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Maakies presents "The Bookworm and the Junky."
Blogger Lindsay Beyerstein went to Austin, Texas with her camera and took these photos of Tom Delay's "perp walk." Obviously this alleged money launderer and still active former U.S. House Majority leader was advised by his attorney, shyster Dick DeGuerin, to keep a shit-eating grin plastered on his face at all times. Believe it or not, all of the supposedly sophisticated government honchos and media DC personages have been genuflecting to this redneck for years. Common criminal trash--sorry, alleged common criminal trash--and he's still running things in the House. Enjoy his humiliation, but it's not like it's had any effect on his career.
Pulsating optical disc internet sketchbook!
I have to pick one of these [to burn to DVD, as described in the previous post], and soon:
Number 1 (previously posted)Then I have to redo this one so it's less crunchy:
Number 2 (more oval 1)
Number 3 (more oval 2)
Number 4 (crunchy enlargement of gif posted over a year ago)
Number 5 (similar to Number 1 but more regular)
Number 5A (even more regular--smaller center hole--think this one's the keeper)
Enlarged Black and White (Crunchy)More will probably be posted as I continue to obsess and procrastinate.
I've been working on scaled-up versions of my animated GIFs for some upcoming gallery shows. Here's one called OptiDisc, which is a bit too large to put on the blog. Some interesting, and some aggravating, issues arise when you start thinking about converting Net Art type product to Video Art type product. Aggravating as in you have to redraw stuff you thought you''d finished. Another alternative is to convert the small files to vector files, which can then be safely enlarged without turning to pixely mush. That seems fetishistic to me, going to that length to preserve the character of something everyday and ephemeral--the cult of MacPaint. But I could (shudder) end up doing it. Big ups to Paul, Matthew, joester, Sally, and others who have helped as I lurch through this process.
The interview Aaron Yassin did with me in NY Arts magazine, linked to here a few weeks back, is now on the newsstands in their Sept./Oct. print edition. The photo above is a very subtle bit of personal horn-blowing. To some extent the text is an attempt to legitimize working with the computer to my brethren in the gallery world; that quest seems totally doomed if you read something like the profile of dealer Leo Koenig in the current New Yorker. It's all about painting with brushes ad nauseum (and theory? forget it), and could have been written about the neo-expressionist hothouse environment of 25 years ago.
The Young Turds Tribute Page has been updated with re-recorded .mp3s: the volume and the streaming rate are higher. The Turds were a DC band active circa '79-'80 (Northern VA to be more specific), and included several high school and college buds of mine. Even with more clarity in the recording, Kerry's vocals are as incomprehensible as ever, but suddenly I'm paying more attention to Tom Payne's precision drumming--he's quite amazing in these recordings, I'll go out on a limb and say as interesting as early Robert Wyatt. My friend Bill posted these songs to the WFMU message board a while back and the connoisseurs were non-plussed. I understand why--the music is completely original but problematic for having, let's just say, different levels of musicianship in the band. There are just enough prog rock influences to make it difficult for the punk purist, and a couple of numbers even make use of the then-new disco synthetic percussion pads. Nevertheless, I've listened to these songs a million times and it's about the only rock I still like. Besides Krautrock.
"Green Slime" [2:09 min. - 2.9 MB]
"Berserker" [2:55 min. - 4.2 MB]
"Hold at All Costs" [3:59 min. - 5.8 MB]
"Tapeworm of Love" [2:38 min. - 3.7 MB]
"One Mad Act" [5:16 min. - 7.5 MB]
"Burn1ng Love" [2:21 min. - 3.3 MB]
"Vigilante" [5:12 min. - 7.5 MB]
"Murder One" [3:09 min. - 4.5 MB]
Personnel are Tim Carter (bass), Kevin Landes (saxophone), Kerry Landes (vocals), Paul Ragan (lead guitar), Steve Walker (rhythm guitar), and Tom Payne (sensible drums).
