The fable of how the fool-killer backed out of a contract

"A stifling Dust enveloped them. They Gasped and Sniffled. Some tried to alleviate their Sufferings by gulping down a Pink Beverage made of Drug-Store Acid, which fed the Fires of Thirst.

Thus they wove and interwove in the smoky Oven. The Whimper or the faltering Wail of Children, the quavering Sigh of overlaced Women, and the long-drawn Profanity of Men -- these were what the Fool-Killer heard as he looked upon the Suffering Throng.

"Is this a new Wrinkle on Dante's Inferno?" he asked of the Man on the Gate, who wore a green Badge marked "Marshal," and was taking Tickets.

"No, sir; this is a County Fair," was the reply."  

Barret Watten on Derrida

" Even dead, his writing is not simply the writing of one who would end up being dead; he would not have written if he had not lived. This matters in the crucial scene of the work's meaning: Derrida, like any writer, is going to be read differently now that he is dead, and yet he cannot be read as if that were the end of it. Living looks forward in the manner of the work in a particular way that is not delimited by anything such as a monument (of text, reputation, influence) that is left behind when the writer is finished. This is the freedom in which Derrida wrote in his present, and the freedom in which we may read him. "

<$Xvarenah$>

"There’s a show where newlyweds volunteer to have their home-to-be completely redecorated by a team of resourceful pro designers. The lovebirds return from their honeymoon for a big surprise. For, all they get to keep from their previous possessions for sure, is a single “protected item” each. Anything else is liable to be radically refashioned, given away, or simply fed to the woodchipper...

I see in this, as so many--if not all--of the so-called “reality shows”, whether by accident or design, the heavy hand of the totalitarian agenda at work. We are to accept without question the decree of the collectivity, as embodied in interchangeably telegenic “experts”, even in such matters as formerly were left to personal discretion: our vaunted “individuality”, however, being symbolized by one pitiful relict item--like the “flesh-strips” which guaranteed the humanness of the cyborgs in "Moderan".

Jamming With Miles on Isle of Wight new movie with full 38 minute set Miles Davis played there in 1970! 

They're hatin' it

"How noble of them to stoop to save the ignorant, helpless burger-munching poor from themselves. Has the Left really lowered its horizons so far that changing the world now means trying to prevent hard-up families from feeding their kids for 1 pound 99p a time (toy and indoor playground included)?"

useful if optimisitic guide to Growing catnip

"After the initial delight wears off, they usually leave the plants alone to grow strong and tall. " 

Juan Cole

"By taking his eye off the ball and failing to finish the fight against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Bush perpetuated dangerous instability in South Asia. By giving in to the Likud Party's aggressive settlement of the West Bank and encroachment on Palestinians there, which end any chance of a Palestinian state ever being established--and by failing to pursue a just peace that would bestow security on both Israelis and Palestinians-- Bush perpetuated dangerous instability and virulent anti-Americanism in the Mideast. By creating a failed state in Iraq, and mismanaging the aftermath of the war so as to allow the rise of an audacious guerrilla war there, Bush perpetuated dangerous instability in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. All three bombings on Thursday spoke eloquently of the Bush administration's failure to create a safer world with less terrorism."

(from "Basement Series" 1996)

Roy Arden

The World as Will and Representation--Archive 2004

QuickTime Movie 38 minutes 51 seconds

10,000 images 

Mother Fights off Hawk to Save Dog

"As the bird lifted Alfie from the ground Mrs Patterson grabbed hold of him and took part in a tug-of-war with the bird.

Mrs Patterson managed to fight off the hawk and rescue Alfie from its clutches.

"It was really scary. We were all terrified and the girls were screaming.

"The bird swooped down and picked Alfie up from the ground. I was holding on to his body and so the bird was only a couple of inches away from my face.

"The bird was pecking at the dog's head. It definitely could have killed him," she said.

Mrs Patterson said luckily Alfie escaped with only a couple of minor cuts and a small hole in the top of his head."

