"A Child's Christmas in Wales" read by the author. Sadly no sign of the great Denholm Eliot TV version on local channels this year.
Friday, December 24, 2004
Thursday, December 23, 2004
Torture reconsidered: Shock, awe and the human body
"It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Bush administration is not torturing prisoners because it is useful but because of its symbolism. It originally was intended to be a form of what later, in the attack on Iraq, came to be called 'shock and awe.' It was meant as intimidation. We will do these terrible things to demonstrate that nothing will stop us from conquering our enemies. We are indifferent to world opinion. We will stop at nothing.
In that respect, it is like the attack on Falluja last month, which - destructive as it was - was fundamentally a symbolic operation. Any insurgent who wanted to escape could do so long before the much-advertised attack actually began. Its real purpose was exemplary destruction: to deliver a message to all of Iraq that this is what the United States can do to you if you continue the resistance. It was collective punishment of the city's occupants for having tolerated terrorist operations based there."
"It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Bush administration is not torturing prisoners because it is useful but because of its symbolism. It originally was intended to be a form of what later, in the attack on Iraq, came to be called 'shock and awe.' It was meant as intimidation. We will do these terrible things to demonstrate that nothing will stop us from conquering our enemies. We are indifferent to world opinion. We will stop at nothing.
In that respect, it is like the attack on Falluja last month, which - destructive as it was - was fundamentally a symbolic operation. Any insurgent who wanted to escape could do so long before the much-advertised attack actually began. Its real purpose was exemplary destruction: to deliver a message to all of Iraq that this is what the United States can do to you if you continue the resistance. It was collective punishment of the city's occupants for having tolerated terrorist operations based there."
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
Tom and Jerry at Heart of China's Linguistic Storm
"Dubbed into regional Chinese dialects, the warring cat and mouse have been huge TV hits — and a good way to pass home-grown culture down to the younger generation, programmers say.
Not so fast, says the central government up north in Beijing, which for decades has promoted standard Mandarin as the only Chinese language worthy of the airwaves. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has ordered an end to broadcasting in dialect, saying kids should be raised in a "favorable linguistic environment."
The move has put Tom and Jerry — or "Cat and Mouse," as the show is called here — at the center of a long-running debate about how to maintain national cohesion amid a linguistic sea of highly distinct regional accents, dialects and wholly separate language groups."
vignette from the Book of Daniel by Philip James de Loutherbourg, from The Bowyer Bible
(via the mighty Exclamation Mark)
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Overheard in New York
"Kid #1: Paper beats rock. BAM! Your rock is blowed up!
Kid #2: "Bam" doesn't blow up, "bam" makes it spicy. Now I got a SPICY ROCK! You can't defeat that!"
"Kid #1: Paper beats rock. BAM! Your rock is blowed up!
Kid #2: "Bam" doesn't blow up, "bam" makes it spicy. Now I got a SPICY ROCK! You can't defeat that!"
Guardian: If you value your freedom, reject this sinister ID card
"To be anonymous, to go privately, to move residence without telling the authorities is a fundamental liberty which is about to be taken from us. People may not choose to exercise this entitlement to privacy, or see the point of it, but once it's gone and a vast database is built, eventually to be accessed by every tentacle of the government machine, we will never be able to claw it back. We are about to surrender a right which is precious, rare even in western democracies, and profoundly emblematic of our culture and civilisation. And what for? "
"To be anonymous, to go privately, to move residence without telling the authorities is a fundamental liberty which is about to be taken from us. People may not choose to exercise this entitlement to privacy, or see the point of it, but once it's gone and a vast database is built, eventually to be accessed by every tentacle of the government machine, we will never be able to claw it back. We are about to surrender a right which is precious, rare even in western democracies, and profoundly emblematic of our culture and civilisation. And what for? "
Saturday, December 18, 2004
Matter and Memory: A Conversation with experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison
"A (nitrate) print goes through various stages of "decomp," as it’s called for short in the archival world. And they also have terms for those various stages, the first one being that the print gets "tacky," then stickier and then they call it "donut," because a ring has formed. And then something that maybe came from a Canadian archivist, it's called a "hockey puck". And then at that point there is nothing to do with it, you can't even play hockey with it. Then it eventually turns into dust."
