The Tyee: Eating Contests: "Coast Salish eating contests were as personal as the ones Jacobs entered. The difference is that only one person or one team ate, and it was always the guests. The object was, literally, to eat the host out of house and home. Drop by my house at the right time, and this could take less than 15 minutes - which was of course, the point. The eater's boast: "My power can consume everything you own." The host's implicit reply: "I am so rich, I have so much food, that I can feed your eating power until it can't eat any more"--which is a serious malfunction in an eating power. "

The Washington Monthly

"....The Army is just making things worse for the coalition. The Army is intent on having its presence seen and felt in Iraq because they think that will make everyone think they are in charge. What they don't seem to realize is that a large military presence is the one thing, pretty much the only thing, the Iraqis can't tolerate. Despite reports by the news media to the contrary, Iraqis don't resent the humanitarian projects, or the rebuilding effort, or even the U.S. being in control of the government until the transition. Sure the Iraqis want to be in charge, but the majority can tolerate the situation until a transition happens, even if it's months down the road. But what they can NOT tolerate is waking up every day and seeing army tanks and Bradleys rolling through their towns and villages. And they can't tolerate being stopped by endless Army checkpoints on the highways, which were set up by commanding officers who think terrorists and insurgents haven't figured out a way yet to avoid those checkpoints. That's what the Iraqis resent and can't tolerate, along with a thousand other ways the Army makes its presence felt (and I didn't even mention having your door kicked in at 2 am because of some 'hot Army intel')."

Nanaimo Chinatowns Website

Roy Moxham, historian of Tea & the Great Hedge of India

The Dominion Daily Weblog: "The corporate media in Canada and the US, meanwhile, has made a obfuscating and distracting from the siege of Fallujah and the resulting human disaster. I know of no systematic study, but there has been a distinct emphasis on 'kidnapped' foreigners while war crimes, massacres, murder, and the continuing illegality of the occupation ignored or heavily marginalized." (many links)

Common-place: Round Table Discussion of "The Crucible of War" I'm halfway through the book.

The Electric Company Digital Archive

Rogue cattle are causing big problems for Mayne Island : "'They're like hippies -- they sleep all day and roam all night,' said Robson on Friday. 'I got to keep an eye on them. They go quite a ways at nighttime. I spend quite a bit of time looking for them.'"

Where did all the (Edinburgh) Italians go?

some West Coast jazz from Drew

"The cliff line looks like a turkey on a slicer. The Red-winged Blackbirds doing legato notes with a curious timbre. Bright orange shoulders. The sound a combination of machine and cat. Excellent group riffing.

Sparkling early evening sunlight on ocean waves."

more pet sounds @ Million Poems:

"MONO/STEREO

Wouldn't it be nice
Be nice if we were
Were older then we
We wouldn't have
To wait to wait so long

And wouldn't it be
It be nice to live together
In the kind of world
Of world where we belong

You know it's gonna
It's gonna make it
Make it that much better
Much better when we
When we can say good
Night and stay
And stay together

Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray
Maybe be then there wouldn't be a single thing

And then we'd be happy
You know it seems the more
The more we talk about it
It only makes it worse
It worse to live without it
But let's talk about it
But wouldn't it be
Good night baby sleep

Nice
Stay
Morning
New
Spend
Close
Through
Times
Kiss
Maybe
Run
Then
Single
Do
Could
We'd
Be
Seems
Talk
Worse
Without
But
About
It
It
It
It
It
It

Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba"

If a Dissertation Proposal was like Bush's Articulation of Foreign Policy...

"This is an important dissertation I will write. It will be long. It will use words. My wife knows books, and knows words. She is an asset. This will be an important dissertation. It has far-reaching consequentialisms. It will be difficult, but the department must continue to give me fellowship support. I cannot predict how long it will take me to write this. I will use a computer. First I will write notes. I may read a few books. I will take breaks to bale hay (at least when the press is around), and to go jogging, since a Mens sans corporatam fiduciam ... I can't remember how the whole Latin American version of that healthy body healthy mind thing goes. Its unimportant. What is important is my dissertation. I am determined to write it. I will remain determined to write it. Those who doubt my resolve only give aid to my doubters. This is too important a dissertation for there to be doubts. Let there be no doubt. I will write this dissertation. This will be an important dissertation. God bless my undertaking."

