the M6 near Birmingham; also fig.; spaghetti (shoulder) strap, a thin cord-like shoulder strap for a dress or the like; spaghetti tubing colloq., tubular insulation for electrical wire; spaghetti Western, a Western (western n. 4) or film set in the U.S. old west, but made in Italy or by Italians, esp. cheaply.
[1947 L. P. De Gouy Gold Cookery Bk. 760 (heading) Spaghetti alla Bolognese.] 1950 E. David Bk. Mediterranean Food 93 If you are serving the classic spaghetti Bolognese+see that it is highly flavoured. 1973 M. Underwood Reward for Defector vii. 56 [He] reached out for everything he needed to make himself a plateful of spaghetti bolognese.



1962 I. Fleming Spy who loved Me i. ii. 34 Derek took me right across London to a spaghetti house called "The Bamboo".

1900 Ade Fables in Slang 158 He knew his Works were good, because all the Free and Untrammeled Souls in the Spaghetti Joint told him so. 1982 H. Engel Murder on Location (1983) ix. 87, I could see a spaghetti joint across the street.

1971 Evening News (Worcester) 15 Nov. 7/4 Worcester will have its own "spaghetti junction" if the big multi-level interchange is ever constructed in the Arboretum. 1978 Listener 5 Jan. 25/4 We pass abruptly from the proprium to the ordinarium, from the winding country road into a great spaghetti junction of criss-cross melodies. 1980 S. Brett Dead Side of Mike xi. 125 He got held up under the spaghetti junction between the M23 and M25 because of road works.

1979 K. Bonfiglioli After You with Pistol vi. 25 We parted in a spaghetti-like tangle of insincere matiness.

1953 A. Boni Talisman Italian Cook Bk. xiii. 222 (heading) Spaghetti sauce home style. 1968 C. Drummond Death & Leaping Ladies v. 111 He was neatly avoiding spilling spaghetti sauce over a very snappy jacket. 1980 B. Freemantle Charlie Muffin's Uncle Sam vii. 73 The man hadn't changed his shirt. There was spaghetti sauce on the collar.

1972 New Yorker 30 Sept. 81/1 Black cocktail dresses with sparkling spaghetti straps. 1977 Lancashire Life Dec. 104/3 The demure look from Elizabeth Hayes consists of a lace-trimmed polyester satin bedjacket which, when taken off, reveals a sexy nightdress with spaghetti shoulder straps. 1980 Times 12 Feb. 7/5 A natty little camisole top with spaghetti shoulder straps topped with an amazing sort of opened up tube of knitting which seals your arms and then blossoms into a shrug for the back and shoulders. Do not ask me how it is done.

1972 House & Garden Feb. 78/1 Spaghetti tongs, 85p. 1977 E. McBain Long Time no See iii. 32 Knives and forks piled haphazardly, paper napkins, spaghetti tongs, a corkscrew.

1922 Science & Invention Mag. May (Advt., rear cover), Spaghetti Tubing, black or yellow in 2 1 / 2 -ft. lengths+18 cents per length. 1969 M. Pei Words in Sheep's Clothing (1970) iii. 22 "Spaghetti Western" and "Sukiyaki Western" are terms applied to cheap Westerns produced in Italy and Japan. 1973 J. Susann Once is not Enough i. 34 It started with the flop of Melba's picture. When your kid is busted into pieces, you can't worry about a spaghetti western. 1977 G. Marton Alarum 56, I wanted to see a Spaghetti Western movie.

Home for the Holidays: Why?

"There are more depressing spots than the Winnipeg Greyhound station. But you never see them unless your ass is peeking out from a hospital gown. "

wassail, n.

