Pallet Stack Creates Art Status Ruckus

"'He was a conniver, a schemer, and a manipulator,' wrote Hal Wheatley. He did not create art, Wheatley said. 'Instead, he used his eccentric creation to justify a deeply selfish motive--avoidance of societal regulation.' " 

samba and bossa nova downloads and cover art at SABADABADA 

OAKLANDISH...cool site of a proud East Bay collective. One of my favorite places done justice to. thanks Juliana. 

While winds frae aff Ben Lomond blaw
And bar the doors wi' driving snaw
And hing us owre the ingle
I set me down, to pass the time
And spin a verse or twa o' rhyme
In hamely westlin jingle
While frosty winds blaw in the drift
Ben to the chimla lug
I grudge a wee the Great-folk's gift
That live sae bien an' snug
I tent less, and want less
Their roomy fire-side
But hanker, and canker
To see their cursed pride...


 

Unexpected outing yesterday with Bob to Shawnigan Lake where he picked up a new 12-foot aluminum skiff. On the way back we stopped in at the Merridale Estate Cidery, tucked into a lovely little valley, trees bare but at least the snow was gone & the sun was half-out. And there were free samples. The "scrumpy" (rough cider, made from small or unselected apples. Also attrib. in scrumpy cider. 1904 in Eng. Dial. Dict. s.v., These apples are of no good but to make scrumpy of. 1932 [see nobble v. 3].1962 G. Compton Too Many Murderers xii. 87 Scrumpy was only eightpence a pint. 1973 C. Bonington Next Horizon viii. 114 A brisk five-minute walk took you to the Coronation Tap, where you could down a pint of scrumpy cider and eat home-made pies) is quite something.

(from Scrump, v. trans. To steal (apples), esp. from orchards. Also transf. and absol. 1866 R. Hallam Wadsley Jack iv. 17 Dick Greasy ax'd me if I'd mak' one to goa a scrumpim', that is, fetchin' apples off sumboddy's trees. 1931 ‘G. Orwell’ Hop-Picking in Coll. Essays (1968) I. 71 Scrump, to, to steal. 1945 B. Naughton in C. Madge Pilot Papers I. 101 They'd come scrumping in Woolworths, or over at the market, or from the street stalls. 1951 A. Baron Rosie Hogarth iii. i. 137 Scrumping apples, remember? God didn't put 'em on that tree for Mr. Moggeridge. 1966 M. Torrie Heavy as Lead xiv. 169 His lordship was going scrumping. You know. Kids scrump apples, Sir G. scrumped rock garden plants. 1972 K. Bonfiglioli Don't point that Thing at Me i. 3 English policemendare not even spank the bottoms of little boys caught scrumping apples nowadays. Hence scrumped ppl. a.; "scrumper, one who scrumps; "scrumping vbl. n. 1946 Scrutiny XIII. 293 There is to be, after all, no development in Fant's moral powers: only, as it were, a schoolboy scrumping of all the redeeming fruits of experience. 1957 Times 20 Aug. 5/1 Scrumping is an offence which perhaps no one in this court-room has not committed. 1969 M. Wiggin Cottage Idyll ii. 26 One scoundrel sent me a message to the effect that he would like his cherished scrumping stick back. 1973 D. Orgill Jasius Pursuit i. 9 If the police had to jail every hippy fruit-scrumper, the prisons would soon be overcrowded. 1976 A. Hill Summer's End vii. 98 Scrumped apples always taste better than bought ones. 1981 Daily Tel. 3 Mar. 3/1 (heading) Rector used stick on girl scrumper.