Get Out the Led : "Here Bonham captures the true sound of the drums he hears in his head, and not the 'biscuit tin' sound of drumming in a studio, by moving the microphones away from his kit so that 'what you hear on 'When the Levee Breaks' is not just the sound of Bonham's drumming, but the way in which the drums react to the acoustics of the room they were in.' "

big review roundup from The News includes nice words about "Hammertown"

Moribundia: "This is where England most truly excels: in all the characterful shabbiness of its drizzled parks, soiled launderettes, frayed tailors, abject chemists, sparse barbers, bare foyers, dun pubs, weary Legion halls... and cowed solitary cafes."

Coach House Books has reprinted Gerry Gilbert's 80's classic Moby Jane, for which I wrote a blurb (my only one so far) that was printed on a bookmark!

Hepster's Dictionary--comes on like gangbusters, creeps out like the shadow...

Great character actor Victor Argo ( After Hours/Bad Lieutenant/Crimes And Misdemeanors/Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai/King Of New York/Last Temptation Of Christ/Mean Streets/Smoke/Taxi Driver/True Romance) 1934-2004

(thanks drew's blog-o-rama)

Ancoats, Manchester's Little Italy

(thanks Plep)

Mexperimental "Culture is to the beginner a karoake. The beginner just came in. What's old is new to him or her. Even him or herself. He or she is innocent. He or she can afford going into stage fright. The karoake makes this possible. A culture that has ended but that we barely know. This is our first time experiencing it or how we show we came to be one with it. The beginner sings, close enough to the real lyrics, close enough--giggling--to the original voice, its harmony. To the beginner culture is pure joy. Karoake helps when we know the culture we live in is no longer ours. We transform this alienation into a fun pain, an adventure into being seen by others, a funny shame or a singer's security; how we perform how we would behave or look life if this culture we live in was ours."

Bush's necktie produces TV wardrobe malfunction: "His selection, navy with small white dots, produced a moire (pronounced mwa-RAY) effect. Simply put, that's when a pattern being photographed interferes with the grid pattern on television screens, creating an eerie, shimmering visual. "

thanks languagehat for these Corporate Etymologies

Talking Points Memo: "I saw a man on autopilot, and a pretty crude autopilot at that. "

from the archives of the Coach House Press---The Pre-Linguistic Heights/ Golders Green/ The LSD Leacock/ Borders/ Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada

(thanks ::: wood s lot :::)

Wonkette: "Short Bush News Conference: If my answers cannot distract you from the miserable failure that is the Bush foreign policy, perhaps my tie will.

Apparently, Bush and Gorelick have the same wardrobe consultant. How can we trust people to run the country if they can't dress for television?"

kudos to 2003-2004 BCHL Champions, Nanaimo Clippers Junior A Hockey Club: "On April 10, 2004, the 2003-2004 Nanaimo Clippers captured their first BCHL title in 26 years with a 3-2 victory over the Salmon Arm Silverbacks in Game 5 of the BCHL Finals. " Last time they won it, Kev was still in town!

Rumsfeld Looking Forward To Secretary's Day: "'I know it's just a silly Hallmark holiday,' Rumsfeld said of the annual event now formally known as Administrative Professionals Day. 'Even so, I have to admit that seeing that bouquet of flowers on my desk... Well, it makes me feel real good.'"

