Local trees

Zombie Capitalism

"One is that for the most part the equity — the idea — is the only thing the company is interested in owning. River West acquires brands when the products themselves are dead, not merely ailing. Aside from Brim, the brands it acquired in the last few years include Underalls, Salon Selectives, Nuprin and the game maker Coleco, among others. “In most cases we’re dealing with a brand that only exists as intellectual property,” says Paul Earle, River West’s founder. “There’s no retail presence, no product, no distribution, no trucks, no plants. Nothing. All that exists is memory. We’re taking consumers’ memories and starting entire businesses.”

The other interesting thing is that when Earle talks about consumer memory, he is factoring in something curious: the faultiness of consumer memory. There is opportunity, he says, not just in what we remember but also in what we misremember..."

Charlie & Rubbercat say: if you want something you can really get your teeth into, why not buy The Age of Briggs & Stratton today??

"The London Nobody Knows" part one, with the great James Mason (hi Sara!)...the other parts are inside...

interesting notes on The Library of Charles Willeford

“The only real difference between the rock-and-roll of The Peanut Butter Conspiracy and the rock-rolling of the Burnt Orange Heresy is the serial consistency and orderly arrangement of movable type rearranged by an unmoving writer for an immobilized and highly literate reader...”

thoughtful essay by Eavan Boland discusses the still shockingly undervalued poets Hugh MacDiarmid, Charlotte Mew & Patrick Kavanagh...

excellent James Laxer on the decline of the CBC--

"Managers of publicly owed corporations have always made a killing in the transition to private ownership. Those who do a good job shedding labour, thereby appearing to raise productivity usually at the cost of lower quality, can expect to be hired on with a much fatter pay packet as the first managers of the new private company. Whether it's a railway, an airline, a water utility, a telephone company, or a petroleum company, in Canada and in Britain, the experience has been that the new shareholders do brilliantly, while the old owners, also known as the citizenry, get hosed. The same will be true if CBC Television goes on the block..."

Sydney Pollack 1934-2008, one of the last of the real Hollywood pros, talking about my favorite of his films "The Yakuza"...I also liked his "Castle Keep", "Absence of Malice, "Three Days of the Condor" & "Jeremiah Johnson"...

jimmy mcgriff 1936-2008

"cat and house with cherry tree in background" & "footpath in west london" among the new spring crop of films at Scenes of Provincial Life

Sunday morning wakeup--YouTube - Hector Lavoe "Mi Gente"

Local trees

Tasty Spam...

(303) 280-8689 / 3032808689

Just called and interrupted the "major essay"I'm supposed to be working on...
Glad I didn't pick up!

"I got a call from this number
and happened to answer it.

animal grunting
(believe it or not)

on a loop.
Out of morbid curiosity

I stayed on the line
as I too am on

the Do Not Call list
and wanted to find out

who it was so I could report.
After about a minute

and a half the automated voice
came on and stated

to press one for yes and 2 for no...
then the grunting returned."

check out this nice little film (via Adidas) about---YouTube - Theo Parrish - Detroit DJ / Producer---one of the most inspirational artists working in any medium right now...

The Blog of War--historian Anne Applebaum on Nicholson Baker's new book--

"Human Smoke, in other words, is not a conscientious pacifist tract. It is not a clever contribution to today's debate on warfare, and it does not add anything to what we know about World War II. It is a cheerful contribution to the movement against scholarship--a movement which has advanced so far, in fact, that I fully expect these observations, too, to be condemned as "elitism." As one who does contribute (it's pathetic, I know) to the mainstream media on a regular basis, I know that any author who expresses a sliver of doubt about the wisdom of amateurs risks bringing down a torrent of recrimination and insult upon his head. But if we have arrived at the point where a solemn and excited individual can cobble together anecdotes from old newspapers and Nazi diaries, and write them up in the completely contextless manner of blog posts, and suggest that he has composed a serious critique of America's decision to enter World War II, and then receive praise from respected reviewers in distinguished publications, then maybe it is time to say: Stop."

todays Youtube--Vivian Stanshall - Crank (Part One) a documentary about the English comedian & hero of mine since seeing him on UK TV as a lad, hosted by the late John Peel (the other parts are there)...

further study--Ginger Geezer

The TPM DOCUMENT COLLECTION - Excerpts from DOJ IG Report on FBI Role in Detainee Interrogations

at home, on the road or in the office--The Age of Briggs & Stratton...

terrific Alissa Quart onLost Media, Found Media

"It was always hard for nonfiction writers, but something seems to have changed. For those of us who believed in the value of the journalism and literary nonfiction of the past, we had become like the people at the ashram after the guru has died..."

Tsawassen trees