Used books in Red Hook--

"The used bookstore is a unique business model in which inventory is, to a good extent, determined by the direct participation of its customers. The customers' cultural awareness, preferences, age, education, careers, and direction of curiosity at certain times and places in their lives defines what stocks the shelves, and so the used bookstore becomes a reflection of its customers, if only at slight angles. This is not simply the nature of selling used merchandise. Most used goods, the kind you might find at a pawnshop, don't have enough variation or cultural encoding to bear the residue of their previous owners. A camera model in a certain condition says something, but nothing we can decode. An old ring with inscribed initials is missing its Rosetta Stone. But an underlined segment of T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets points to a reader's epiphany, and what sort of person he or she was to be moved by such imagery: And you see in every face the mental emptiness/deepen/leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about. "

devotees of George Saintsbury (and I mean you ) should note that the The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. 1907-21 contains a lot of his work (on prosody, "minor" poets & much more) not found elsewhere (on the web anyway)...

a proper conservative talks about End-Timers & Neo-Cons

"The conservative movement that I grew up in did not share the liberals' abiding faith in government. 'Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.'

Today it is liberals, not conservatives, who endeavor to defend civil liberties from the state. Conservatives have been won around to the old liberal view that as long as government power is in their hands, there is no reason to fear it or to limit it. Thus, the Patriot Act, which permits government to suspend a person's civil liberty by calling him a terrorist with or without proof. Thus, preemptive war, which permits the President to invade other countries based on unverified assertions.

There is nothing conservative about these positions. To label them conservative is to make the same error as labeling the 1930s German Brownshirts conservative.

American liberals called the Brownshirts 'conservative,' because the Brownshirts were obviously not liberal. They were ignorant, violent, delusional, and they worshipped a man of no known distinction. Brownshirts' delusions were protected by an emotional force field. Adulation of power and force prevented Brownshirts from recognizing implications for their country of their reckless doctrines."

author Philip Pullman on teaching writing--

"What does work, the York study maintains, is writing in a meaningful context: writing as a practical hands-on craft activity. One of the implications of this is that teachers have to be confident about writing - about play, about delight. Too many are not, because they haven't had to be; and the result is the dismal misery of the "creative writing" drills tested in the Sats, where children are instructed to plan, draft, edit, revise, rewrite, always in the same order, always in the same proportions, always in the same way. If teachers knew something about the joy of fooling about with words, their pupils would write with much greater fluency and effectiveness. Teachers and pupils alike would see that the only reason for writing is to produce something true and beautiful; that they were on the same side, with the teacher as mentor, as editor, not as instructor and measurer, critic and judge." 

(The Auld Kirk in Alloway, scene of the Witches Sabbath in "Tam O'Shanter"--lived with my family about a mile from it, '70-72)

some recipes for your Burns Supper

Anodyne adds to the "How Cats Spend Their Time" anthology--

"A beast can
not bear its own weight
out of water, gravity
collapses, holes appear
at the heart of things. "

Our lone goldfish, that lives in a barrel on the porch, seems to have survived the cold spell. The fish in this Matisse don't have nearly enough room.

(Byron being greeted at Missolonghi)

belated birthday greetings to the esteemed author of Don Juan


"The evaporation of a joyous day
Is like the last glass of champagne, without
The foam which made its virgin bumper gay;
Or like a system coupled with a doubt;
Or like a soda bottle when its spray
Has sparkled and let half its spirit out;
Or like a billow left by storms behind,
Without the animation of the wind;


Or like an opiate, which brings troubled rest,
Or none; or like -- like nothing that I know
Except itself; -- such is the human breast;
A thing, of which similitudes can show
No real likeness, -- like the old Tyrian vest
Dyed purple, none at present can tell how,
If from a shell-fish or from cochineal.
So perish every tyrant's robe piece-meal! "

(NYC 1888)

thanks metafilter for The Digital Snow Museum

Stay warm and safe...

thoughtful review of the one-volume version of William Vollman's "Rising Up and Rising Down"--

"Humankind’s propensity for violence throws up questions that Vollmann pursues through the thick of the most horrific situations. He is, by turns, baffled, dogged, frightened, tireless, overwhelmed, uncertain and sickened even as he seeks to codify the possible responses to violence and formulate the arguments which organise this vast work."

thanks SL for this poetry from actor Michael Madsen

"Yesterday I was the answer to 46 Down
in a crossword puzzle
in the L.A. Times" 

from Laynie Browne - "A Mullein Sceptre in My Hand"

+


Doorstep, in her arms
an owl slept

Windmill modder cry
a drifting herd

an' road so steep
rasped the tale again

Bring home sheep

Entrammelled gambler
sorrow marble diurnal


+


Murmur of old stone
yellow water

Cross no mill

arms of darkness

No matter which primrose
rondel

Poppies doorways
browse


+


Yearneth
violet blows

turf comeliest
on a higher hill, ransom

Dogwoods starry
fell in flocks

Crooned bower
Canst thou conjure?