The Early Days of a Better Nation: "The uprising could fizzle. Already, however, it has revealed that the US-led occupation of Iraq is built on sand. The Fallujah insurgents and the Army of the Mahdi, few in themselves, have drawn mass - not necessarily majority - support. What must be far more worrying for the US is what props to its rule the insurgents have kicked away. The IGC puppet government, to which a very nominal 'sovereignty' is supposed to be handed at the end of June, is scurrying to dissociate itself from the US military's handling of the situation; hence the IGC negotiations with the insurgents. Given how unwelcome to the US military these negotiations must be, one can imagine what pressures the IGC must have brought to bear. Perhaps the whole arrangement might have been on the point of collapse. The IP, ICDC, and even the Iraq Armed Forces, built up over the past year, are not just unreliable but in many cases actively hostile. Of the allied troops, the least reliable are the ex-commies, with the possible exception of the Poles, who were never very commie in the first place. Bulgarians, Ukrainians and Kazhaks are unlikely to be called to the imperial colours again any time soon. Gestural allies with symbolic contingents are vulnerable to hostage-taking and other casualties, and therefore a liability. Second and third tier imperialist forces - Spain and Italy - are militarily solid but politically weak. Their troops will fight until they're withdrawn. The Spanish are leaving in a month or two. The Salvadorans are basically US colonial troops, blooded in occupying their own country for decades, and therefore sound. And then there are the Brits, reliable militarily and politically but privately shaking their heads, if not holding their heads in their hands, at the sight of a counter-insurgency strategy derived from that splendid positive role model of a winning approach: Israel.
"

Matt Taibbi--The real Vietnam Syndrome is amnesia. : "While Democrats and Republicans fight over who best to stick with the blame for our Southeast Asian ass-whipping, both sides remain completely blind to the fact that Vietnam was not really Johnson's or Nixon's Vietnam, any more than Iraq is Bush's Iraq. Vietnam was, first and foremost, Vietnam's Vietnam--and the current absurd debate about the comparison between the two wars has proven that the vast majority of Americans still have trouble grasping that fact"

Equanimity: "It's leaf-casing-on-the-sidewalk day in Between the Uptown Parks."

Corot A&A: Three landscape sketches

Constable Sketch (undecipherable, possibly hills or clouds) (verso)

A Break in the Road - Luke Whittaker download and mix the sounds of the city....

how come no one told me about this terrific Daniel Nester poem?

"ARRAIGNMENT OF A BEACH BOY

Mike Love has ruined America. He has made ours a primitive boring land,
Censoring Brian Wilson, our country's only attempt at art song.

And now Mike Love rests comfortably in California, hawking Kokomo burgers
With his orangutan eyes, orange Republican beard, and fake west coast Alan Watts Buddhism.

He has deprived us of songs beautiful enough to mark our conception,
Thus making us all less intelligent. He has exiled our Mozart to a room with quarts of chicken fried rice.

Mike Love, who blundered Beach Boy harmonies all his life,
Who toured the world with comb-over hairdos and Andy Cap hats.

I condemn him for slurring this century's only true melodist,
Now writhing at a piano with a stroke victim voice.

Mike Love, who sang exactly what he was told for five years, then rebelled,
Exiled his god to a quarter century of carbohydrates, mind control, air filters,

This is the traitor to the state, this is the war criminal who rhymed vibrations with the excitations,
Ruining a symphony, who fucked up the theramin part in Germany,

Mike Love rests comfortably, like some dictator in his dotage.
Who will accuse the happy goat on the cover of Pet Sounds

For not serving its country, biting the hands off the second guy from the right?
These were the hands of a man who turned the knobs down in the studio,

Who asked a genius, What's the bottom note? What's the bottom note? What's the bottom note?
And now Mike Love rides the gravy train to state fairs, Desert Storm rallies,

Endless Summer greatest hits packages, duets with The Fat Boys and John Stamos.
For ruining America, I summon the spirit of William Carlos Williams,

Who endured Eliot, the wasteland that set American poetry back 20 years.
I summon Santayana, who exposed our fake gentility with queeny aplomb.

