...more recent posts
Perhaps they could call it Poisonville National Park. Poisonville. That's the name Dashiell Hammett, America's hardboiled Dante, gave to Butte in Red Harvest, his strange nocturnal novel of corruption and corporate filth. "The city wasn't pretty," writes Hammett on the opening page of Red Harvest. "Most of its builders had gone in for gaudiness. Maybe they had been successful at first. Since then the smelters whose brick stacks struck up tall against a gloomy mountain to the south had yellow-smudge everything into uniform dinginess. The result was an ugly city of forty thousand people, set in an ugly notch between two ugly mountains that had been all dirtied up by mining. Spread over this was grimy sky that looked as if it had come out of the smelters' stacks."
Times Headline today:
U.S. Is Completing Plan to Promote a Democratic Iraq
By DAVID E. SANGER and JAMES DAO
The plan calls for an 18-month occupation, trials of only the most senior Iraqi leaders and a quick takeover of oil fields.
I had been concerned that the Administration didn't have a plan, so this comes as some relief. It was nice of the Times to let us know about this. Also, that everything will be completed so quickly.
Cynthia Cotts, the Voice's press columnist, documents the Times' infatuation with bitterness. If she'd turned nexus on her own paper she might have found the best line, which I think I saw in Musto's column:
Am I bitter? Taste me.
birthday suits from the 60's (six slides per lot)
What will we think of next?
This could have been added to the 1000 monkeys thread, but I thought an old friend deserves her own post. While flipping channels, I ran into Dr. Marilyn Schlitz, who I remember from junior high school. She's now one of the top researchers in parapsychology, which she was defending on Closer to Truth. This shows up on channel 25, which has the PBS stuff that channel 13 turns its nose up at. The show was quite balanced and reasonable, which I suppose translates as too boring for the masses. Then again, rational parapsychology, which mostly rests on tiny statistical deviations, may be a tough sell. Marilyn's best finding to date involved doing double blind experiments alongside a skeptical colleague. She got her usual good results, but he got nothing, proving that the mindset of the scientist (in magic we call that the "operator") affects the result of the experiment. This could cause problems down the road…
Here's a blog from Baghdad. I haven't read too much of it, but it might be interesting. Especially if it can stay on the air.
if 1000 monkeys...
If we take Christmas far enough (that is, to Easter), we’ll wind up drinking blood. Like they do in Malawi.
Russ and Daughters gets the Lovevibe
"Asshole Retailer of the Year Award" for 2002!!
Mrs. Dweezil Zappa's cam. Click "reload" to see if she's on. No nudity.
Yesterday I sat around waiting for the phone company to send a repairman, and looks like tomorrow I'll be doing it again. Yesterday they restored the dial tone, but there's still a loud hum on the line. This happens on the average of once every 3 months. The phone poles behind my apt. are old and decrepit and whenever it snows (or the sun shines too hard) my phone goes out. They never really fix the problem. The repairman does some kind of patch and then the phone's OK for a while, then the cycle starts again. I'm supposed to sit and wait from 8 am to 7pm and if they don't show up (which they often don't) I go through the whole thing on another day. According to one of the repairmen, the company had several million marked for infrastructure repair and it all went to CEOs in the last merger. I totally believe it. Anyway, the company's name is VERIZON (stupid name--like a ten year old's idea of clever: "vertical + horizon"? gimme a break) and they SUCK.
im working this one (truck driiver) Recomended
Trent-chant Commentary
Just when I thought I had this war-blogger thing figured out, 2nd generation neocon John Podhoretz comes along to explain what's really going on in cybersville. Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy and, you know, powerful, ha ha ha…
froogle your holiday shopping.
From the (extended) family:
Bird artist Jonathan Alderfer talks about the new edition of the National Geographic Field Guide.
nudie suits
for the first time in a long while i didnt have to work on a saturday so i took the time to cook, nap and be a couch potatoe......to get in the spirit of the holidays i watched the following 4 movies in a row 1) No Mans Land (Bosnian War), 2) Pearl Harbor (WW2), 3) Full Metal Jacket (Vietnam War), and 4) ???title?? CNN news team in (Iraq/Kuwait) War.....
bird blogger
robert redford's great op-ed on energy independence from monday's LA Times
New (to me) get your war on page.
DISINFORMATION: THE INTERVIEWS
Robert Anton Wilson
Grant Morrison
Norbert H. Kox
Paul Laffoley
Douglas Rushkoff
Howard Bloom
Genesis P-Orridge
Joe Coleman
Peter Russell
Duncan Laurie
Kembra Pfahler
They're back! Late hummingbirds, that is. We don't know if it's climate change, or just more people noticing, but more and more western hummers are showing up in the east after fall migration should be over. Last year they were in Yonkers and at Fort Tryon Park; this year they're even closer. There's been a Selasphorus genus bird (almost certainly a Rufous) in Central Park for over a week now, and I just got word that there is a probable Calliope downtown at Battery Park City. Must go take a look…
(And don't forget the Yellow-breasted Chat that's been hanging out in Bryant Park.)