Jim Behrle's comics have really been busting through lately. That Led Zep song always chokes me up anyway.

LA Through Postcards

"MacArthur Park is melting in the dark,
all the sweet green icing flowing down,
someone left a cake out in the rain..." 

Alan Bramhall's Brockton Poems--

Natural History Museum of Brockton 4/30/00


the elaboration constitutes a township. let all exult now in the music, and the greening trees. today is a goose heading to that wet patch. slack sunlight washes any city like Brockton, Massachusetts, gladdened enhancement. the communal urge fires up a truculent vacuity familiar to all jaded eyes. hearken to that or the tea kettle a-boil. the favoured enclose their destitutions in glossy rites. they magnify their delirium with queenly justice and a dollop of sweet cream in their tea. this hums with Brockton's tone. a flicker of honey sweetens the tea and the day pauses in its grandiose stretch across the imaginable heavens to let the tea's airy fragrance trim some clutter from the doorway. take hold of the idea that a gust will be yours. take that picture now. you can walk the streets of Brockton, collapse in sidewalk reverie. the beamish sun resists interpretation but look how the ransacked factories take on new life. the country has a heavenly possibility. that's not so bad as it sounds. the framework renders activity into boundless energy, you see. that Blakean truth works its magic on Brockton's own. the language dips its beak into the mild rostrum of invigourated politics. the people speak, or move above the town. and the town, too, moves about. and the country moves, and the continent does, and the planet finds extremity as just one more dance. and all this adds up to a talked-about grace. discussion fills the boat with longing and excitement. island astonishment lives on. Brockton is home. 

Finnish speeding tickets based on income
"Finland's largest traffic fine to date was paid in February by 'sausage king' Jussi Salonoja, heir to a food processing empire, who had to pay 170,000 euros after driving at 80 kilometers per hour in a zone limited to half that speed. "

nice review of new Dylan Memoir

"...he talked about the sound he'd always been searching for: It was "that thin, that wild mercury sound" he told me, and it was a New York sound: "It was the sound of the streets, that ethereal twilight light on a particular type of building. A particular type of people--arguments in apartments and the clinking of silverware and knives and forks--usually it's the crack of dawn."

"The jingle-jangle morning?" I ventured, quoting the phrase from "Mr. Tambourine Man."

"Right," he said." 

the new Rain Taxi is up

Pie vs. Parliament in Scotland

"Mr McAveety rushed to the chamber but then managed to compound his original error by telling MSPs he had been 'unavoidably detained' because of a literary event, failing to mention that he had actually been late because of his desire for a pie and beans. " 

Political Theory Daily Review

"The Anomie of My Anomie is My Friend", a Scooby-Doo Treatment by Alice Munro

"Daphne adjusts her scarf and thinks of Velma, so coy with her glasses off, teasing them all over chamomile tea back at the sun-baked diner in Edmonton, teasing them for their stupidity in not realizing that the culprit was the ghost, always the ghost, every time the ghost. Why, Daphne thought, why must it always be the ghost? Why were they trapped in this fool's game of charade and parody? Why had she given up her job teaching comparative literature at McGill and her Gitane-smoking Russian with his sarcasm and garlic. Why had she given up the Raleigh three-speed, with the battered basket, just the right size for the loaf of warm bread they would split every morning, why would she give up all that for this, for this clownish van? For an endless parade of ghosts. For Fred." 

any time is a good time for pie "In a scene straight from the cartoons, the cub hoisted himself on to the deck, walked through the open door and made a beeline for the freshly baked pie cooling on the kitchen counter." 

QuickTime video of Dani Siciliano and the MATTHEW HERBERT BIG BAND in Paris 2003 

Ladies and Gentlemen--The Wizard of Oz, The Akond of Swat, The Great Cham, Mr. October, The Mighty Camembert, The Big Kahuna, The Master of Disaster, The Ayatollah of Rock and Rolla, Happy Birthday

Mr. Wallace Stevens--



Fabliau of Florida


Barque of phosphor
On the palmy beach,
Move outward into heaven,
Into the alabasters
And night blues.
Foam and cloud are one.