I order every long-haired Englishman who jacks up the price of vinyl
To repent. I call Mike Love to a tribunal, assembled to condemn his quashing sins,

All the songs that could have been written after Mike Love, all the babies born stupid after him,
All those fallen asleep to his misdeeds."

jane dark's sugarhigh!--Down with the quickness
"By editing out the human pauses of theatre, of mise en scene, and cutting relentlessly from one creaturely burst to the next, the moments in which the human gathers itself, composes itself, are excised from the screen and disallowed for the audience. As a film, it is absolutely filmic; of its viewers, it requires total creatureliness. This may explain its multiple nods to Sam Peckinpah (particularly Pat Garrett), or why the only character allowed much characterization ('Steve Marcus') is pointedly the creep. Nothing, I fear, can explain the Richard Cheese lounge-against-the-machine version of 'Down With The Sickness' mid-film (genius) or do justice to the apparition of Jim Carroll's 'People Who Died' (weepingly le choix juste) during the closing credits, before it dissolves into the original of 'Down With The Sickness' and the last burst of speed overtakes the tale entirely."

Carrie Snodgrass, 1946 - 2004

Will I see you give more than I can take?
Will I only harvest some?
As the days fly past will we lose our grasp
Or fuse it in the sun?

Hey, What Happened to My Jesus?: "Although I choose not to attend the Christian church anymore, I'm still culturally Christian; it's hard to shake. I know all the stories and the names of the characters from my time reading the Bible as a child. A personal favourite was Taylor's Bible Stories, a weighty tome given to me by my grandmother, where bearded, ZZ Top-esque dudes could be found herding sheep in their 900th year.

If I find my fantasy version more comforting than Mel Gibson's blood-soaked interpretation, please, Lord, forgive me."

<$Xvarenah$>: "Von Trier is a true Gnostic; & he is just as disagreeable as one of them would be if transported to the 21c."

Started this blog a year ago today.

MARSHMALLOW PEEPS IN OUTER SPACE!

from this show of photographs of children an untitled Sander portrait

& a Rodchenko, among many others.

(thanks gmtPlus9)

via the mighty Plep this splendid Victorian Anthology

Brit indy band drummer on why hip-hop is bad lost me forever with "But perhaps the wittiest of the hip hop haters is black jazz critic Stanley Crouch... "

Drum Machine Dictionary refulgent 303!

Canuck mercenaries: "So, in order to stem the loss of these highly trained soldiers, the military is taking action. It's considering raising pay beyond the current annual salary of $60,000, plus $1,200 a month in danger allowance.
'We recognize that private security firms have highly attractive packages for highly skilled members, like JTF 2,' said Navy Lt. Kent Penney of the Department of National Defence.
'But beyond money issue, we're also looking at the other factors.'
Those other factors include job security, and appealing to the soldiers' sense of patriotism, reminding them that the satisfaction that comes from serving one's country is something that private security firms simply will never offer."

From Psalms to Seuss - what poetry can do for you: "Part of reclaiming poetry, though, is recognizing poets. We don't have celebrity poets in the United States as some other countries do. In Canada, poet Anne Carson is on magazine covers, with inside articles about what she wears and where she goes. "

Dictionary of Condi "Historical: Communications that mentioned the past and were therefore irrelevant to the future.

Example: The Aug. 6 PDB [president's daily briefing] ...was not a particular threat report. And there was historical information in there about various aspects of al-Qaida's operations. ... This was not a warning. This was a historic memo."

Soldiers Choose Canada by Alisa Solomon: "Hughey did watch New York shut down Toronto in a fourth-quarter comeback that night--but on TV from St. Catharines, Ontario, where a Quaker couple has taken him in. He is the second American soldier who opposes the war to have applied for refugee status in Canada. As the occupation in Iraq drags on, morale among soldiers plummets, and talk of a post-election draft heats up, their cases will determine whether Canada will once again welcome young Americans resisting a questionable war. "

Eat your allsorts: Carbenoxolone could aid verbal memory.: "It may, for example, help people to remember random words or recall what they did at the weekend."

The Neal Pollack Invasion:

"A summary of her testimony follows:

Lie, lie, distortion, half-truth, pander, manipulation, pseudo-intellectual bombast. Dodge, dodge, feint, lie, dodge, avoid, subject change, lie, slander, pretentious generalization, character assassination, bald-faced lie.