(Forms: 3 wæs hæil, wæshail, washayl, washail, wesseyl, 3–4, 7 wassayl, 3, 6–7, 9 arch. wassaile, 5 wassaylle, wessayle, (whatsaile, -saill), 6 wassaill, -ayle, 6–7 wassall, 7–8 wassal, (7 vassaile, Hist. was-haile, washeall, waes heal, 9 waisall, waissel, arch. was-hael), 5–9 wassel(l, 3– wassail. [ME. wæs hæil etc., a. ON. ves (= later ver) heill, corresp. to OE. wes hál lit. ‘be in good health’ or ‘be fortunate’: see be v. A. 3 and whole a.
As an ordinary salutation (= "hail" or "farewell") the phrase, or an approximation to it, occurs both in OE. (hál wes þú, and in pl. wesað hále: see be v. A. 3) and in ON. (pl. verið heilir). But neither in OE. nor in ON., nor indeed in any Teut. lang., has any trace been found of the use as drinking formulas, of the phrases represented by wassail and drinkhail. It seems probable that this use arose among the Danish-speaking inhabitants of England, and became more or less common among the native population; in the 12th c. it was regarded by the Normans as markedly characteristic of Englishmen. The earliest known occurrence of the phrases is in Geoffrey of Monmouth vi. xii. (c1140), in the well-known story of Rowena (wes heil+drinc heil: v.r. was heil, printed edd. corruptly wacht heil). Geoffrey's attribution of the phrases to the 5th century is an anachronism; the original story as told by Nennius contains nothing corresponding to them. In Wace's Brut (c1180), which is a metrical version of Geoffrey, various MSS. have weshel, waisseil, gasel; drinkel, drincheheil, drechehel. That Wace's acquaintance with the ‘English’ phrases was not wholly derived from the passage in Geoffrey is shown by his reference to them in the Roman de Rou, where it is said that the night before the battle of Hastings was spent by the English in revelry, with cries of weissel (v.rr. wesse heil, welseil, weseil) and drincheheil (v.rr. drinceseil, drinqueheil, drinkeil). In the Speculum Stultorum of Nigellus Wireker (c 1190) the English students at the university of Paris are praised for generosity and other virtues, but are said to be too much addicted to wessail and dringail. The earliest example of the phrases in an English context is in Layamon's translation of Wace.
In drinkhail the second element is, as in wassail, the ON. adj. heill used as complement. Although the phrase drekk heill is not recorded in ON., it has an exact syntactical parallel in sit heill, ‘sit in health’. Whether the form of the first element in drinkhail is due to OE. influence or is archaic Scandinavian is doubtful; the form drechehel in one MS. of Wace is noteworthy from its resemblance to the ON. of the literary period.]
1. A salutation used when presenting a cup of wine to a guest, or drinking the health of a person, the reply being drink-hail.
c1205 Lay. 14309 Reowen+bar an hir honde ane guldene bolle i-uulled mid wine+& þus ærest sæide in Ænglene londe Lauerd king wæs hæil [c1275 wassayl]. Ibid. 14332 Þat freond sæiðe to freonde+Leofue freonde wæs hail. Ibid. 14970 Heo fulde hir scale of wine+& þus hailede him on+Lauerd king wæshail [c1275 wassail]. 13+ E.E. Allit. P. B. 1508 WeŠe wyn in þis won "wassayl!" he cryes. c1400 Brut 52 Ronewenne+come wiþ a coupe of golde+and knelede bifore þe kyng, and saide to him "Whatsaile!"þat was þe ferst tyme þat "whatsaile" and "drynkehaile" come vp into þis lande; and fram þat tyme into this tyme it Haþ bene wel vsede. 1568 Grafton Chron. II. 116, I trust this wassall shall make all England glad. And with that he dranke a great draught, the king pledging him. 1832 Motherwell Poems, Battle-Flag of Sigurd i, Then lift the can to bearded lip, Wassaile! to every dark-ribbed ship, To every battle-field! 1843 Lytton Last Bar. i. v, Fair mistress Sybill, your dainty lips will not, I trow, refuse me the waisall. [Another ed. reads waissel.] 1860 Longfellow Wayside Inn, K. Olaf xii. xiii, The Berserks drank "Was-hael! to the Lord!"