(via GreenCine Daily)
Friday, December 17, 2004
Real Mince Pies
"Take veel ysode and grynde it smale. Take harde eyren isode and ygron and do thereto with prunes hole; dates, icorved pynes and raisons corance hool spices, and powdor, sugar salt; make a litell coffin, and do this fars thereinne, and bake it, and serve if forth."
just in case you haven't seen it by now, the magnificent online Early and Clairvoyant Journals by Hannah Weiner...
Anodyne on Steven Shearer at the CAG--
"That young dude posing down with his prize pot plant, his eyes glittering vampire-red from the camera’s flash? Irony. The painting of the greasy lunk whose hair highlights spell out H-A-S-H? Irony. Shearer’s fake Port Coquitlam basement metal band, the Puff Rock Shiteaters? Irony, baby. The alternative – that these works might actually be as transparent as glass, that Shearer might find something worthwhile or even appealing in his subjects – is too worrying for most institutional viewers to contemplate. Thus the unsigned wall panel at the CAG, whose anonymous author spends several densely worded paragraphs discussing systems of representation, and Shearer’s hopscotching jumps among them, without ever once discussing the artist’s subjects, a list apparently designed to bait the dependably liberal conscience of the Canadian art bureaucracy: longhairs; burnouts; suburban rednecks; decayed child stars; Kiss tribute bands; drunks, and assorted other “high”-culturally challenged folks."
"That young dude posing down with his prize pot plant, his eyes glittering vampire-red from the camera’s flash? Irony. The painting of the greasy lunk whose hair highlights spell out H-A-S-H? Irony. Shearer’s fake Port Coquitlam basement metal band, the Puff Rock Shiteaters? Irony, baby. The alternative – that these works might actually be as transparent as glass, that Shearer might find something worthwhile or even appealing in his subjects – is too worrying for most institutional viewers to contemplate. Thus the unsigned wall panel at the CAG, whose anonymous author spends several densely worded paragraphs discussing systems of representation, and Shearer’s hopscotching jumps among them, without ever once discussing the artist’s subjects, a list apparently designed to bait the dependably liberal conscience of the Canadian art bureaucracy: longhairs; burnouts; suburban rednecks; decayed child stars; Kiss tribute bands; drunks, and assorted other “high”-culturally challenged folks."
Balance in the service of falsehood
" By promoting schools of journalism, media owners could claim that trained editors and reporters were granted autonomy to make decisions based on professional judgment, rather than on the needs of proprietors and advertisers. As a result, owners could present their media monopoly as a service to the community."
" By promoting schools of journalism, media owners could claim that trained editors and reporters were granted autonomy to make decisions based on professional judgment, rather than on the needs of proprietors and advertisers. As a result, owners could present their media monopoly as a service to the community."
S/FJ on IDM
"The addition of "intelligent" and "music" to the category of original music composed and performed largely through cut'n'paste reproduction strategies is the history of the bleaching and bourgeosification of the tradition, and meanwhile I am still waiting for something as intelligent or musical from Sean O'Hagan (or Squarepusher or Shadow) as "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel." As for "dance," don't make me laff, it hurts my jaw.
There is a social content to IDM -- produced entirely by the drama between sonic composition/production technics and the name! -- and that social content is racism, and particularly the racism that takes the form of the most traditional, desecratory narrative of denial, recuperation, piracy and despoilage one could imagine, one that's been played out not just in artistic genre but in, hmm, the history of colonization? "
"The addition of "intelligent" and "music" to the category of original music composed and performed largely through cut'n'paste reproduction strategies is the history of the bleaching and bourgeosification of the tradition, and meanwhile I am still waiting for something as intelligent or musical from Sean O'Hagan (or Squarepusher or Shadow) as "The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel." As for "dance," don't make me laff, it hurts my jaw.
