Gung Hay Fat Choy!  

The Ghost of a Flea, William Blake (c. 1819-20)

"The ghost's spine is a throbbing, gristly column shooting into his scaly head with its bulging eyes and voracious tongue; his massive muscles are red-toned, as if infused with dried blood, and his loping, crushing walk is that of a colossus come to life. This vastness and mad-eyed bestiality contrasts with the visible form of the spirit's physical embodiment, which can be seen on the floor between his veined legs: a little flea." 

Dame Miriam Rothschild 1908-2005

"Miriam Rothschild's position as the world authority in her field was confirmed by her Catalogue of the Rothschild Collection of Fleas in the British Museum, Volumes I to VI, which appeared at intervals from 1953 to 1983. She liked to keep her live specimen fleas in cellophane bags in her bedroom - "so that I can see what they are doing and so children do not annoy them"." 

lots of great Pinhole Photographs of NYC and London (via metafilter) 

Egg Saturday,
Quinquagesima Sunday
Collop Monday...

Shrove Tuesday

 

a couple of mp3's from Neko Case

"I fell in love with Neko Case one night when, at a New Pornographers show, she settled a couple of song-requesting hecklers with the admonishment, 'Why don't you shut up, you hipster indie snobs!' " 

farewell John Vernon TV's Wojeck and a memorably complex villain in two of my very favorite movies "Point Blank" and "Charley Varrick". 

lovely series on Bohemian New York 

interview with the great Anjelica Houston. I watched her in two of her best this week, "The Grifters" & "The Witches"...

more on Sam Johnson, and Gertrude Stein at Hotel Point

"What struck me in the Johnson, originally, is, rather, what he claims regarding Shakespeare and the “quibble”—by which he means “pun,” wherein so often impact’d lies the stark commencement of a (primarily) musical journey, the rightest thing Shakespeare does. Not so, says Johnson:

A quibble is to Shakespeare what luminous vapors are to the traveler; he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind and its fascinations are irresistible. [Ain’t it always the case with music. See Orfeo. “Orfeo mest of ani thing / Lovede the gle of harping.” See the threnodies of the second liners “processionalizing” back along Magazine, they’s a parade an’ I gots to jine . . .] Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents or enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him and he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career or stoop from his elevation. A quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight that he was content to purchase it by the sacrifice of reason, propriety, and truth. A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra . . .

Keats had it all wrong. Beauty and truth both scuttle along in music’s wake. And reasonable souls’ll always dispute that. Unreasonable souls’ll quibble."

how to get Rodney Graham & Kim Gordon to leave your record store, etc.

"KG It's usually techno that drives me out.

RG Yeah, techno's not really my thing either.

KG The square sound waves. I just can't take it."

(thanks Chris)

furious Vanity Fair cover autopsy--

"VF considers its Hollywood issue an event - "This is a very big issue for us so close to the Oscars," a PR told me - but actually, it is a desperate sight to make all feminists tremble. This is Disempowerment as she is dressed by Versace. On the first rung of the paper podium Kate, 29, Cate, 35, and Uma, 35, mug ferociously for the camera lens, trying to ease each other out of the viewers' eye in a nightmare of expensively dressed passive aggression. Uma has her hand resting on her neck and stretches out lasciviously in a parody of post-sexual languor. Cate has chosen to fling out her arms and toss her hair as if she's been caught on board a ship in a gale. She too is doing the repulsive yearning thing, which should only be done in secret, with a lover. Kate is arching her back and flinging her hand across her crotch, with enormous "No, don't fuck her - fuck me" eyes. And these three are the talented ones."

Enough Appeasement

"As far as I can tell, America today is dominated by two "opposing" factions: the Incompetent Fascists of the Bush Right, and the Squeamish Fascists of the center-Right, the sort promoted in the Times. Which is why relying on mere rational argument is a cop-out—much as the Times' own credo of "objectivity" and centrism is a kind of cop-out on genuine journalism. If the lesson of Vietnam taught us one thing, it's that the Squeamish Fascists are in many ways more culpable than the Incompetent ones. When the Squeamish Fascists support war—as they did in Nam, Serbia and Iraq—the slaughter machine revs up. When the Squeamish Fascists squeam, as they're doing now, the long, slow, tortuous road to withdrawal and self-examination begins. Without the Squeamers, the Incompetent Fascists have a much more difficult time putting their plans into action."

nice to see The Great Cham threaded all through Hotel Point lately...

