global warming = Polar Bear Jail Expansion--


"Bears that are locked up are normally released only when the ice returns, although if the jail gets crowded before then, some bears are flown by helicopter far away from town and released.

The five extra cells should reduce the need for pricey helicopter rides, Bobier said.

The expansion of the jail may be timely, because climate change is expected to drive polar bears in western Hudson Bay near human settlements more often.

Polar bears need a long winter so they can hunt seals on solid ice, and the ice in that part of Hudson Bay is not what it used to be.

"Over the last 30 years, the average date of breakup has come approximately three weeks earlier than it was," said Ian Stirling, a biologist with the Canadian Wildlife Service who has published several studies on polar bears.

"Hungry predators . . . don't tend to lie down under a tree and just starve to death, so if they start to get hungry, they're going to look for an alternate food source.

"What we see is that as the breakup gets earlier, there are more and more bears seen in the vicinity of Churchill or in the settlements up the Nunavut coast.""

 

"A Collection of Candle Holders"  

friends should just be arriving at the incredible Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Centre in southern Alberta , to my mind Canada's best museum--the only other place I have ever felt so close to the ancient world was at the stone-age village of Skara Brae in the Orkney Islands. A "buffalo jump" was a short cliff pre-horse owning peoples would chase buffalo over--the museum is INSIDE the cliff...

via bookslut this fine list of 101 Crackerjack Sea Books


(above the destroyer HMS Bellona, one of the ships my dad served as a telegraphist ("sparks") on during & after WWll)

"The Town Pigeon", from below

 

"World Book Day" from British photographer STEPHEN GILL's excellent site.

"Stephen Gill's photographs have all the naive gusto of the field studies series of old. Mercifully lacking in sarcasm and malevolent irony, they are also wise and modern and beautifully laden with tiny, understated details about the way we live today."


 

new Sy Hersh

“Rumsfeld and Cheney are the pushers on this—they don’t want to repeat the mistake of doing too little,” the government consultant with ties to Pentagon civilians told me. “The lesson they took from Iraq is that there should have been more troops on the ground”—an impossibility in Iran, because of the overextension of American forces in Iraq—“so the air war in Iran will be one of overwhelming force.”

we celebrated Daphne's last day of work by dining at South Nanaimo's premier steak house The Bold Knight last night--especially notable: the strawberry daiquiri (above, centre)/crab cocktail appetizer...

cheers baby!!

creditistas, bimetalists and anarcho-syndicalists alike will enjoy Common-place's special issue on money..
 

fine long article (with samples) commemorating fiftieth anniversary of the tragic early death of Clifford Brown, possibly the greatest trumpeter ever. My favorite story about him was of his playing so intently that the blood vessels in his face would pain him, forcing him to soak in a sinkful of ice between sets...


I think it'll be all-Brownie at the Manse this am...

 

"Nine Foot Wave Slide"

"used only one season..."

came upon eerie, striking, Romero/Carnival of Soulesque Dead People (Messiah of Evil) on Moviecentral's "Encore 2" channel, which Shaw Cable have given us in place of CNBC, no loss...mmm... Withnail & I is on in a couple of days--

"Laura accepts the ride, as the music changes to the Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin. The ghastly albino asks her if she likes Wagner, which he pronounces American-style. He further asks if she was at the beach ceremony with everyone else. Even the little creatures were out tonight, he notes. When she doesn't understand, he explains by producing a tiny rodent from his pocket. And what does he do with the mice? Laura asks. The albino shows her, and Laura elects to get out of the truck immediately..."


 

"Stainless Steel Drain Tray" 

"Coil Spring Compressor" 

"Sheet Metal Bender" from Used Nanaimo
 

Here's the ingridients in case you want to try and cook some up yourself.

 

don't know why, other than a momentary hummingbird's thirst or general vague nostalgia I should think of Creamola Foam, a strange but compelling powdered Scottish chemical fruit froth I enjoyed as a youngster 68-72, but in a parody of the way such things generally proceed I found out that not only was it a) bought out by Nestle but b) had become a

Deleted Brand from a Multinational Portfolio

"Consider Scotland's Creamola Foam. Many Scots grew up loving the sweet, fizzy powdered drink. When Nestle sold the brand to Britain's Brands Partnership in 1998, the new owner somehow neglected to acquire the product's formula. The recipe is now believed lost. (Some former devotees are reportedly trying to locate tins of the discontinued product in order to analyze the contents and bring Creamola Foam back to life.) But Brands International reportedly has no plans to re-introduce the product, even if the formula is re-discovered. Several websites currently host well-trafficked bulletin boards where those nostalgic about the vanished brand can post their thoughts. There is even a petition that people can sign to show their support for bringing the product back. But for now, Creamola Foam is dead, and brand loyalists are left with nothing to take its place."

Well that's just terrific.



 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrmmmooooooooooooooooooooond!!

"In the hateful "School of Rock", Black played a childish egotist but Nacho's sense of devotion makes a rich, funny characterization, based in genuine complexity: "My mother was a Lutheran missionary from Scandanavia, my father was a deacon from Mexico. They tried to convert each other. They got married instead, and then they died." No recent movie figure has a richer character precis. Thus, Nacho--an orphan who claims his legacy--acts from principle and obligation, uncommon virtues. In his luchadore's mask, Black suggests Brando's full-lipped self-questioning; his eyes beam from determination and inner stress. Hess recognizes these basic traits and provides a benedictory close-up that shows Nacho's saintly ache for love. This pellucid image affirms: Hess is not just one of the American Eccentrics. He's one of our best."





 

The Erroneous Pharmacology of a Cat

"In the spring of 1791, James Woodforde, the parson of Weston Longville in Norfolk, England, developed a painful sty on his right eyelid. Parson Woodforde, however, knew how to treat it: "As it is commonly said that the eyelid being rubbed by the tail of a black cat would do it much good, if not entirely cure it, and having a black cat, a little before dinner I made a trial of it, and very soon after dinner I found my eyelid much abated of the swelling and almost free from pain." He concluded that a cat's tail was of the greatest service for such a condition...

Encumbered in his Norfolk countryside, James Woodforde continued on his ignorant way, overindulging in mackerel and pork and rabbits and beef steak and onion stew. His cat continued to be useful: Woodforde noted that the weather changed whenever the cat washed both her ears, which, he says, "is an old observation and now I must believe it to be a pretty true one." His brother recommended brimstone to him for the cramp, and in the advent of symptoms to hold it in his hand or put it on the affected part. "I did, as I apprehended at one time it was coming into one of my legs, and I felt no more advances of it. This I thought deserving of notice, even in so trifling a book as this."
 

just reminded that Mardin also did sleepover classic "Dusty in Memphis" and Scritti Pollitti's staggering pointillist monsterpiece Cupid & Psyche 85! If a movie ever gets made about the Vancouver art/poetry world of the mid-80's this baby had better be on the soundtrack...site has samples and a video of Miles doing "Perfect Way"...East Georgia, looking toward the mountains from the green chair, PC making paper on the floor, the gunpowder smell of the Expo fireworks...

 

farewell to great record producer Arif Mardin best known for Aretha and latterly Norah Jones but dearest to me for producing three seventies "blue-eyed soul" albums that were cornerstones for my pre-punk years, Andy Pratt's feverishly ecstatic Resolution (also maybe the biggest drum sound ever or at least my poxy Radio Shack amp thought so )the "white" album by the Average White Band which has an Isley Brothers cover that's better than the original, and Daryl Hall and John Oates slinky but tender formica masterpiece Abandoned Luncheonette. Just in passin, I'm not askin that you be anyone but you..my old wallpaper, the sign of the old inn, the vent, sitting in an abandoned luncheonette, drinking imaginary colas...

 

dashing biologist Ernst Haeckel from Cabinet Card Portraits in the Collection of Radical Publisher Benjamin R. Tucker

"260 portrait photographs, from about 1880-1900, chiefly albumen cabinet cards and cartes de visite, of radical figures, and a variety of statesmen, authors, artists, actresses and other notable, primarily European, cultural figures."

everyone you might think--Marx to Maeterlinck--a must for beardos I think---

(via gmtPlus9 (-15)--on Wisconsin!!)



 

finally an on-line version (with glossary) of Hugh MacDiarmid's A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle


"The licht nae man has ever seen
Till he has felt that he's been gien
The stars themselvls insteed o een,

And often wi the sun has glowered
At the white mune until it cowered,
As when by new thocht o'er powered.

Oor universe is like an ee
Turned in, man's benmaist hert to see,
And swamped in subjectivity.

But whether it can use its sicht
To bring what lies withoot to licht
To answer's still ayont my micht.

But when that inturned look has brocht
To licht what still in vain it's socht
Ootward maun be the bent o thocht.

And organs may develope syne
Responsive to the need divine
O single-minded humankin.

The function, as it seems to me.
O Poetry is to bring to be
At lang, lang last the unity...."


(listen along at Pennsound)




 

"This is the leaf blower engine before I removed the centrifugal fan and blower shroud. I will relocate the fuel tank to the very front of the cockpit to help balance the craft."

from this sweet Build Your Own Hovercraft page--where's Dad when I need him??
 

5 hp "A hammering in the night" 

16 hp engine "Will probably run with TLC", a product of research for my upcoming poem "Hammertown Three: The Age of Briggs & Stratton".
 

The Miami Seven: How Serious Was the Threat?

"Its members, mainly Americans and Haitan immigrants, clearly have an enthusiasm for emulating and following al-Qaeda. But their only "connection" with al-Qaeda appears to have been the fact that a government informant who had infiltrated their ranks had apparently convinced the alleged conspirators that he was, in fact, a Qaeda operative. The oaths of allegiance to the organization alleged by the indictment to have been taken by the accused were administered not by any representative of the organization, but to a U.S. government agent posing as a Qaeda operative."

same old csis/cointelpro crap...