Paul Bremer, the preppy mountebank/stooge who headed the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, is currently enjoying being back in the comfort and safety of America and "working on a book" about his adventures. Awww, isn't that special. When finished it will no doubt be accorded respectful consideration by the media, but the man should probably be clapped in irons along with the rest of his hopefully soon-to-be-incarcerated Washington handlers. Today in Iraq has a good summary of his doings and failings:
After the fall of Baghdad, the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance was established under Lieutenant General Jay Garner to administer postwar Iraq. OHRA was staffed by many of the Middle-East experts from the [State Dept.'s] former Future of Iraq Project. Garner wanted to quickly establish an Iraqi civil government through elections while Rummy and the neo-cons insisted on de-Ba'athification. When Garner refused to comply, Rummy fired him and disbanded the ORHA, and replaced it with the Coalition Provisional Authority which recruited ideologically-pure rookies and rubes from the Heritage Foundation. Garner himself was replaced by Baghdad fashion maven and incompetent administrator L. Paul Bremer.
Bremer disbanded the Iraqi Army and established the Iraqi Governing Council, which was composed mostly of former exiles with little political support within Iraq, but having close connections to the neo-cons in Rummy's Defense Department. Among the accomplishments of the IGC were choosing a new Iraqi flag (which went over like a fart in the mosque) replacing secular family law with Sharia family law, and banning newspapers and television stations deemed unsupportive of the occupation.
Meanwhile, Bremer and the CPA was mismanaging Iraq's reconstruction (when they weren't busy establishing Baghdad chapter of the Optimists Club.) They awarded contracts to American firms and publicly announced a policy of blackballing companies from countries that had not supported the war, while CPA Order 17 granted immunity to all foreign firms from Iraqi civil and criminal law. Contractors working for the CPA were exempt from taxes and tariffs that gave domestic Iraqi businesses a competitive advantage over large foreign contractors were lifted.
This was all part of an effort to reshape Iraq's economy from a centrally-planned economy to a neo-con ideologically-approved economy friendly to foreign investors and against the interests of the Iraqi population. CPA orders reversed Iraqi law to allow unlimited and unrestricted foreign investment, and removed limits on the expatriation of profits.
Bremer's CPA was also responsible for managing two reconstruction funds. One was the former UN Oil-For-Food Fund, which was re-named the Development Fund for Iraq and raised about 20 billion dollars in 2003 from foreign donors and oil revenue. The other was the Iraqi Relief and Reconstruction Fund, which consisted of 18 billion dollars appropriated by the US Congress.
DFI funds were supposed to be disbursed by the CPA with oversight from the International Advisory and Monitoring Board, an organization established [by] the United Nations when the CPA assumed control of the former UN Oil-For-Food Program. Funds were supposed to be transparently disbursed under IAMB oversight with Iraqi input on spending priorities. To meet these requirements, the CPA established an internal Program Review Board, consisting of ten CPA staffers and one member of the IGC.
By the end of the CPA's lifespan in June 2004, they had spent $19.1 billion of the DFI funds but only $400 million of IRRF funds. The IAMB, in an effort to discover where all the DFI money went appointed the accounting firm KPMG to audit spending by the CPA's Program Review Board. The audit found that PRB minutes failed to record why expenditures were approved [or] who approved them, [that] attendance was not recorded, [that] expenditures were made without meeting quorums, [and that] expenditures were made by Bremer and other CPA staffers without PRB approval. The audit also discovered the CPA had shipped Iraqi oil through unmetered pipelines, meaning there was no way to determine the amount of Iraqi oil the CPA had sold or where it actually went. A later US Congressional report documented many more instances of fraud, waste and abuse of DFI funds.
The CPA was disbanded on June 28th 2004, when Bremer cut and ran back to the United States. Oil and electricity production remained below pre-war levels, water and sanitation systems were breaking down, food and fuel distribution was increasingly difficult and unemployment was estimated at 35%.
In 2005, George W. Bush awarded Bremer the Medal of Freedom for his performance in Iraq.
Journalist Nick Turse has compiled a list of government employees who have been fired or resigned as a result of Bush administration policies. Tomdispatch, which published it, refers to it as a "memorial wall," similar to those springing up around the country to honor the Iraq war dead. Maybe that association is a bit casual, since these people still have their lives, but the list provides a sobering rundown of the scary-bad things that have happened since the Bush Putsch of 2000, on the environmental, national security, and economic fronts. (It may not seem scary to you now but wait a few years.) Tribute should be paid to these people whose careers were wrecked by speaking out, as opposed to what actually happened: as the departures were announced in a steady trickle since the beginning of the Reich, the national media (not heroes) enabled the Bushites by marginalizing or actively sliming these exercisers of conscience.