"Endless admiration for Dr. Johnson’s “instinctive revolt against the intellectually modish.” What W. Jackson Bate labels as Johnson’s strengths as a critic of literature: “his refusal to be intimidated by the spurious ‘authority’ of fashion; his scorn of the ‘cant’ of those who are conditioned by attitudes simply because they are current; his tendency to walk immediately up to the tyranny of stock response in the prevailing mode of thinking, and to push directly through it in order to see what is on the other side.” (Empty verbiage, “cultural critique” in the form of old saw-blades whining, earnest old Panama hats, recticulated string bags of airy profundities, the usual pumpernickel and dough.)"

saluting that great Canadian Hammy Hamster 

thanks Anodyne for these new Theo Parrish mixes

1967

"U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote :
Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror

by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967: p. 2)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching here."

Daphne's Radio


the reproduction
of a manuscript page
onto which
a drop of sunny delight
has been spilled,
35 crocuses
in a square yard of
sunny slope--

(33 yellow
2 purple, 29 open
5 shut
1355 january
31 2005). due to
a mistake in storage
the humming of glenn gould
on all my cd's.

for about six minutes a day
from november to march
south of the space heater,
north of the fish tank
and east of the fridge,
a golfball-sized sphere
of invisible fire
hangs flylessly
from november
to march.

A Pict Song

Rudyard Kipling

Rome never looks where she treads.
Always her heavy hooves fall,
On our stomachs, our hearts or our heads;
And Rome never heeds when we bawl.
Her sentries pass on--that is all,
And we gather behind them in hordes,
And plot to reconquer the Wall,
With only our tongues for our swords.

We are the Little Folk--we!
Too little to love or to hate.
Leave us alone and you'll see
How we can drag down the State!
We are the worm in the wood!
We are the rot at the root!
We are the taint in the blood!
We are the thorn in the foot!

Mistletoe killing an oak--
Rats gnawing cables in two--
Moths making holes in a cloak--
How they must love what they do!.
Yes--and we Little Folk too,
We are busy as they--
Working our works out of view--
Watch, and you'll see it some day!

No indeed! We are not strong,
But we know Peoples that are.
Yes, and we'll guide them along,
To smash and destroy you in War!
We shall be slaves just the same?
Yes, we have always been slaves,
But you--you will die of the shame,
And then we shall dance on your graves!

We are the Little Folk--we!
Too little to love or to hate.
Leave us alone and you'll see
How we can drag down the State!
We are the worm in the wood!
We are the rot at the root!
We are the taint in the blood!
We are the thorn in the foot!

interesting interview with Peter Sloterdijk--


"The reason a new vocabulary is necessary in the cultural sciences can be explained in seven simple words: because the old one is basically useless. And why? Because all previous natural languages, including theoretical discourse, were developed for a world of weight and solid substances. They are thus incapable of expressing the experiences of a world of lightness and relations. Consequently they are not suited to articulate the basic experiences of the modern and the postmodern, which construct a world based on mobilization and the easing of burdens. This already allows me to explain why, in my view, the critical theory of the Frankfurt School is outdated and must be replaced by a completely different discourse: Because of their Marxist heritage, critical theorists succumb to the realistic temptation of interpreting the light as appearance and the heavy as essence. Therefore they practice criticism in the old style in that they "expose" the lightness of appearance in the name of the heaviness of the real. In reality, I think that it is through the occurrence of abundance in the modern that the heavy has turned into appearance—and the "essential" now dwells in lightness, in the air, in the atmosphere. As soon as this is understood, the conditions of "criticism" change dramatically. Marx argued that all criticism begins with the critique of religion; I would say instead that all criticism begins with the critique of gravity."

one too many Burns Suppers and Orange Lodge marches for this Scotsman columnist--

"Concerns, as expressed in this newspaper yesterday, that young people are put off by the formality of Burns suppers have nothing to do with it. It's the fear of yet another rendering of one or both of those poems, a fear that also afflicts the not quite so young, including a writer near you.