Oversimplification, undersimplification, condescension, insult, insult, lie, avoidance of responsibility, avoidance of question about avoiding responsibility, cheap political point, utter, malicious lie.

Grimace, slither, dodge, lie, deliberate misinterpretation of history, nonpartisan character disparagement, narrative designed by public-relations experts to create maximum "connection" with American public. Appearance of professionalism, resoluteness, capableness, preparedness. Major omission of lie to create partial truth. Lie for political convenience. Lie for partisan gain. Lie to protect the economic interests of an incredibly small number of people. Reception of flattery. Dispersal of flattery. Abuse of good will afforbed by ten people who are trying to gather evidence without partisan bias. Backhanded dismissal of all criticsism. Denial of any responsibility in orchestrating what will almost certainly become the most tragic and bloody war of this generation.

Rinse and repeat. "

Blowin' in the wind fine Dylan review by Charles Taylor

Session greatTommy Tedesco: "We walked into his kitchen at one point; a radio was playing "A Taste of Honey" by the Tijuana Brass. "That's a record I was on," he said nonchalantly. The odds were good he could have said the same thing had we walked in five or 15 minutes later. Tedesco also played on "Good Vibrations," "Strangers in the Night," "Da Doo Ron Ron," Lumpy Gravy" and "MacArthur Park," and on the soundtracks of The Godfather, MASH and Bonnie and Clyde, among uncountable other tracks, songs, dates, jingles and sides--more than he could, or would want to, remember"

Claim vs. Fact: Rice's Q&A Testimony Before the 9/11 Commission - Center for American Progress

TV: The Urge to Purge : "Will she agree to give up that teddy bear collection? Will he freak out when his trophies are carted away? In both Clean House and TLC's Clean Sweep, the tag sale is the cathartic centerpiece around which the show pivots--a fantastic transaction which shifts junk from one clutter bug's house to another. "

London's Abandoned Tube Stations

Hearing starts 6 AM PST: "For one thing, at the outset of the new administration, Bush and Rice decided to keep Richard Clarke--a veteran of the first Bush and the Clinton administrations--in his job as National Security Council counterterrorism director. Second, in a break with past practice, the president insisted that Clarke report to him exclusively through Rice.

That made Rice solely responsible for what the president learned about appraisals of terrorist threats from Clarke and others in the months before Sept. 11. She was also responsible for coordinating counterterrorism efforts, including ranking its priority relative to other threats and problems."

Pantaloons rounds up Scalapino, Champion & more--
"We know Scalapino is a bona fide avantast, and on whichever side we find ourselves in the Naropa Wars, the demeanor of a calming, enlightened refusal has likely rubbed off during her and our intake of an illusory simultaneity in the social imagination. Or don't know."

DiamondDead George Romero's back!!

free download of dj c's junglist bashment mix, which has been rattling the windows of the Manse for several days...

conossieurs of deep ick may want to check out Robert Christgau's "thanks for sharing" Janet Jackson review-- "Yet she exudes carnality, a desire to please and be pleased radiating from and to the mucous membranes, and the nipples too. And thus she moves blood to the groin, where it awaits deployment in socially useful endeavors—in my case, marital relations. "

Significant Trees of Ladysmith

review of my book "Hammertown" in the Georgia Straight!

Vancouver Cops: " "In Vancouver it is not just a case of a few renegade officers, but an underlying problem of the Vancouver Police Department attacking poor and working class people all across city," says Bundock. "It's clear that it's not just one demonstration but an escalating role of the VDP in the service of the provincial government that is really attacking people across the province.""

Daph says they could see the smoke from town: "A spectacular fire damaged a 35-metre wooden trestle on the E&N Railway at Nanaimo late Monday afternoon, forcing the suspension of freight and passenger service north of that city."

