dr0wning in the p0rn St0rm

Pope Further Left than U.S. President & Republicans

to read this address from the pope and basically see a good chunk of the democratic platform is quite remarkable. historically, i believe the vatican has been more conservative than the U.S. government.

Juicy Chris Matthews Profile

some enjoyable reading for "opinion junkies" .. i only read the first bit up to the cleveland ritz. and it was a great scene.

Dubai's Incredible Growth

in a previous post, we saw a new york subway station pictured in the midst of completely undeveloped land. that was in 1906. in dubai, there is much the same amount of growth. the city expects to have the most passenger traffic of any airport in the world. here's the stunning images of growth from an economic blog.

lord have mercy -- iraq vet commits senseless murder of mother of his children

this is the stuff folk songs are made of. you have a soldier home who senselessly murders the mother of his twins. the story is complete with the stinging emptiness of the human mind pushed to its failure limits. the inability to understand, and the insignificance of the legal system's practical conclusion. this emptiness of this story is enough to make anyone religious. the writer of this article is quite the dramatist. kudos.

Watching MSNBC's live webcast of the new hampshire primary

9:59 PM EST: MSNBC uses a moving camera to broadcast an image of a large television showing the obama / clinton results graphic.

10:00 PM EST: there was a a weird story about how huckabee granted a convicted rapist clemency in part because of a religious conversion that happened in prison and in part because of huckabee's belief in redemption. the recorded piece was cut short by a return to a live webcast. apparently the webcast control room doesn't have things totally tight.

10:06 PM EST: They say Clinton gets more votes in part because she answered questions live for 90 minutes today. that's something she hasn't done much at all. in principle it seems like a smart thing to do. i like the idea. but can a change in behavior only a few hours old radically change polling numbers? the minute by minute reportage of the campaign may give unequal weight to small events only 24 hours old.

10:14 PM EST: Pat Buchannan et al. suggest that new hampshire voters deliberately cast their votes in the opposite direction that polls and pundits were saying they would since Obama's Iowa victory. it seems like a narcissistic hypothesis.

10:27 PM EST: interesting backdrop for edward's "I'm continuing" speech. a few "middle class working male" types. attractive, retiremnt age, etc. now keith lets us know that guy is the actor who plays the plummer on desperate housewives.

10:32 PM EST: NBC news projects Hillary Clinton as the winner at 66% of precincts reporting.

10:36 PM EST: anchors can't hear interviewee in hillary's victory room. return to tim russert to suggest "gender gap", "contrarian spirit", and "people of new hampshire hate a fait accompli."

10:39 PM EST: Tom Brokaw reads a hilarious list of Hillary's Dead headlines. New York Post-- Hillary: Panic

10:41 PM EST: Terry McAuliffe sounds like an athlete or coach talking over the crowd in a post-game show. he seems a little out of breath.

10:45 PM EST: DailyKos offline, because comment archiver goes to work at an inopportune time.

10:46 PM EST: Event planners of Obama use some upbeat rock music for the approach to the stage. similar to the springsteen music edwards used.

10:51 PM EST: One stumble, but Obama is an impressive speaker.

10:56 PM EST: Obama gives a good list of 21st century challenges. Then he gives the not I but you turn.

10:58 PM EST: "There has never been anything false about hope." Obama counters Clinton. we'll see this as a sound byte. and then they go into a "yes we can" refrain. it seems like an okay refrain for a speech, but that sort of repetition has a whiff of cliche to it. but it's not bad.

11:05 PM EST: Tom Brokaw suggests trying to get ahead of the voters with "predictions" and "projections". Chris Matthews doesn't seem to like it and cuts him off. Tom jumps back in and introduces hillary. Chris stays quiet. Tom's tone is more serious and ceremonial than his younger's.

11:08 PM EST: Hillary: "Thank You New Hampshire. you spoke. I listened, and I found my voice." She just found her voice now? at this age? hmm. she gave the "politics is not a game" sentence. she delivers it well.

11:17 PM EST: one person in the "tweety, shut up" thread about msnbc broadcast said, "I'm marginally a Hillary backer, but Brokaw telling Chris Matthews to start letting the process to go forward in the way that it should and for them to stop trying to get ahead of the voters (and Matthews complaining "so what do we do before election day", to which Brokaw answered that they could analyze what the candidates are saying) was absolutely the best part of the night."

11:28 PM EST: Keith Olbermann asks if Hillary is the front-runner now. He seems stuck on his perhaps incorrect use of the term over the past months.

11:30 PM EST: Matthews asks if Hillary, really did, in an honest way, just find her voice in the last few days. It seems a fair question.

11:37 PM EST: Matthews congratulates himself for saying something smart last night.

11:38 PM EST: Scarborough defends news media from tom brokaw by saying that hillary was in fact way behind, and then in the last 24 hours everything changed. he implies that the news outlet made no mistakes, things just changed faster than they could report.

Man Sentenced in Bizarre Diagnosing Scam

MONROE, La. (AP) — A man was sentenced to more than four years in prison for bilking friends and family out of more than $800,000 by convincing them that his wife was a government agent who could arrange to have their medical problems diagnosed by satellite imaging.

Brent Eric Finley, 38, of Rayville, was sentenced in federal court in Monroe to serve 51 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release. His wife, Stacey Finley, was sentenced in August to spend 63 months in prison and both are ordered to jointly pay restitution in the amount of $873,786.94.