b. As a mere salutation. quasi-arch.
a1643 Cartwright Ordinary iv. ii, Ha. What? who goes there? Moth. Waes heal thou gentle Knight.
¶c. ironically. A salute, smart attack. Obs.
c1400 Laud Troy-bk. 9020 Odemoun+Toke Menelaus In that swyng, And him bare ouer his hors tayl: He aff him there suche a wassail, That he lay longe In colde swot.
2. The liquor in which healths were drunk; esp. the spiced ale used in Twelfth-night and Christmas-eve celebrations.
wine and wassail (now arch., echoing Shakes.): vaguely, strong drink in abundance (cf. sense 4).
c1300 Havelok 1246 Wyn and ale deden he fete, And made[n] hem glade and bliþe, Wesseyl ledden he fele siþe. 1494 in Househ. Ord. (1790) 121 When the steward cometh in at the hall doore with the wassell, he must crie three tymes, Wassell, wassell, wassell. a1548 Hall Chron., Hen. VIII, 9 Then was the wassaill or banket brought in, and so brake vp Christmas. 1601 Holland Pliny xxv. viii. II. 224 And even at this day [in Spain] in their great feasts+they have a certaine Wassaile or Bragat, which goeth round about the table, made of honied wine or sweet mead, with+hearbes in it. 1605 Shakes. Macb. i. vii. 64 His two Chamberlaines Will I with Wine, and Wassell, so conuince, That Memorie+shall be a Fume. 1616 B. Jonson Forest iii, The jolly wassall walkes the often round, And in their cups, their cares are drown'd. 1616 I Masque of Christmas 2 Enter+Wassal, Like a neat Sempster, and Songster; her Page bearing a browne bowle, drest with Ribbands. 1661 New Carolls for Christmas, For Twelfth-day iii, The Wassell well spiced, about shall go round. 1742–50 R. O. Cambridge Archimage xiii. Wks. (1803) 39 'Bove all things else he Wassel priz'd and ale. 1808 Scott Marm. vi. Introd. 64 On Christmas eve+The wassel round, in good brown bowls Garnish'd with ribbons, blithely trowls. 1816 I Old Mort. ix, Women, wine, and wassail, all to be had for little but the asking. 1824 W. Irving T. Trav. I. 7 The wine and the wassail of mine host began to operate upon bodies already a little jaded by the chase. 1836 Dickens Pickw. xxviii, They sat down+to a substantial supper, and a mighty bowl of wassail,+in which the hot apples were hissing and bubbling. 1850 Tennyson In Mem. cv. v, And strangely falls our Christmas-eve.+ But let no footstep beat the floor, Nor bowl of wassail mantle warm. 1851 Longfellow Gold. Leg. i. Court-yard of Castle 17 No song, no laugh, no jovial din Of drinking wassail to the pin. 1857 G. A. Lawrence Guy Liv. iv, Two hundred gownsmen, wild with wrath and wassail, came leaping to the rescue. 1898 J. B. Crozier My Inner Life v. 43 He was much addicted to wine and wassail too, as his blood-red face sufficiently attested.
†3. A custom formerly observed on Twelfth-night and New-Year's eve of drinking healths from the wassail-bowl. †Also, ? the person invited to drink from the wassail-bowl. Obs.
1598 E. Guilpin Skial. (1878) 25 A wassaile on twelfe night. 1612 Selden Illustr. Drayton's Poly-olb. ix. 153, I see a custome in some parts among vs,+I meane the yearely washaile in the country on the vigil of the New-yeare. a1654 I Table-Talk (1689) 42 The Pope in sending Rellicks to Princes, does as Wenches do by their Wassels at New-years-tide, they present you with a Cup, and you must drink of a slabby stuff; but the meaning is, you must give them Moneys. 1658 Phillips, Wassail,+an ancient Ceremonious custome, still used upon twelf day at night, of going about with a great bowl of Ale, drinking of healths. 1661 New Carolls for Christmas, For Twelfth-day ii, For a King of our Wassell this night we must chuse.
4. A carousal; riotous festivity, revelling.
1602 Shakes. Ham. i. iv. 9 The King doth wake to night, and takes his rouse, Keepes wassels. 1606 I Ant. & Cl. i. iv. 56 Anthony, Leaue thy lasciuious Vassailes. 1614 R. Tailor Hog hath lost Pearl G3, I sweare,+By Cresus name and by his castle, Where winter nights he keepeth wassell. 1805 Scott Last Minstr. v. viii, The blithesome signs of wassel gay Decay'd not with the dying day. 1820 Byron Juan iii. lxi, Meantime the lady and her lover sate At wassail in their beauty and their pride. 1820 W. Irving Sketch Bk. (1849) 148, I at length arrived in merry Eastcheap, that ancient region of wit and wassail. 1848 Lytton Harold iv. ii, A board was spread and a wassail was blithe around me. 1878 H. Phillips Jr. Poems fr. Sp. & German 72 Two kings held wassail in Orkadàl. 1903 R. S. Hawker Footpr. Far Cornwall 28 Now there was signal made of banquet in the halls of Stowe, of wassail and dance.
†5. A carol or song sung by wassailers; a wassailing or health-drinking song. Obs.
In quot. 1607 ironical or jocular.
1607 Beaum. & Fl. Woman-Hater iii. i, Have you done your wassayl? 'tis a handsome drowsie dittie I'll assure ye, now I had as leave hear a Cat cry. c1650 New Christmas Carols, Carrol for Wassel-Bowl 7 Good Dame here at your Door Our Wassel we begin.
6. attrib. and Comb., as (sense 3), wassail-candle, -day, -singer, -singing; (sense 4), wassail-bout, -revelry, -roar, -rout, -season, -song; also wassail-cup = wassail-bowl.
A spurious compound wassail-bread, given in many Dicts., is due to a misinterpretation of wastell-bread: see wastel. For a similar figment, wassail-cake, see quot. 1686–7 s.v. wassail v. 2.
1840 Longfellow Skeleton in Armour vii, Many a *wassail-bout Wore the long Winter out.