Oor Wullie is top Scottish icon: "Oor Wullie has been appearing in the Sunday Post newspaper since 1936 and has legions of fans around the world.
Lulu, in fifth place, was the only woman who made it into the top 10. "

Nader Fails to Make Oregon Ballot: "'The ball game, it had to be the ball game,' Nader muttered as he climbed a stairway leading to the stage."

The art of pain: "Romero's films fetishise gore, but he always insisted that his animated corpses - sometimes greenly mouldering, on occasion freshly autopsied with sutures like zip fasteners from neck to pelvis, usually missing odd limbs after accidents - were exemplary citizens of contemporary America. He called them 'the silent majority', identifying them with the voters who elected Nixon in 1968 (and who may well re-elect George W. Bush this year). "

Draining the Language out of Color: "Kay and Berlin hit on color terminology in the early 1960s while comparing notes on their field research. Kay, a New York City-born, New Orleans-bred cultural anthropologist, had just returned from 15 months in Tahiti. Berlin, a linguistic anthropologist reared in Oklahoma, had been researching a Mayan language of southern Mexico. 'We found that in both our languages, all the major color terms but one were exactly like those in English, and in the one area of difference, they differed in exactly the same way.' (They grouped green and blue to form what Kay and Berlin called 'grue.') That two such profoundly unrelated languages should name colors alike seemed to point to some universal linguistic pattern. "

found, by accident, my village (edge node? suburb?) of South Wellington in the OED under the entry for "jitney"-- I wish those buses were still running!-- but the reduction of the service must coincide with the decline of the mines, even during wartime...

"2. bus, omnibus. An omnibus or other motor vehicle which carries passengers for a fare, orig. five cents. So, on account of the low fare or the poor quality of these buses, used attrib. to denote anything cheap, improvised, or ramshackle.

1914 Let. 28 Nov. in Nation (N.Y.) (1915) 14 Jan. 50/3 This autumn automobiles, mostly of the Ford variety, have begun in competition with the street cars in this city [sc. Los Angeles]. The newspapers call them ‘Jitney 'buses’. 1915 N.Y. Even. Post 16 Apr., The jitney wears out the streets and should contribute to their repair. 1916 Daily Colonist (Victoria, B.C.) 6 July 4/5 The daily jitney service between Nanaimo and South Wellington has been discontinued. Hereafter cars will run on Saturdays only and the fare has been raised from 25 cents to 50 cents. 1916 H. L. Wilson Somewhere in Red Gap ii. 59 He+sells these jitney pianos and phonographs and truck like that. 1917 E. Frost Lett. (1972) 13, I hired McGrath, the jitney driver, to bring us home. 1919 M. A. von Arnim Christopher & Columbus xxxi. 400 He had come in the jitney omnibus to the nearest point. 1920 [see Daiquiri]. 1921 Daily Colonist (Victoria, B.C.) 25 Mar. 2/4 The decision of the Provincial Legislature to prohibit the sale of near beer will affect 58 jitney bars in this city, according to City Licence Inspector Charles Jones. 1923 F. Parsons Everybody's Business 215 All the jitney operators on the line. 1925 Amer. Speech I. 152/1 That bastard word ‘jitney’ is still used in outlying places, where a ‘jitney dance’ means a nickel dance. 1933 N.Y. Herald Tribune 5 Dec. 17/3 We refer to the jitney economists, the boys who play the money tunes only by ear. 1946 E. O'Neill Iceman Cometh (1947) i. 36 He never worries in hard times because there's always old friends from the days when he was a jitney Tammany politician. 1947 E. A. McCourt Music at Close 108 He would go to the jitney dance held in the big open space behind the town hall unless an outdoor floor had been set up. 1967–8 Bahamas Handbk. & Businessmen's Ann. (ed. 7) 197 There are jitneys on New Providence+which travel over unscheduled and not necessarily prescribed routes picking up and dropping off passengers. 1973 Philadelphia Inquirer (Today Suppl.) 7 Oct. 8/2 From the museum a jitney carries visitors to the Mills. "

"There Goes the Neighborhood" : "Greenspan knows, perhaps better than anyone, that this economy is perched nervously on top of a wobbly, Dr. Seuss-like tower."