Nothing, or not very much, against the performers. Most renditions I've heard - and I've heard a puckle over the years - have been well done, some with the Holy Willie works of nightgown, nightcap and candle, Tam with a bunnet and once a cameo appearance by Cutty Sark.

It is simply that custom does stale their infinite variety. How those enthusiasts who attend a string of suppers each year manage without screaming I don't know. It can only be that, like judges at a gymnastic competition, they pass the time by awarding points: "A good "chosen sample" but only a moderate "ne'er lift a lawless leg" and fell apart on " 'a the glory shall be thine"- 5.3. Next!"

And a next there will be. They only have to wait until the next supper where, let us not forget, there will be yet one more address to the ubiquitous chieftain o' the pudden race, abune them a' taking its place, gushing its entrails and with some over-enthusiastic declaimer clapping a blade in his walie nieve and making it wissle to risk of throats and fingers. Haud me back. "

happy birthday to composers Luigi Nono and Frederick Delius! 

always lots to see at the Courtauld Institute's Art & Architecture site, including a puppy by Wyndham Lewis & nice set of "stormy weather" images, including this 17th cent chalk/watercolour drawing by Anthonie Waterloo... 

interesting long review of two books by cineaste David Thomson--

"What is the social effect of close-ups edging out shots of people interacting in a definite environment, or of a jumpy camera or digitized effects overwhelming reality as opposed to a steady camera subordinate to the visible world? How has movie music affected our patience with trying, unscored moments in life? (The iPod is our way of scoring our otherwise uneventful days.) What does it mean that films, unlike plays, are shot out of chronological sequence? How does that influence an actor's style, and how do the actors influence us? Or do they?" 

Walked over to the other side of the valley and up Gomerich Rd. to the highest viewpoint (maybe 40 ft), where there is now a newly built house facing the lake just up from which another new house in the same style, what I'd call "mini-estate", faces it. Not grossly big, like the monstrosities to the north of town or the big biker-era compounds up the hill down long, hooded driveways. No fuss landscaping, but well kept (wee topiary, "bedding"plants, etc.)--in a neighbourhood where fussily tended vegetable gardens by no means preclude an abandoned vehicle or two on the property, they have carved out an honorable middle way. Their only contemporary indulgence the hunched acknowledgment of the "view"--the little lake, the farm, the coal tip covered with arbutus that obscures our house, the curve of the train tracks--that the older houses, built when the valley was either an open mine or a swamp, were designed to alleviate. Hence the rose gardens and carpentry, the hobby farm, that closed in communal fireside life. But the rickety little barn at the corner of the property, spared into its second century only by a continuing need for the convenient storage of wood, held up by creosote fumes, is now valued for its melancholy aspect, has become a "feature", the way old parks get swallowed up in new suburbs. The way Nanaimo started facing the ocean around the time of Expo '86.  

happy birthday Samuel Palmer! 

the marvellous burritos of conceptual artist Raul Vincent Enriquez provided some unexpected & much-needed comfort on the grim night of the US election...

classic punk-era Vancouver Complication re-issued at last--

"My older brother bought Vancouver Complication when I was, like, 10 years old," Newman explains when reached at his home, "and 'The Marching Song' by Pointed Sticks was one of my favourite songs. I thought that was just as good as any of the hits on the radio. And then when I was a teenager, I remember going back and looking through my brother's records that he had basically abandoned, and going, 'Hey, I know this record,' and putting it on and thinking it was great. I just love it--I mean, it really proves that the Vancouver punk scene was just as good as any punk scene anywhere."  

check out dj /Rupture's lively blog Mudd Up! mp3's, comment & more--

" Monied pop is a strange precipice. The underground is large the way cemeteries are large--room enough for everybody." 

(cafe in Brockley, London SE4)

The aquamarine 47 pence profile of our Queen and the Royal Mail par avion sticker gleaming in my mailbox must mean it's the 23rd issue of the always welcome TOLLING ELVES, which is an (err...) excerpt from Kevin Davies' "Excerpts" (see pennsound for audio) and a funky collage from Deirdre Kovac (issue 19)

Apes Overthrow Descartes in Authorial Intention Shocker

"Phillips said the experiment showed that monkeys 'are not random generators. They're more complex than that.

'They were quite interested in the screen, and they saw that when they typed a letter, something happened. There was a level of intention there.' "