There is a social content to IDM -- produced entirely by the drama between sonic composition/production technics and the name! -- and that social content is racism, and particularly the racism that takes the form of the most traditional, desecratory narrative of denial, recuperation, piracy and despoilage one could imagine, one that's been played out not just in artistic genre but in, hmm, the history of colonization? "
Thursday, December 16, 2004
High-tech rat hole
" Ever since March 1983 when Ronald Reagan got it into his head that we could build an astrodome over the earth and created a crash program with almost no respectable scientific or expert input, this albatross has been nothing more than a welfare program for generals and defense contractors -men who often turn out to be the same person, see under "Tauzin" for a domestic allegory- but the scale is really something to behold. This particular administration's obsession with Star Wars crowded out any attention it might have been willing to pay to terrorism during the 9/11 days, but even with all of the evildoings discussed above, it still finds money to pour more and more billions down this high-tech rat hole while at the same time pretending it is not the unarguable failure it has proved to be at virtually every moment of its existence for the past 21 years--and counting. "
" Ever since March 1983 when Ronald Reagan got it into his head that we could build an astrodome over the earth and created a crash program with almost no respectable scientific or expert input, this albatross has been nothing more than a welfare program for generals and defense contractors -men who often turn out to be the same person, see under "Tauzin" for a domestic allegory- but the scale is really something to behold. This particular administration's obsession with Star Wars crowded out any attention it might have been willing to pay to terrorism during the 9/11 days, but even with all of the evildoings discussed above, it still finds money to pour more and more billions down this high-tech rat hole while at the same time pretending it is not the unarguable failure it has proved to be at virtually every moment of its existence for the past 21 years--and counting. "
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Silliman's Blog
"The degree of work involved in creating a couple hundred couplets on the topic of constipation & bears is not inconsiderable--and to do so with wit & humor all the more challenging. "
"The degree of work involved in creating a couple hundred couplets on the topic of constipation & bears is not inconsiderable--and to do so with wit & humor all the more challenging. "
Monday, December 13, 2004
The Rebel Sell
"Thus the kind of ad parodies that we find in Adbusters, far from being subversive, are indistinguishable from many genuine ad campaigns. Flipping through the magazine, one cannot avoid thinking back to Frank's observation that "business is amassing great sums by charging admission to the ritual simulation of its own lynching." "
"Thus the kind of ad parodies that we find in Adbusters, far from being subversive, are indistinguishable from many genuine ad campaigns. Flipping through the magazine, one cannot avoid thinking back to Frank's observation that "business is amassing great sums by charging admission to the ritual simulation of its own lynching." "
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Jackson Mac Low 1922-2004
1ST LIGHT POEM: FOR IRIS -- 10 JUNE 1962
The light of a student-lamp
sapphire light
shimmer
the light of a smoking-lamp
Light from the Magellanic Clouds
the light of a Nernst lamp
the light of a naphtha-lamp
light from meteorites
Evanescent light
ether
the light of an electric lamp
extra light
Citrine light
kineographic light
the light of a Kitson lamp
kindly light
Ice light
irradiation
ignition
altar light
The light of a spotlight
a sunbeam
sunrise
solar light
Mustard-oil light
maroon light
the light of a magnesium flare
light from a meteor
Evanescent light
ether
light from an electric lamp
an extra light
Light from a student-lamp
sapphire light
a shimmer
smoking-lamp light
Ordinary light
orgone lumination
light from a lamp burning olive oil
opal light
Actinism
atom-bomb light
the light of an alcohol lamp
the light of a lamp burning anda-oil
(drawing byMimi Gross)
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
memories of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band!!!
"Picture this: Oslo, Norway. SAHB are playing an outdoor festival. The stage is at the top of an old ski-slope, and at the bottom, there's a lake. As The Faith Healer's pulsing riff kicks in, Alex is standing on the far shore of the lake. Save for a swimming cap fashioned from a polythene bag, he's butt-naked.
Alex dives in, swims across the lake, then begins making his way up the ski-slope and through the crowd. When he reaches the stage, he pulls on his pirate-stripe T-shirt and jeans, then climbs up to introduce "The Sensational. . . Alex. . . Harvey. . . Band". The next day he made the front page in all the Norwegian papers. Ted McKenna still has the clippings."
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
warm review of the Joe Brainard memoir and the James Schuyler letters--
"Dear Americans, love, The Perkins Rose People. Dear Prisoner in a Chinese Laundry, love, Josette Day. Dear Kewpie, Ever-thine, Hilton Kramer. Engel, love, Bettina. Dear Glen Tetley, love, Pachita Crespi. Dear Lad of Sunnybrook Farm, love, Fran Hagood, Ye Ed. Dear Purvis, Love, The Hookers of Kew. Dear Hosty with the Mosty, love (Mrs) Birdsey Youngs. Dear Tempest Storm, love, Norma Vincent Peel. Dear Rich Freeze-Dried Coffee Chunks, love, Stubborn Stains."