Berlin Mitte. Explorations of an Urban Conversion

download for free the best American movie of 1968---Night of the Living Dead

Battling back against the 'human jackals': "Most are no strangers to violence, having served as special forces soldiers in countries such as Afghanistan, Bosnia, and other places they usually politely decline to name. Yet as the men working for US company Blackwater Security learned the hard way, working without a uniform on can be even more dangerous. As mercenaries in the world's dirtier conflicts have known for centuries, captured guns-for-hire cannot even expect the right to a dignified burial. "

Happy Birthday Fragonard!

Maintaining the Vista: "While busy urban border crossings such as the ones in Niagara Falls and Detroit may be the most common image, much of the Canada/U.S. border stretches through forests, mountains and prairie. It is along these vast stretches of uninhabited and occasionally rough terrain that 'maintaining the vista,' as the commission calls it, has been challenging."

Bioluminescence

Metrorama - Photos panoramiques du metro de Paris

cassettes picked up at the dollar store today

1. Shabba Ranks--Rough and Ready vol 1 (was there a vol 2?--big slick sound, though, David Morales worked on it) (later--pretty good beats throughout)
2. PM Dawn--Jesus Wept (their third, never before heard by me, playing now & good, forget how much I miss that compressed but fat bass sound on late-era ('95) cassettes--and the big fold outs!) (great acoustic cover of 1999 just came on!) (which just segued into "once in a lifetime", wild!) (...then nilsson's coconut??--odd medley--wonder what they're up to now?)
3. Strictly Bass Too--"nonstop dance mix" odd Canadian compilation--has dance mixes of U2 but Chaka Demus & Pliers too--last days for the Muchmusic utopia?? (later--rather good--had forgotten how close dancehall came to the mainstream back then)
4. Strictly Bass Three--more Chaka Demus but also Ashley MacIsaac and Jann Arden
5. Bim Skala Bim--Tuba City--Boston Ska band I'd never heard of on Celluloid (called here "skaloid") from 88--has cover of "sunshine of your love" though
6. Don Sebesky--Moving Lines--14 minute big band fusion version of "malaguena"!(best tunes here were the versions of "cherokee" and "skyliner"--he should have done a whole album of charlie barnet)
7. Herb Jeffries--The Four Winds & the Seven Seas--great Ellington crooner and cowboy movie star, uncertain vintage (later--use of echo chamber and booming hifi mono sez 50's for sure), has "its easy to remember" and the self-penned "sunday isnt sunday anymore" only ten songs, though
8. Rhythm Formula Essentials vol 4.--14 full length extended club mixes--lots of big mid-90's pophouse mixes compiled in Montreal or Toronto--includes two versions of the mildly smutty "disco's revenge" by Gusto, todd terry mixes as well

massive cache of Literature for Children

Ian McEwan reaches the promised land: "According to a US Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection spokesman, the problem arose because he told officials he was being paid for his west coast lecture tour, but he did not have a visa for business visitors. McEwan was turned back and spent the night in a Vancouver hotel."

Music swappers win court victory: "The act of 'making available' is illegal under a World Intellectual Property Organization treaty that Canada has signed, 'however that treaty has not yet been implemented in Canada and therefore does not form part of Canadian copyright law,' said von Finckenstein."

here's the mixup/mashup master IDC's site, Pete

Big Baby: "'I think it reinforces the idea that the president cannot go it alone,' she said. 'The president should stand tall, walk in the room himself and answer the questions.' "

April Fools: "When semiotician cum novelist, Umberto Eco teamed (as director) with actor/producer Gerard Depardieu, to bring Perec's great Oulipian novel to the viewing public, he set out to create "a work of art like none that has been made before."
"...because," Eco said, picking up a baroque recorder from his desk, "that novel is like no book ever written." "

S/FJ: "Headline in that free downtown paper today: 'MURDERERS!' As opposed to who? As compared to when? Women? Children? Soldiers? A year ago? Yesterday? Is this going to be a regular feature? Murder Watch (tm)? Which murderers and murderees are we tracking? Would there, then, be a day when you couldn't run that headline? And would there, could there be a day when you didn't have a picture to go with it?"