+
 

from W.N.P. Barbellion - a photographic tribute. I'd never seen a picture of him before. 

on the heels of D'Israeli comes the welcome bloggening of another favorite of mine W.N.P. Barbellion, author of "Journal of a Disappointed Man" (1919) in the "hideously named" Barbellionblog

"January 3, 1903

Am writing an essay on the life-history of insects and have abandoned the idea of writing on "How Cats Spend their Time." "

Still, a good title for someone.

James Wolcott

"The commentators noted this clampdown with a sigh of regret, and mentioned the "irony" of President Bush using the words "freedom" and "liberty" dozens of times in his address while the city was under such tight constriction. But this has gone past way irony now into total cognitive dissonant breakdown. Commentators refuse to recognize the ominous import of the stepped-up militarization of the parade and pageantry, and increasingly of civilian life in this country under a president who likes to wear neat little uniforms that say, "Me commander-in-chief." It's ridiculous for Judy Woodruff and Doris Kearns Goodwin (I think it was her I heard nattering) and Jeff Greenfield to wax patriotic about presidents and inaugurals past as if there were some heartening continuum at work when there are snipers perched on the roof of the White House and enough riot police to protect a Latin American dictator."

are we playing Robert Johnson too fast?

"This is a Steady Rolling Man, whose tempos and tonalities are much like those of other Delta bluesmen. Full-speed Johnson always struck me as a disembodied sound -- befitting his wraith-like persona, the reticent, drifting youth, barely more than a boy, that Don Law spoke of: the Rimbaud of the blues. Johnson slowed down sounds to me like the person in the recently discovered studio portrait: a big-boned man, self-assured and worldly-wise. It works for me, but listen for yourself."

Four More Years 

An Evening with The Rodney Graham Band
February 3, at 8pm
The Cambrian Hall
215 East 17th St., Vancouver
with commentary by Peter Culley
Free Admission
Cash Bar
Limited seating - please come early!
Information@604-662-4700
 

Luxury Class Coming to BC Ferries

When pressed, the BC Ferries spokesman did admit that, "in response to customer requests," the refit on the two ferries was going to include the possibility of new luxury business lounges, and that a "pilot project" involving two-tier travel was in the works for the spring. The "premium lounges," he told me, will feature free coffee and pastry, newspapers and magazines, and, as technological glitches are resolved, satellite linked internet access." 

new, improved Vancouver mag Terminal City is online

farewell Virginia Mayo of "White Heat" and "The Best Years of our Lives" 

MLK

"Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distort the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an 'I-it' relationship for an 'I-thou' relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful. Paul Tillich said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression 'of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong. " 

"Vigili Utrinque (watchful on both sides)" Jacobean surveillance culture emblematised in Henry Peachem's Minerva Britanna

must-read Seymour Hersh on Rummy's mattress mice--

“Rumsfeld will no longer have to refer anything through the government’s intelligence wringer,” the former official went on. “The intelligence system was designed to put competing agencies in competition. What’s missing will be the dynamic tension that insures everyone’s priorities—in the C.I.A., the D.O.D., the F.B.I., and even the Department of Homeland Security—are discussed. The most insidious implication of the new system is that Rumsfeld no longer has to tell people what he’s doing so they can ask, ‘Why are you doing this?’ or ‘What are your priorities?’ Now he can keep all of the mattress mice out of it.”

(in New York, 1948)

pictures of Charles Olson, family, friends, etc. 

Kraftwerk pocket calculator (thanks metafilter)