Torture and Truth
"It’s become a kind of cliché that, if in the struggle against terror, we forget our values, the terrorists will have been victorious. My question is, what do we mean by this? What exactly would constitute our having lost this battle and making changes in the way we live and our attitudes towards human rights and civil liberties that would actually constitute a kind of defeat? It’s hard to think of something more obvious than American troops and American intelligence officers torturing prisoners. And doing it not only as an act of desperation in the field, but doing it as a matter of policy which has been developed at the highest level of the administration. My question is, when we say the terrorists cause us to dispense with our values -- our belief in human rights, our adherence to laws we have passed that commit the U.S. not to torture -- if we have abrogated those, doesn’t that constitute the victory of the other side that we talk about? And if it doesn’t, what is the line you have to cross so that it does? "
"It’s become a kind of cliché that, if in the struggle against terror, we forget our values, the terrorists will have been victorious. My question is, what do we mean by this? What exactly would constitute our having lost this battle and making changes in the way we live and our attitudes towards human rights and civil liberties that would actually constitute a kind of defeat? It’s hard to think of something more obvious than American troops and American intelligence officers torturing prisoners. And doing it not only as an act of desperation in the field, but doing it as a matter of policy which has been developed at the highest level of the administration. My question is, when we say the terrorists cause us to dispense with our values -- our belief in human rights, our adherence to laws we have passed that commit the U.S. not to torture -- if we have abrogated those, doesn’t that constitute the victory of the other side that we talk about? And if it doesn’t, what is the line you have to cross so that it does? "
hearing Tami Lynn's "I'm Gonna Run Away From You" for the firtst time since then brought back the glories of the UK chart for July 1971 into sharp relief--I tend to forget how different the British charts still were in those days...John Kongos! Slade! Jim Reeves! Hurricane Smith! Herman covering Bowie!--
UK Top 40 Hits of July 1971
1 Middle Of The Road Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep
2 T Rex Get It On
3 Sweet Co-Co
4 Hurricane Smith Don't Let It Die
5 Lobo Me And You And A Dog Named Boo
6 Greyhound Black And White
7 Blue Mink Banner Man
8 Dave & Ansil Collins Monkey Spanner
9 New World Tom-Tom Turnaround
10 John Kongos He's Gonna Step On You Again
11 Temptations Just My Imagination
12 Tami Lynn I'm Gonna Run Away From You
13 Supremes & Four Tops River Deep, Mountain High
14 Bob & Marcia Pied Piper
15 Tony Christie I Did What I Did For Maria
16 White Plains When You Are A King
17 Move Tonight
18 New Seekers Never Ending Song Of Love
19 Smokey Robinson & The Miracles I Don't Blame You At All
20 St Cecilia Leap Up And Down (Wave Your Knickers In The Air)
21 Mungo Jerry Lady Rose
22 Atomic Rooster Devil's Answer
23 Dawn Knock Three Times
24 Rolling Stones Street Fighting Man
25 Medicine Head (And The) Pictures In The Sky
26 Delfonics La-La Means I Love You
27 Who Won't Get Fooled Again
28 Slade Get Down And Get With It
29 Elgins Heaven Must Have Sent You
30 Gordon Lightfoot If You Could Read My Mind
31 Family In My Own Time
32 Jim Reeves I Love You Because / He'll Have To Go / Moonlight And Roses
33 Bob Dylan Watching The River Flow
34 Neil Diamond I Am ... I Said
35 Fascinations Girls Are Out To Get You
36 Diana Ross I'm Still Waiting
37 Judy Collins Amazing Grace
38 Elvis Presley Rags To Riches
39 Elvis Presley Heartbreak Hotel / Hound Dog
40 Peter Noone Oh You Pretty Thing
Monday, December 06, 2004
Smug Canada
"The rush to make comparisons sometimes prevents meaningful examination of the very real problems that Canada faces. As a Canadian social advocate once told me, when her compatriots look at their own societal problems, they are often satisfied once they can reassure themselves that they're better off than the United States. As long as there's still more homelessness, racism and income inequality to the south, Canadians can continue to rest easy in their moral superiority."
"The rush to make comparisons sometimes prevents meaningful examination of the very real problems that Canada faces. As a Canadian social advocate once told me, when her compatriots look at their own societal problems, they are often satisfied once they can reassure themselves that they're better off than the United States. As long as there's still more homelessness, racism and income inequality to the south, Canadians can continue to rest easy in their moral superiority."