1597 Shakes. 2 Hen. IV, i. ii. 179 Iu. What? you are as a candle, the better part burnt out. Fal. A *Wassell Candle, my Lord; all Tallow.

1634 Brereton Trav. (Chetham Soc.) 6 Such as they met gave them money+to buy a *wassail-cup, a carouse. 1600 Holland Livy xxvi. xiii. 593 The same wassaile cup [L. poculum idem] that first will be presented to me, shall go round about to you all. 1853 C. Brontë Villette xxv, Let us haue a Christmas wassail-cup and toast Old England here, on the hearth.

1742 Shenstone Schoolmistr. xiii, O *wassel days! O customs meet and well!

1814 Scott Ld. of Isles vi. xix, But now, from England's host, the cry Thou hear'st of *wassail revelry.

1808 I Marm. i. xxx, This was the sign the feast was o'er; It hush'd the merry *wassel roar.

Ibid. iii. Introd. 187 Of forayers, who,+home returning, fill'd the hall With revel, *wassel-rout, and brawl.

1767 Mickle Concub. i. xxix, Now fly the *wassal Seasons wingd with Glee.

a1825 Forby Voc. E. Anglia, *Wassail-singers.

1895 ‘Q’ [Quiller-Couch] Wand. Heath 182 December and January, with+carols and *wassail-singing.

1829 Scott Anne of G. xxiii, The chorus of a *wassel-song, which some reveller was trolling over in his sleep. 1854 Grace Greenwood Haps & Mishaps 88 A hall of the old castle, which had rung to the clang of rude armour, and the wassail songs of Erin's princes and knights.

Top Cat (1961), at least partially responsible for my early turn toward languid Bohemianism, is out on DVD. 

1931 self-portrait of Ilse Bing: Queen of the Leica

(via gmtPlus9) 

Renata Tebaldi 1922-2004 

"A Child's Christmas in Wales" read by the author. Sadly no sign of the great Denholm Eliot TV version on local channels this year. 

Torture reconsidered: Shock, awe and the human body

"It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Bush administration is not torturing prisoners because it is useful but because of its symbolism. It originally was intended to be a form of what later, in the attack on Iraq, came to be called 'shock and awe.' It was meant as intimidation. We will do these terrible things to demonstrate that nothing will stop us from conquering our enemies. We are indifferent to world opinion. We will stop at nothing.

In that respect, it is like the attack on Falluja last month, which - destructive as it was - was fundamentally a symbolic operation. Any insurgent who wanted to escape could do so long before the much-advertised attack actually began. Its real purpose was exemplary destruction: to deliver a message to all of Iraq that this is what the United States can do to you if you continue the resistance. It was collective punishment of the city's occupants for having tolerated terrorist operations based there."

Tom and Jerry at Heart of China's Linguistic Storm

"Dubbed into regional Chinese dialects, the warring cat and mouse have been huge TV hits — and a good way to pass home-grown culture down to the younger generation, programmers say.

Not so fast, says the central government up north in Beijing, which for decades has promoted standard Mandarin as the only Chinese language worthy of the airwaves. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has ordered an end to broadcasting in dialect, saying kids should be raised in a "favorable linguistic environment."

The move has put Tom and Jerry — or "Cat and Mouse," as the show is called here — at the center of a long-running debate about how to maintain national cohesion amid a linguistic sea of highly distinct regional accents, dialects and wholly separate language groups."  

vignette from the Book of Daniel by Philip James de Loutherbourg, from The Bowyer Bible

(via the mighty Exclamation Mark) 

Screened Out--interesting top 10 movie list includes Mamet's "Spartan"

Overheard in New York

"Kid #1: Paper beats rock. BAM! Your rock is blowed up!
Kid #2: "Bam" doesn't blow up, "bam" makes it spicy. Now I got a SPICY ROCK! You can't defeat that!"

