the state of politics in Oregon

The Lenny Bruce Trial 

soul sides--tasty, tasteful Mp3 blog

free Mp3's from The Fall 

The 2004 Olympics - Living in Seattle means never having to see Bob Costas
"The Canucks also aren't afraid to give airtime to losers--and not just the sentimental favorites who gamely finish long after the winners are showing their shoe logos to the crowd. This isn't the Olympic spirit in action. The Canadians show losers because they ARE losers."

You pissed on my rug
"According to Canadian texts (six are cited), the United States planned to conquer and annex Canada during the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War and at various points in between. During the Cold War, the United States repeatedly bullied Canada into supporting its aggressive military policies. Canadian officials hoped that NATO would evolve into a North Atlantic community that would act as a counterweight to U.S. influence in Canada, but in vain: Canadian governments had to toe the U.S. line or suffer humiliation. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Prime Minister John G. Diefenbaker, concerned that Kennedy's belligerence might lead to a nuclear war, waited three days before announcing that Canadian forces had gone on the alert. In the next election, the Americans used their influence to topple the truculent prime minister. Diefenbaker's successor, Lester Pearson, aligned Canada more closely with the United States, but in 1965 he annoyed Lyndon Johnson by calling for a bombing pause and a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam War. In a meeting after the speech, Johnson grabbed Pearson by the lapels and shouted, 'You pissed on my rug.' Thus have Canadian texts immortalized the Johnson vernacular. " 

it all started with Lani Guinier...
"On the (relatively) high road, the Guinier fight taught conservatives that Clinton was singularly susceptible to frontal media assault on 'controversial' social issues; on the low road, the Hill fight produced a cadre of conservatives committed to taking down the next Democratic president by means of mass-media sex-scandal. In this bitter sense, the Guinier episode set the terms for the torpedoing of national health care in 1993 94 and Clinton's later capitulation on welfare 'reform'; Hill, meanwhile, begat David Brock, who tripled the American Spectator's circulation and begat Richard Mellon Scaife and a host of Arkansas state troopers, who together begat Kenneth Starr, who begat Linda Tripp, who begat Monicamania, whose issue was still uncertain at press time. No doubt Anita Hill and Lani Guinier would prefer to leave a different legacy - which is, I surmise, one reason they have written their own accounts of their encounters with Washington at its worst."

(via Eschaton)

Ralph Waldo Emerson's free adapatation of part of the Vishnu Purana--Hamatreya

"Minott, Lee, Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, Flint,
Possessed the land, which rendered to their toil
Hay, corn, roots, hemp, flax, apples, wool, and wood.
Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm,
Saying, ''Tis mine, my children's, and my name's.
How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees;
How graceful climb those shadows on my hill;
I fancy those pure waters and the flags
Know me as does my dog: we sympathize,
And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.'
Where are those men? Asleep beneath their grounds,
And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough.
Earth laughs in flowers to see her boastful boys
Earth proud, proud of the earth which is not theirs;
Who steer the plough, but cannot steer their feet
Clear of the grave.

They added ridge to valley, brook to pond,
And sighed for all that bounded their domain,
'This suits me for a pasture; that's my park,
We must have clay, lime, gravel, granite-ledge,
And misty lowland where to go for peat.
The land is well, lies fairly to the south.
'Tis good, when you have crossed the sea and back,
To find the sitfast acres where you left them.'
Ah! the hot owner sees not Death, who adds
Him to his land, a lump of mould the more..."

 

blissblog
"If your classic rock drum sound is something like Baskerville or Times New Roman, then the drums in the Belgian stuff or early Eurohouse or The KLF is perhaps equivalent to Arial or Lucida Console or something of that ilk: streamlined, almost-naturalistic, with a hint of futurity and this-is-the-modern-world. But like your classic rock drum sound, the beat/font doesn't really draw attention to itself, it's functional--rhythm as division of time. Pure information. Of course rock drum sound hasn't always been like that--think of psychedelia's effects-laden beats: the billowing, phased drum-rolls on The Small Faces' 'Itchycoo Park' being equivalent perhaps to the trippy typography on all those Fillmore Ballroom posters for bands like Sopwith Camel and Jefferson Airplane, woogly and pendulous to the point of illegibility.

Then in the Seventies drums went 'naturalistic' again; a good sound meant clear and defined. (Exceptions: dub and dub-fiends like PiL and Martin Hannett; gamelan-aware postpunkers; Eno-linked or influenced stuff e.g. the splashy drums on 'Warning Sign' by Talking Heads; rock groups that used a lot of hand percussion perhaps; Arthur Russell obviously). Despite rave culture being the rebirth of psychedelia, the drums in house and early techno are for the most clean and stark, but that begins to change around 1993, leading to the current fontasia (forgive me!) of voluptuous texturhythm. So my challenge, to folks out there who actually know something about both dance music and graphic design (Matt? Julian House?), is to tabulate direct correspondences between the specific beat-signatures of auteur-producers and particular fonts. Who, for instance, is the Wings Dings of modern music? Who's really pushing it now in terms of approching the threshold of rhythmic illegibility? Alternatively, to break down the history of drums in pop music according to a similar schema. E.g. What's the equivalent of serif versus sans-serif? Would sans-serif = the postpunk fashion for not using ride-cymbal and hi-hats, because of its assocation with heavy rock?"