Sunday, December 05, 2004
Friday, December 03, 2004
"Wise Man" (Mexico) from this Advent Calendar
"Featuring daily meditations and pieces from the creche exhibit at Washington National Cathedral."
Carla Bley article/interview--
"Q. You started playing at an early age, didn't you?
Carla: At three.
Q. Church music?
Carla: Yeah. One of the first songs I did was "This Little Light of Mine." I would go around afterwards, collecting coins.
Q. Your parents encouraged you?
Carla: I had no choice. They gave me the cup and taught me how to play "Three Blind Mice." That's so weird. I just realized that was the first piece I played in public. Now I've written a very lengthy arrangement of "Three Blind Mice." B flat, A flat, G flat. It was very effective. I got a lot of coins."
Thursday, December 02, 2004
The Barren Lands extensive site about J.B. Tyrell's expeditions for the Geological Survey of Canada 1892-94
review of fine book on Picasso's Guernica
"When in February 2003 Colin Powell went before the United Nations in a last-ditch attempt to win approval for an aerial bombardment of Baghdad to be code-named Shock and Awe, a blue 'shroud' was thrown over the 'Guernica' copy hanging before news cameras in the corridor. 'Painted as a passionate protest against senseless violence,' van Hensbergen observes, 'it was once again succeeding only too well.' "
"When in February 2003 Colin Powell went before the United Nations in a last-ditch attempt to win approval for an aerial bombardment of Baghdad to be code-named Shock and Awe, a blue 'shroud' was thrown over the 'Guernica' copy hanging before news cameras in the corridor. 'Painted as a passionate protest against senseless violence,' van Hensbergen observes, 'it was once again succeeding only too well.' "
Fallujah/Guernica
"The defining image of Fallujah - for Iraqis, for the Arab world, for 1.3 billion Muslims - is the summary execution of a wounded, defenseless Iraqi man inside a mosque by a marine. This execution, caught on tape, suggests 'special' rules of engagement were applying. Marine commanders have been on the record telling their soldiers to 'shoot everything that moves and everything that doesn't move'; to fire 'two bullets in every body'; in case of seeing any military-aged men in the streets of Fallujah, to 'drop 'em'; and to spray every home with machine-gun and tank fire before entering them. These 'rules' are all confirmed by residents of Fallujah who managed to escape. "
"The defining image of Fallujah - for Iraqis, for the Arab world, for 1.3 billion Muslims - is the summary execution of a wounded, defenseless Iraqi man inside a mosque by a marine. This execution, caught on tape, suggests 'special' rules of engagement were applying. Marine commanders have been on the record telling their soldiers to 'shoot everything that moves and everything that doesn't move'; to fire 'two bullets in every body'; in case of seeing any military-aged men in the streets of Fallujah, to 'drop 'em'; and to spray every home with machine-gun and tank fire before entering them. These 'rules' are all confirmed by residents of Fallujah who managed to escape. "
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
David Thomson on Scorsese's Aviator--
"That is why it's so hard to sell the story of Howard Hughes. He was a downer; he preferred not to in the end. But it wasn't just that he agreed that there are no second acts in American history. No, he said, there are second acts--and they are as prolonged, as inert and vacant, as the best medical research can manage. He left most of his money to medicine, don't forget, and I suspect that was because he'd guessed how that unending second act of life barely sustained was our just reward. So I encourage the kids to carry on oblivious of Howard Hughes. He is not for you. That way lies dismay, the thoughts that fill the early hours of any morning when the drug has worn off, or the times of day when no one can believe in just being American any longer."
The Brothers Quay and Bruno Schulz
"On the contrary, the Quays' 'aesthetics of degraded reality' finds beauty in industrial decay, moldering fabric, rust, dirt, grime, the discarded, the broken, the derelict, the deformed, human and non-human abnormalities, pathologies, and anomalies. Beauty lies precisely in that which contemporary mainstream society neglects and discards. "
"On the contrary, the Quays' 'aesthetics of degraded reality' finds beauty in industrial decay, moldering fabric, rust, dirt, grime, the discarded, the broken, the derelict, the deformed, human and non-human abnormalities, pathologies, and anomalies. Beauty lies precisely in that which contemporary mainstream society neglects and discards. "
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)