below from and much more at White Rose, a UK civil liberties blog

Guardian: If you value your freedom, reject this sinister ID card

"To be anonymous, to go privately, to move residence without telling the authorities is a fundamental liberty which is about to be taken from us. People may not choose to exercise this entitlement to privacy, or see the point of it, but once it's gone and a vast database is built, eventually to be accessed by every tentacle of the government machine, we will never be able to claw it back. We are about to surrender a right which is precious, rare even in western democracies, and profoundly emblematic of our culture and civilisation. And what for? "

Matter and Memory: A Conversation with experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison

"A (nitrate) print goes through various stages of "decomp," as it’s called for short in the archival world. And they also have terms for those various stages, the first one being that the print gets "tacky," then stickier and then they call it "donut," because a ring has formed. And then something that maybe came from a Canadian archivist, it's called a "hockey puck". And then at that point there is nothing to do with it, you can't even play hockey with it. Then it eventually turns into dust."


(via GreenCine Daily)

Real Mince Pies

"Take veel ysode and grynde it smale. Take harde eyren isode and ygron and do thereto with prunes hole; dates, icorved pynes and raisons corance hool spices, and powdor, sugar salt; make a litell coffin, and do this fars thereinne, and bake it, and serve if forth."  

just in case you haven't seen it by now, the magnificent online Early and Clairvoyant Journals by Hannah Weiner...

Bookseller's Plates

(via Coudal Partners) 

Anodyne on Steven Shearer at the CAG--

"That young dude posing down with his prize pot plant, his eyes glittering vampire-red from the camera’s flash? Irony. The painting of the greasy lunk whose hair highlights spell out H-A-S-H? Irony. Shearer’s fake Port Coquitlam basement metal band, the Puff Rock Shiteaters? Irony, baby. The alternative – that these works might actually be as transparent as glass, that Shearer might find something worthwhile or even appealing in his subjects – is too worrying for most institutional viewers to contemplate. Thus the unsigned wall panel at the CAG, whose anonymous author spends several densely worded paragraphs discussing systems of representation, and Shearer’s hopscotching jumps among them, without ever once discussing the artist’s subjects, a list apparently designed to bait the dependably liberal conscience of the Canadian art bureaucracy: longhairs; burnouts; suburban rednecks; decayed child stars; Kiss tribute bands; drunks, and assorted other “high”-culturally challenged folks."

Balance in the service of falsehood

" By promoting schools of journalism, media owners could claim that trained editors and reporters were granted autonomy to make decisions based on professional judgment, rather than on the needs of proprietors and advertisers. As a result, owners could present their media monopoly as a service to the community."

S/FJ on IDM

"The addition of "intelligent" and "music" to the category of original music composed and performed largely through cut'n'paste reproduction strategies is the history of the bleaching and bourgeosification of the tradition, and meanwhile I am still waiting for something as intelligent or musical from Sean O'Hagan (or Squarepusher or Shadow) as "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel." As for "dance," don't make me laff, it hurts my jaw.

There is a social content to IDM -- produced entirely by the drama between sonic composition/production technics and the name! -- and that social content is racism, and particularly the racism that takes the form of the most traditional, desecratory narrative of denial, recuperation, piracy and despoilage one could imagine, one that's been played out not just in artistic genre but in, hmm, the history of colonization? "

The Third Unheard--Connecticut Hip Hop 79-83  

beautiful photographs of Marcy Avenue, one of my favorite subway stations.

(via Gothamist) 

High-tech rat hole

" Ever since March 1983 when Ronald Reagan got it into his head that we could build an astrodome over the earth and created a crash program with almost no respectable scientific or expert input, this albatross has been nothing more than a welfare program for generals and defense contractors -men who often turn out to be the same person, see under "Tauzin" for a domestic allegory- but the scale is really something to behold. This particular administration's obsession with Star Wars crowded out any attention it might have been willing to pay to terrorism during the 9/11 days, but even with all of the evildoings discussed above, it still finds money to pour more and more billions down this high-tech rat hole while at the same time pretending it is not the unarguable failure it has proved to be at virtually every moment of its existence for the past 21 years--and counting. "

Silliman's Blog

"The degree of work involved in creating a couple hundred couplets on the topic of constipation & bears is not inconsiderable--and to do so with wit & humor all the more challenging. "

The Rebel Sell

"Thus the kind of ad parodies that we find in Adbusters, far from being subversive, are indistinguishable from many genuine ad campaigns. Flipping through the magazine, one cannot avoid thinking back to Frank's observation that "business is amassing great sums by charging admission to the ritual simulation of its own lynching." "