Julia Child 1912-2004

Bernd Heinrich's "Ravens in Winter" and "The Mind of the Raven" are excellent--
"'Klaus told me that whenever he gets mail, Jakob demands his fair portion of it,' says Heinrich, adding that it is Jakob's pleasure to shred junk mail into confetti. Jakob also insists on being given, for his destructive pleasure, cardboard boxes and mail-order catalogs. Finishing them off, Jakob gives Heinrich a mighty peck on the thigh. 'I was told he wanted the ballpoint pen with which I was taking notes,' he reports, informing us that he quickly surrendered the pen. "

Ravens on PBS Sunday night 

Aspects of the Victorian book 

Walt Whitman--notebooks, butterfly...

(from Plep) 

sound pioneer Delia Derbyshire 

from John Aubrey's "Wiltshire", how to make
Metheglyn-- (from Mistress Hatchman. This receipt makes good Metheglyn; I thinke as good as the Devises). Allow to every quart of honey a gallon of water; and when the honey is dissolved, trie if it will beare an egg to the breadth of three pence above the liquor; or if you will have it stronger putt in more honey. Then set it on the fire, and when the froth comes on the toppe of it, skimme it cleane; then crack eight or ten hen-egges and putt in the liquor to cleare it: two or three handfulls of sweet bryar, and so much of muscovie, and sweet marjoram the like quantity; some doe put sweet cis, or if you please put in a little of orris root. Boyle all these untill the egges begin to look black, (these egges may be enough for a hoggeshead,) then straine it forth through a fine sieve into a vessell to coole; the next day tunne it up in a barrell, and when it hath workt itself cleare, which will be in about a weeke's time, stop it up very close,
and if you make it strong enough, sc. to carry the breadth of a
sixpence, it will keep a yeare. "

Michael Mann on Collateral "'Motion picture film could not see the world that these characters inhabit. It can't see into the night. The environments, where there's a red desert of depopulated refineries just at the moment when Max and Vincent become personal for the first time. Film can't see that stuff. [Digital technology is] a very painterly medium. You can manipulate it a lot as well as being able to see into the night. [There's a] crime scene, you're seeing two miles away, downtown, little American flag on top of the building. It's not just the seeing, though. It lends itself to taking atmosphere and building landscapes and pushing them into a mood and affect a scene and affect the way you feel about these characters.' " 

Alex Cox watches "Man on Fire" and has some questions--
"The ICT was set up in 1999 with a grant of $50m from the US Army to create training simulators. In the aftermath of 9/11, the A-list creatives were supposed to come up with scenarios by which terrorists might seek to attack the USA. Would it be naive to question whether this was a one-way street? Or whether the Pentagon, which already maintained film liaison offices in Los Angeles, had a few ideas for the A-list talent to work on, as well? "

check out the work of Vanessa Renwick and Bill Daniel at the Oregon Department of Kick Ass 

Letters from Citizen Kay--a new blog

great director Anthony Mann on the big screen in NYC (oh well)--including the early noirs (with cinematographer John Alton), the westerns (with James Stewart) and the great widescreen epics ("El Cid" and "The Fall of the Roman Empire")... 

Washington State International Kite Festival Aug 16-22 

(I guess Holbein didn't do cats) Sir Henry Wyatt

"'He was imprisoned often; once in a cold narrow tower, where he had neither a bed to lie on, nor cloaths sufficient to warm him, nor meat for his mouth; he starved there had not God, who sent a Crow to feed his prophet; sent this his country's master, a Cat, both to feed him and to warm him ----------- it was his own relation from whom I had it -------- A cat came one day down into the dungeon unto him, and, as it were, offered herself unto him, he was glad of her, laid her in his bosome to warm him, and making much of her, won her love. After this she would come every day unto him in diverse times, and when she could get him one, bring him a pigeon; he complained to the keeper of his cold and short fare; the answer was, he durst not better it; but said Sir Henry, 'If I can provide any, will you promise to dress it for me?'. 'I may well enough' said the Keeper, 'are you safe for that matter' and for him from time to time such pigeons as his Acater (caterer) the cat, provided for him. Sir Henry in his prosperity would ever make much of a cat, and perhaps you will never find a picture of him anywhere, but with a cat beside him."

