South Delta trees

Sam Raimi's immortal "Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn" on TCMUnderground tonight...

from a small dictionary of Antarctic Slang and jargon

Big eye - Insomnia caused by changes in the length
of daylight.

Crawlies - Blowing snow at ground level that snakes
along being very atmospheric. Snow blows around in Antarctica far more than
it falls from the sky, the low temperatures means that it stays powdery and
loose and ever present winds move it back and forwards a lot.

Gomble - An accretion of snow on hair. This is usually facial hair
or the hair on a dog in the days when they were
used to pull sledges. In certain conditions, snow could form into balls (gombles) that
hung from the hair or dogs fur, making them heavy and uncomfortable. (see
degomble) Br.

Hollywood Shower - A naval term, derisively
used to describe showers of longer than the allotted two minutes (fresh water
in a liquid form is relatively rare in Antarctica) Am.

Poppy - Alcoholic beverage that is chilled with natural Antarctic
ice. Hundreds of thousands of years of pressure captured bubbles of environmental
gas that, when warmed with Glenfiddich (or any other less qualified inebriant
of choice), pop in your face. Due to the extremely low humidity of the region,
hangovers induced from poppys were particularly onerous and it wasn't uncommon
for someone to say, "Had too many poppys last night." Trust me, it had nothing
to do with genealogy or flowers. Am

Three-hundred-club - To belong,
you need to go through 300 degrees Fahrenheit, this is achieved by rolling naked
outside in a chilly Antarctic temperature and then going inside to hit the sauna.
Am

a stone classic at Vancouver's plushest high tech movie theatre: Stan Douglas presents COCKFIGHTER

Based on the novel of the same name by Charles Willeford, Cockfighter presents
arguably Warren Oates' best performance as Frank, a drifter torn
between the sport he knows and loves and his feelings for the woman who
adores him.

The opposite of the blowhard he played for director Monte Hellman in Two Lane Blacktop,
Frank maintains a vow of silence for most of the movie. Even so, like
the previous character, Frank travels down many roads, literally and
spiritually. The scenes of cockfighting are disturbingly realistic –
though they are not in fact real – and they're the perfect image of
Frank's inner struggle and obsession. Like Raging Bull, Cockfighter is a story about a man whose worst enemy is outside the ring: himself.

Magnificently shot by Nestor Almendros in rural Georgia – his first
American film after working with Truffaut, Rohmer, Chabrol and
Schroeder - the film has a quasi-documentary look, and the unique stamp
and idiosyncratic humour of cult director Monte Hellman...

"The Bavarian offers a choice of six calibres..."

read Terry Glavin, friend of Ignatieff, fellow New Star author, winner of the 2009 B.C. Lieutenant-Governor's Award for Literary Excellence & articulate defender of "The War on Terror", use those finely honed rhetorical skills to move seamlessly from a harmless post about vanishing fish stocks to a modest proposal funny ha-ha vague threat of gun violence against the author (for the Tyee) of this column, which is critical of the Afghan War--

Afghan Politics: Let's Be Real

Here's Glavin, but the post should be read in its entirety for the full faux-Swiftian effect:


It's an especially good issue of Outdoor Canada, with several
interesting articles, and I see that in Top Gear tips, Ken Bailey 's
recommendation for best pump-action shotgun of the year is the
Remington Model 87 Nitro-mag 12-gauge.

It was the very thing I
had in mind today, being of humane disposition (if you take my
meaning), when I was reading a certain addled columnist in the Tyee,
just after having read the usual idiocies from the "ceasefire.ca"
project of the Rideau Institute. As far as I can tell, the former is
one of those ageing hippies in the early stages of dementia whose
wealthier fellow out-patients the latter is solely designed to bilk of
tax-deductible contributions.

I could be wrong, of course, in
which case I'd dispense with the ritual of offering a last cigarette
and blindfold and go with Bailey's "best bolt-action rifle" pick,
Sako's 85 Bavarian. A handsome rifle, with walnut stock and a Schnaebel
fore-end. The Bavarian offers a choice of six calibres....

The torture debate, rule of law & the subservient defense of monarchical power - Glenn Greenwald

But where says some is the King of America? I’ll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve as monarchy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other...

from "Documentation of Child Graffitti from Ancient Sources", from Public Collectors

My friend J.G. Ballard, by Michael Moorcock

For a while his back garden served as a pit in which he burnt review copies (he phoned me to complain bitterly that Fahrenheit 451 was NOT the temperature at which book paper burned) or as a jungle of sunflowers, which he had seeded...