Daily Kos: "I was angry that five soldiers -- the real heroes in my mind -- were killed the same day and got far lower billing in the newscasts. I was angry that 51 American soldiers paid the ultimate price for Bush's folly in Iraq in March alone. I was angry that these mercenaries make more in a day than our brave men and women in uniform make in an entire month. I was angry that the US is funding private armies, paying them $30,000 per soldier, per month, while the Bush administration tries to cut our soldiers' hazard pay. I was angry that these mercenaries would leave their wives and children behind to enter a war zone on their own volition. "

Iraq: The Secret Policeman's Other Ball

The privatisation of war: "The private sector is so firmly embedded in combat, occupation and peacekeeping duties that the phenomenon may have reached the point of no return: the US military would struggle to wage war without it. "

Britain's secret army in Iraq: "So many British security firms are cashing in on the violence in Iraq that armed private security men now outnumber most of the national army contingents in the country."

"Hellboy" rave

group show (including poet Lisa Robertson and named after her book) The Weather opens in Vancouver at the Charles H Scott tonight

Extraordinary Rendition: "While the nation focused on Richard Clarke's allegations last week, CIA director George Tenet let slip other revelations in his testimony to the 9-11 Commission, admissions that sharpen the contours of the shadowy intelligence practice called 'extraordinary rendition.'
The policy, codified in the late 1980s to allow U.S. law enforcement to apprehend wanted men in lawless states like Lebanon during its civil war, has emerged in recent years as one of America's key counterterrorism tools, and has now expanded in scope to include the transfer of terrorism suspects by U.S. intelligence agents to foreign countries for interrogation�and, say some insiders, torture prohibited inside this nation's borders. "

Niagara Falls freezes and stops, 1848

Frame Enlargements from Stan Brakhage films

Birdsong albums fly off the shelves

"Willows" abridged too far
"But the Disneyfication of "The Wind in the Willows" is more insidious. Because, as Evil Clones are wont to do, Disney's Toad has gone back to wipe out the original, replace it with himself and cover his tracks. Only those who know to poke around will discern the plunder, and by that time the real treasure may be long gone. When our library's vintage copies of "The Wind in the Willows" finally wear out, the Great Illustrated Classic, with its sturdy library binding will be all that's left. And the only hint of the desecration will be the ambiguous but friendly "adapted by" bit on the title page. We'll find Mole sick of cleaning. Toad flinging horrid little wagons. Mole sitting in his chair with a bubble of Badger over his head. Cleansed of "divine discontent and longing," bereft of "poetry of motion," with Mole never taking time out to smell Home, Little Portly neither lost nor found, and no Pan pipes to be forgotten by Rat or reader. Greatly diluted and poorly illustrated "classics" will be the literary legacy left to our children."

Dictionary of the Scots Language Crivvens!

The Fight Against Shostakovich Revisionism: "What motivates these flat-earthers? It's hard to say without putting them on the couch, but what Taruskin, Fay and Brown have in common on their CVs is a halcyon student period in the old Soviet Union where life was spartan and Shostakovich was a secret language which no-one in the west had yet cracked. They cannot forgive Volkov for his unmasking, nor can they retract their own theories without looking like idiots. And so they flourish, these red-rimmed nostalgists, fighting a Cold War from tenured positions, heedless of the discredit that they heap on the indiscipline of musicology and on the reputation of the Soviet era's greatest hero, Dmitri Shostakovich."

No Rock&Roll Fun: "Julie Burchill believes that we're all children of Thatcher and McClaren, but this misses that they're actually one and the same: she came from a grocers, he came from a trouser shop; they built their position on the back of the working classes preaching the virtues of self-interest, while making sure they got more than their share of the spoils. And none of them have done anything decent since Jubilee Year."