away from the Manse a few days, readers 

Sir Thomas Wyatt

Mine Own John Poynz


Mine own John Poynz, since ye delight to know
The cause why that homeward I me draw,
And flee the press of courts, whereso they go,
Rather than to live thrall under the awe
Of lordly looks, wrapp'd within my cloak,
To will and lust learning to set a law:
It is not for because I scorn or mock
The power of them, to whom fortune hath lent
Charge over us, of right, to strike the stroke.
But true it is that I have always meant
Less to esteem them than the common sort,
Of outward things that judge in their intent
Without regard what doth inward resort.
I grant sometime that of glory the fire
Doth twyche my heart. Me list not to report
Blame by honour, and honour to desire.
But how may I this honour now attain,
That cannot dye the colour black a liar?
My Poynz, I cannot from me tune to feign,
To cloak the truth for praise without desert
Of them that list all vice for to retain.
I cannot honour them that sets their part
With Venus and Bacchus all their life long;
Nor hold my peace of them although I smart.
I cannot crouch nor kneel to do so great a wrong,
To worship them, like God on earth alone,
That are as wolves these sely lambs among.
I cannot with my word complain and moan,
And suffer nought, nor smart without complaint,
Nor turn the word that from my mouth is gone.
I cannot speak and look like a saint,
Use willes for wit, and make deceit a pleasure,
And call craft counsel, for profit still to paint.
I cannot wrest the law to fill the coffer
With innocent blood to feed myself fat,
And do most hurt where most help I offer.
I am not he that can allow the state
Of him Caesar, and damn Cato to die,
That with his death did scape out of the gate
From Caesar's hands (if Livy do not lie)
And would not live where liberty was lost;
So did his heart the common weal apply.
I am not he such eloquence to boast
To make the crow singing as the swan;
Nor call the liond of cowardes beasts the most
That cannot take a mouse as the cat can;
And he that dieth for hunger of the gold
Call him Alexander; and say that Pan
Passeth Apollo in music many fold;
Praise Sir Thopias for a noble tale,
And scorn the story that the Knight told;
Praise him for counsel that is drunk of ale;
Grin when he laugheth that beareth all the sway,
Frown when he frowneth and groan when is pale;
On others' lust to hang both night and day:
None of these points would ever frame in me.
My wit is nought--I cannot learn the way.
And much the less of things that greater be,
That asken help of colours of device
To join the mean with each extremity,
With the nearest virtue to cloak alway the vice;
And as to purpose, likewise it shall fall
To press the virtue that it may not rise;
As drunkenness good fellowship to call;
The friendly foe with his double face
Say he is gentle and courteous therewithal;
And say that favel hath a goodly grace
In eloquence; and cruelty to name
Zeal of justice and change in time and place;
And he that suffer'th offence without blame
Call him pitiful; and him true and plain
That raileth reckless to every man's shame.
Say he is rude that cannot lie and feign;
The lecher a lover; and tyranny
To be the right of a prince's reign.
I cannot, I; no, no, it will not be!
This is the cause that I could never yet
Hang on their sleeves that way, as thou mayst see,
A chip of chance more than a pound of wit.
This maketh me at home to hunt and to hawk,
And in foul weather at my book to sit;
In frost and snow then with my bow to stalk;
No man doth mark whereso I ride or go:
In lusty leas at liberty I walk.
And of these news I feel nor weal nor woe,
Save that a clog doth hang yet at my heel.
No force for that, for it is ordered so,
That I may leap both hedge and dyke full well.
I am not now in France to judge the wine,
With saffry sauce the delicates to feel;
Nor yet in Spain, where one must him incline
Rather than to be, outwardly to seem:
I meddle not with wits that be so fine.
Nor Flanders' cheer letteth not my sight to deem
Of black and white; nor taketh my wit away
With beastliness; they beasts do so esteem.
Nor I am not where Christ is given in prey
For money, poison, and treason at Rome--
A common practice used night and day:
But here I am in Kent and Christendom
Among the Muses where I read and rhyme;
Where if thou list, my Poinz, for to come,
Thou shalt be judge how I do spend my time.  

wonderful Sheet Music Covers

(via Metafilter) 

Edward Said on Adorno & "The Leopard"

"This is the prerogative of late style: it has the power exactly to render disenchantment and pleasure without resolving the contradiction between them. What holds them in tension, as equal forces straining in opposite directions, is the artist's mature subjectivity, stripped of hubris and pomposity, unashamed either of its fallibility or of the modest assurance it has gained as a result of age and exile." 

more on Luchino Visconti  

Claudia Cardinale (as Angelica with Alain Delon (Tancredi) in "The Leopard) discusses Visconti & Leone, etc. 

17 Portland Oregon Blogs--you sort 'em out 

never mind!
"Most of the al Qaeda surveillance of five financial institutions that led to a new terrorism alert Sunday was conducted before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and authorities are not sure whether the casing of the buildings has continued, numerous intelligence and law enforcement officials said yesterday. "

Dark Aphasia Roast
"'If the word is unrelated then caffeine is still strengthening retrieval in the same way, but because it is unrelated to the word you want to find it is actually having a negative effect,' she said. "