Sultry moon-monsters
Are dissolving.
Fill your black hull
With white moonlight.
There will never be an end
To this droning of the surf.
 

Fast-learning fish

"In experiments, Dr Burt de Perera found that the fish did more than merely avoid bumping into objects in their tank. They built a detailed map of their surroundings, memorising the obstacles in them within a few hours. Once stored in their brains, the fish used their 'mental map' to spot changes in the obstacles around them - a feat that defeats hamsters." 

Charles Taylor on "The Big Red One"

"When the late writer Veronica Geng said in 1988 that Oliver Stone's "Platoon" wasn't "as good as a Sam Fuller war movie," she was committing a heresy against the prevailing critical orthodoxy. With the exception of Brian De Palma's "Casualties of War" (which never found an audience), none of the big prestige war movies that have appeared since the late '70s -- the mucked-up "Apocalypse Now"; "Platoon" and Stone's even more appalling "Born on the Fourth of July"; "Full Metal Jacket"; and "Saving Private Ryan," a film that pushes war-movie gore to its limit while returning the subject to '40s homefront platitudes -- can match the humanity, the craft, or the deft mixing of moods and emotions in "The Big Red One."

It may seem strange to speak of the decorousness of a tabloid filmmaker, but the key to the power of "The Big Red One" can be found in these sentences from Fuller's autobiography: "See, there's no way you can portray war realistically, not in a movie nor in a book. If you really want to make readers understand a battle, a few pages of your book would be booby-trapped. For moviegoers to get the idea of real combat, you'd have to shoot at them every so often from either side of the screen." " 

A Utopian's Submarine from 1859

"The silence that accompanies the dives; the gradual absence of sunlight; the great mass of water, which sight pierces with difficulty; the pallor that light gives to the faces; the lessening movement in the Ictineo; the fish that pass before the portholes--all this contributes to the excitement of the imaginative faculties. . . . there are times when nothing can be seen outside by natural light, when one sees nothing but the obscurity of the deep; all noise and movement stops; it seems as though nature is dead, and the Ictineo is a tomb. " 

excellent long account of the recording of the original Smile

"The diamond necklace played the pawn," Wilson sang. ". . . A blind class aristocracy, back through the opera glass you see the pit and the pendulum drawn.

"Columnated ruins domino," his voice reached upward; the piano faltered a set of falling chords.

In a slow series of impressionistic images the song moved to its ending:

I heard the word:

Wonderful thing!

A children's song!

On the last word Brian's voice rose and fell, like the ending of that prayer chorale he had played so many months before."

 

Legalizing Torture

Manhattan from Jackson Heights, 1938

received these lovely books from
Insurance Editions
35-48 80th Street #52
Jackson Heights, NY 11372
USA


from "Knowledge Follows" by David Perry

*

The baslilisk tracks led to the Department of Anthropology
The professor's mouth formed a stone O
He stood in treated grass, the flute effects of afternoon wind
piched angle and forced right
so beautifully unlike life

He's still alive inside
soft and hot in the sun



from "Reticular Pop-Ups" by Carol Szamatowicz

Diary of Dr. Malmude

Any second now the pelts will fall off the rack,
the serpent soap its bedroll.
I dare not part from my assigned parts--
frequentor of solitide,
devil-may-care sister-mommy,
slice of light in a barque for two.
You're a real bright warm-up,
dashing through your smoke,
lights on your heels.
I dream a cold snap in the tropics,
sun slant uncertain, clock fucked
though we seem to be on time.
I scribble in the hay,
loll around in a bed of potulaca.
Got my thermos to keep me warm.
We stick to vegetable medicine,
never read the news,
ripen open the window,
vote the old city ticket
from nineteeen ought something.
All our shocks are furrowed,
above the psychic mechanisms of trash,
the economy of the few, far too few
have saved their eggs for us.



from "Daydream" by Kostas Anagnopulos

The sky employs many today
People benefit from it
They'd rather horse around
In the new addition
Too hyper for me
There's a kink in the system
They lock the loaf in the freezer
No further instructions
They mourn the day
Ultimately, they take a nap
For the better part of it
Oxygen is delivered
Cars peter out
Ramps are shut down
We need a speaker system
Minus the thunder
The sky is spoken for
The yellow-bellied sapsucker
Sings for its supper

 

The Tyee: Tyee Subscription Drive sign up for BC's best online news, it's free!

