First Nations perspective on the Red Lake shootings--

"In the early 20th century, when the federal government once again tried to dissolve and diminish Indian control of Indian land, this time through the passing of a law that gave states criminal and civil jurisdiction on the reservation, Red Lake said no—even though that meant they lost the majority of their funding for schools, hospitals, roads, and police protection. The reservation then built its own schools, paved its own roads, and built its own court, police station, and hospitals. Red Lake has always been Indian land. The people there know it, and they act like it. If you're not born there, it is hard to make it your home. Red Lake is the reservation equivalent of Cuba: proud, poor, troubled, independent, never dominated by the United States, and indescribably beautiful."

U B U W E B, now with movies--

"UbuWeb announces the beta launch of its newest section of historic artist's films. In addition to the 37 short Fluxus films (see below), films can be viewed by Kenneth Anger, Luis Buñuel, John Cage, Guy Debord, Marcel Duchamp, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Robert Morris & Stan VanDerBeek, Isidore Isou, Man Ray, Robert Rauschenberg, Hans Richter, Harry Smith and Jack Smith."  

W.G. Sebald in Corsica--

"I watched the sand martins circling the flame-colored cliffs high above in astonishingly large numbers, soaring from the bright side of the rocks into the shadows and darting out of the shadows into the light again, and once that afternoon, which for me was filled with a sense of liberation and appeared to stretch endlessly away in every direction, I swam out to sea with a great sense of lightness, very far out, so far that I felt I could simply let myself drift away into the evening and so into the night... " 

"Strato Cumulus" from "The International Cloud Atlas" (Paris 1896) at Weathering the Weather: The Origins of Atmospheric Science 

Two juncos, giddy, drunk with display on what must be one of last available hookup days, fly in short, interlocking spirals until just short of the ground, then they pivot and with short hard wingstrokes ascend to some pre-arranged respiralling point. They are doing this in the lot of newly turned burnt topsoil ("loamy slash") where the little forest was, hard against a pale braided woodboard fence, so that everyone can see them. By the fourth or fifth repetition their spiral is tight--if they were eagles they could lock claws--until at the last moment, less than a foot off the dirt, they fly apart as if pushed, and instead of pivoting upward somersault into hard but perfect two point landings. After quickly shaking off the impact, the bird nearest the fence turns toward it, lowers its head and very quickly runs under it. The other bird follows and they footchase onto the lawn beyond the fence for several feet before flying back toward the big trees behind the house. An odd, rolling gait, but fast.

list of 500 best songs (sort of) won me over by putting Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers "Road Runner" at the top... 

(Rod Steiger (see below), equally unrestrained, in "Duck, You Sucker!")

from Greencine a witty essay on cinematic guilty pleasures has a lot of my favorites, including "No Way to Treat a Lady", "Road House", "Gator Bait" (and "Point Break"), oddly omits "Extreme Prejudice" and "The English Patient"--

"Credit director Jack Smight for turning Rod loose on the scenery and letting him graze like the Tasmanian Devil, and credit Rod for gulping down as much at one time as he does, for his thespian gluttony here is truly remarkable to behold."

Hotel Point

"To read Kevin Davies is begin to see all language usage caught in the Swale of Irony, a low meadow'd depress aiming for the rad heights, the protuberant Swell of Sincerity, or Sublimity, or something. The form is there, and generally "correct" but one gets a hell-hound feeling that that beatific and washcloth-scrub'd Sunday schoolboy up in the front row's busy goosing the minister's girl mid-recital, and that such goofery'll likely rearrange the neural synapses of both, and for some lengthy period to come." 

'One huge US jail'

"He was taken to Bagram, where US military doctors had to amputate his leg. Afterwards, he said, 'an American woman appeared. She said the US was sorry. It was a mistake. The men in the car were Special Forces or CIA on a mission. She gave me $500.' Sardar showed us into another room in his compound where a circle of children stared glumly at us; their fathers, all policemen, were killed in the same incident. 'Five dead. Four in hospital. To protect covert US prisoner transports,' he says. Later, US helicopters were deployed in two similar incidents that left nine dead."

CHARLES DARWIN HAS A POSSE -- free bookmarks and stickers 

"Boys are at play on the future route of the Golden State Freeway near Griffith Park" from the Los Angeles Public Library Virtual Gallery

(thanks Exclamation Mark)