four fives from de-noted

"Howl" and the Paperback Revolution

"With all the passion and drama surrounding Howl and Other Poems, it's interesting to consider that the bulk of the cultural weight that it carries comes not from its text but instead from its material form. First, it was a paperback, published by City Lights Press, based in Ferlinghetti's North Beach bookstore of the same name. City Lights was the first American bookstore that sold only paperback books, and this matters..."

a fine sheaf of Schwitters links at

::: wood s lot ::: "

Guantanamo: Beyond the Law

An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad.

How to make banana ketchup spaghetti

flickr sets of rare chapbooks--Air Two: Maxine Gadd (1971), Kevin Davies, Lateral Argument (2003) & Robert Mittenthal, Ready Terms (1989)

Local trees

The Olympics Scam

"The defining image of this era – Bob Hoskins (in the movie) with his sleek pleasure craft moored in St Katharine Docks, Margaret Thatcher schmoozing the Reichmann brothers in Canary Wharf – is the maquette of the proposed marina, the city of towers. A Lilliputian theme park of unimaginable wealth creation. A DIY anticipation of computer-generated presentations for the Olympic wonderlands. ‘Water City’, a new Venice (without the memory-mud of centuries), will rise from the stinking filth of back rivers and green-scum canals.

Keeffe’s ‘Corporation’, a confederacy of villains, is a direct translation of alliances in contemporary political life. Hoskins, a pumped-up Dalston Mussolini, presenting himself as ‘a businessman with a sense of history’, spiels his pitch as the oligarch’s gin-palace powers under Tower Bridge. Thirty years on and he could be making his final plea as a candidate in the London Mayoral Election, right across the river from the crumpled buttock of City Hall. Which is neither a hall, nor in the City, but an architectural doodle with the perverse ambition of bringing Manhattan to Bermondsey. ‘We’ve got mile after mile and acre after acre of land for our future prosperity,’ Bob drools. ‘It’s important that the right people mastermind the new London.’

The scam of scams was always the Olympics: Berlin in 1936 to Beijing in 2008. Engines of regeneration. Orgies of lachrymose nationalism. War by other means. Warrior-athletes watched, from behind dark glasses, by men in suits and uniforms. The pharmaceutical frontline. Rogue Californian chemists running their eye-popping, vein-clustered, vest-stripping robots against degendered state laboratory freaks. Bearded ladies and teenage girls who never have periods. Medals returned by disgraced drug cheats to be passed on to others who weren’t caught, that time. The Millennium Dome fiasco was a low-rent rehearsal. The holy grail for blue-sky thinkers was the sport-transcends-politics Olympiad, the five-hooped golden handcuffs, the smoke rings behind which deals could be done for casinos and malls: with corporate sponsorship, flag-waving and infinitely elastic budgets (any challenge an act of naysaying treason)..."

"Cheese Map of Canada" from the excellent Strange Maps

find out what the fuss was all about--Reading Marx’s Capital

"A close reading of the text of Volume One of Marx's Capital in 13 two-hour video lectures by David Harvey"

in a hurry? a version told with lithographs...