Ornette Coleman (ts) with
Don Cherry (pocket trumpet); Jimmy Garrison (b); Ed Blackwell (dr).
TRACKS:
[1] Cross Breeding
[2] Mapa
[3] Enfant
[4] Eos
[5] Ecars
Total Time: 41:05
Recorded in New York City on 22nd and 27th March 1961.
 

Robert Frank Coloring Book

(thanks Bifurcated Rivets) 

'Europe's biggest mushroom' found
"The Swiss fungus is considerably smaller than another Honey Mushroom growing in the US.
Found in the Malheur national forest in Oregon, that fungus covers 890 hectares (2,200 acres) - making it the largest living organism ever discovered. " 

Neil Young Joins a B.C Air War or "Do you do that often, or is this Crofton?

"Crofton and the mill are just a short ferry ride across Stuart Channel from Vesuvius on Salt Spring Island. An exclusive, 851-acre residential development is to be built to the north of the sleepy island hamlet, making the 405 new homes and 1,200 residents at Channel Ridge by far the largest development on the Gulf Islands. The selling of the island as a bucolic paradise is not made easier by the presence of a pulp mill to the southwest."
 

Michael Beschloss recommends some books about US presidential campaigns, includes my favorite "What it Takes", but omits "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72", "The Selling of the President", "American Melodrama" and "The Boys on the Bus", still...

History's Notable Films, Reconsidered.

"Seriously: Who names a sled?"

"Shadow Artforms"

"Once favor has shifted away, an artform may continue on pretense, like deposed royalty in exile; at the same time the culture at large may still go through motions of respect, without anymore having any contact with the living artists. Then, the image of the artist in that medium acquires a different, shadow-power. The artist becomes a symbol, & carries the weight of dreams that more mainstream art-heroes (whose lives are all too visible) cannot. "

much on Bill Daniel's sunset scavenger including Texas Punk, houseboat days and "the world's most mysterious boxcar artist"... 

Skeeter Davis 1931-2004

Why does the sun go on shining?
Why does the sea rush to shore?
Don't they know it's the end of the world,
`cause you don't love me anymore?

Why do the birds go on singing?
Why do the stars glow above?
Don't they know it's the end of the world?
It ended when I lost your love.

I wake up in the morning and I wonder why
ev'rything's the same as it was.
I can't understand, no I can't understand,
how life goes on the way it does!

Why does my heart go on beating?
Why do these eyes of mine cry?
Don't they know it's the end of the world?
It ended when you said good-bye. 

from Inkblot Record author Dan Farrell a look at San Francisco Sewer Air Vent Covers with a brief history--

"One "well-known" member of the elite women's California Club asked "What is the use of putting up fine houses when on stepping to your very door in the finest residence quarter you are greeted by such odors as one meets on Pacific Avenue? We must cleanse ourselves inwardly before we can have a beautiful exterior or properly enjoy it." To cleanse "inwardly" seems to refer to both moral character and one's bowels. It is common after all to refer to the "bowels" of the city when speaking of the underground. A purgative is a physical cleansing and a moral or spiritual purification. Would a new, scientific, sewer system bring a moral purification? If the social problems of the city were reduced to the dysfunction of a body, science could be relied on to cure it. A modern sewer system, like a healthy body, should carry sewage "rapidly to its outfall outside the city, so that no time would be given to decomposition . . ." and should be" . . . flushed at intervals. . . ."" 

"Swimming Pool, Welch, West Virginia" O. Winston Link