Bacon: the Other White Heat

Pure oxygen flows from a metal pipe through a core of baked prosciutto...

Hermaphrodite Mollusks, Georges Bataille & Jean Painlevé - Acera ou le bal des sorcières (1972)

"A dictionary would begin as of the moment when it no longer provided the meanings of words but their tasks. In this way formless is not only an adjective having such and such a meaning, but a term serving to declassify, requiring in general that every thing should have a form. What it designates does not, in any sense whatever, possess rights, and everywhere gets crushed like a spider or an earthworm. For academics to be satisfied, it would be necessary, in effect, for the universe to take on a form. The whole of philosophy has no other aim; it is a question of fitting what exists into a frock-coat, a mathematical frock-coat. To affirm on the contrary that the universe resembles nothing at all and is only formless, amounts to saying that the universe is something akin to a spider or a gob of spittle."

not seen by this blogger, on TCM tomorrow night the 1921 Swedish silent The Phantom Carriage , directed & starring Bergman fave Victor Sjostrom, looks splendid...

Local trees @c.

Soul! October 4, 1972 Rahsaan Roland Kirk

AIG is chump change -- let's find corporate America's hidden billions

So rather than continue arguing over chump change, it is long past time for the United States, with its international friends and allies, to demand accountability from the long list of tiny countries and principalities, from Andorra and the Cayman Islands to Singapore and Switzerland, where corporations, wealthy clients and unrepentant evildoers hide their assets.

The big claw-back will reach into quaint islands and mountainous principalities, because the same banks, hedge funds and private equity firms responsible for the world financial meltdown keep their profits in those "secrecy spaces" -- alongside the ill-gotten gains of numerous drug dealers, dictators and delinquents of every description...

some South Delta trees from Peter Cummings

Antonia Hirsch
Anthropometrics Vol. I & Vol. II

April 24 to May 28, 2009

Opening reception Friday, April 24, 6 - 8 pm






Anthropometrics Vol. I & Vol. II is a suite of colour photographs that operates as an inventory of 'colloquial' methods of measurement using the human body as their base reference. The demonstration of these measurements results in the idiosyncratic gestures captured in the photographs. Anthropometrics Vol. I & Vol. II seeks to trace and document methods of measurement that remain in use parallel to standardized modes of measurement. These types of 'biometric' measurements have a kinship to oral history that is passed on by generations of families or other social networks, rather than through official institutions. They require face-to-face exchange, rather than abstract or remote forms of interaction.

This is the first presentation of Vol. II of the series.

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Antonia Hirsch is a Vancouver-based artist who has received critical attention for her work in Canada, Europe and Asia. Her work is currently on view as part of How Soon Is Now at the Vancouver Art Gallery and in the context of awashawave at the Blackwood Gallery in Mississauga. Double Blind, a new public artwork commissioned for the Vancouver Community College, will be inaugurated in late April 2009. Additional information on the artist is available at antoniahirsch.com.

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Anthropometrics Vol. I & Vol. II will be on show April 24 through May 28 with an artist reception on Friday, April 24, 6 - 8 pm. Regular gallery hours are 11 am - 4 pm, Thursday through Saturday, and by appointment.

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REPUBLIC GALLERY
732 Richards St, 3rd Floor | Thurs-Sat, 11am-4pm & by appointment
www.republicgallery.com | 604.632.1590

Knock on Wood

When his publisher insisted he contribute to a new children's weekly, Giornale per i bambini, he reluctantly delivered the first installment of "The Story of a Puppet," with a letter remarking: "Here's some childish twaddle, do what you want with it; but assuming you print, you'd better pay me well if you want to see any more."

The story would later be retitled The Adventures of Pinocchio. Collodi did not grow more fond of it. A third of the way into the book we now have, he left Pinocchio hanging by the neck from a tree, having apparently put a gruesome end to both the puppet and his tale. It took the magazine four months to convince him to press on. Later, he was so weary with the project that he took another six-month break. Very likely it was this irritation at writing in a genre he thought secondary that accounts for the story's extraordinary mood swings and unusually cavalier approach to such matters as narrative consistency...