The Finleys pleaded guilty in August to wire fraud, according to court records.

U.S. Attorney Donald W. Washington said in a news release following Monday's sentencing of Brent Finley that the couple convinced numerous people that Stacey Finley was a CIA agent and with her contacts she could schedule a medical scan of the victims' bodies by satellite imaging that would detect any hidden medical problems.

The Finley's convinced their victims that, if any medical problems were found, secret agents would administer medicine to them as they slept in exchange for payment, according to a bill of information filed when the Finleys were charged in May.

"These audacious criminals should remind all of us that scam artists will go to great lengths to take our life's savings," Washington said.

war in iran

i needed a little update on the politics & von hardenberg let me know the latest.

when_i_kill_debbie
2/20/07 8:22 PM shit
2/20/07 8:22 PM wtf
2/20/07 8:22 PM a guy falls asleep and WW3 starts
2/20/07 8:22 PM
2/20/07 8:23 PM hey
2/20/07 8:23 PM should i drop out and focus on being a writer?
2/20/07 8:24 PM or should i just go ahead and TAKE midterms tomorrow?
2/20/07 8:24 PM
2/20/07 8:38 PM
2/20/07 8:38 PM we havent officially attacked yet
2/20/07 8:39 PM we're lobbing cruise missiles into iran and we have special forces attempting to provoke abadinejad
2/20/07 8:39 PM shit like that
2/20/07 8:39 PM supporting "rebels"
2/20/07 8:39 PM we moved a bunch of older warships into the region in case we are able to provoke them into sinking one or more of them
2/20/07 8:40 PM zbigniew brzezinski has come out publicly and warned congress that there will be a fake terror attack, blamed on iran
2/20/07 8:40 PM there is a falling out among the oligarchs, with the neocons going balls out for war
2/20/07 8:41 PM http://www.takingaimradio.com/shows/audio.html
2/20/07 8:41 PM theres some material on it there
2/20/07 8:41 PM ralph shoenman and mya shone
2/20/07 8:43 PM http://www.alexconstantine.blogspot.com/
2/20/07 8:43 PM COINTELPRO 2007: Pacifica Radio & the CIA, Part One – Talk Show Host Larry Bensky Welcomes a Peoples' Temple Death Squad Leader to the Airwaves By Alex Constantine

if only they did this to living writers

this is review of hart crane is quite entertaining:

January 28, 2007
Hart Crane’s Bridge to Nowhere
By WILLIAM LOGAN

HART CRANE Complete Poems and Selected Letters.
Edited by Langdon Hammer.
849 pp. The Library of America. $40.

Before Hart Crane’s leap into the Caribbean that fatal April noon in 1932, he folded his jacket over the ship’s rail with impeccable manners. Striking out into the glassy sea, he was seen no more, dying younger than Byron but older than Shelley. Not being a seagoing breed, poets rarely die by water — Shelley drowned in a sudden squall; but he had written 1,500 pages of poetry, while Crane left only two very short books and the shards of a third. The hope for a homegrown American epic that died with him has never entirely revived.

The precocious son of a wealthy Cleveland candy manufacturer (Crane’s father created the Life Saver mint but sold the rights cheap), Crane dropped out of high school and persuaded his parents to send him to New York, where he hoped to make his way as a writer. Wearing the scarlet A of ambition, at 17 he confidently predicted that he would “really without doubt be one of the foremost poets in America.” In fact, Crane was soon published in some of the best little magazines. He impressed his friends, not just with his bulb-eyed and brutish good looks (there’s always room in New York for a handsome boy with manners and a wild streak), but with his canny critical judgment. He was a fan of Pound before “The Cantos” and Joyce before “Ulysses,” and was terrified by Eliot before “The Waste Land.” As early as 1920 he was recommending, before either had published a book, Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore, whom he referred to as “Marion” (Crane’s deranged spelling offers one of the quiet comedies of the new Library of America edition of his work).

Most of Crane’s short life was spent scuffling for money. His tightfisted father kept him on an allowance at first, but expected Crane to get a job. The poet tried various fits and shifts, finding employment most frequently in advertising (writing copy for, among other things, a new synthetic leather called Naugahyde), though at times he was forced back to Ohio, where he spent an unhappy Christmas selling candy from an Akron drugstore counter. No doubt his father saw this as his son’s first step toward inheriting the family business, but the experiment was not a success.

Crane’s early poems showed more style than talent, and from the start he was attracted to an obscurity that left some readers cold:

And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.

It helps only a little to know that this dreadful mess was called “Chaplinesque.” One of Crane’s friends later knocked on his door with Charlie Chaplin in tow, and the three went out on the town until dawn. Having learned this, a hundred American poets will begin odes to Angelina Jolie.

Crane was mystified, as most obscure poets are, when readers found his poems difficult — after all, they were perfectly clear to him. His obscurity was not that of Eliot or Pound, not a layered and allusive language whose intrigues deepened the more one examined it. Crane’s language, when not a matter of tangled metaphors (he mixed them almost more often than he mixed drinks), was a schoolboy code for which an English-Fustian, Fustian-English dictionary would have proved helpful. He came by his obscurity honestly — he didn’t read Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose style might have influenced him, until far too late. When you clear away the clutter from his verse, often you find only banalities — Crane flinched from Eliot’s dour observations and pince-nez disillusion, wanting to embody a rhapsodic vision of poetry it was difficult not to glaze with sentiment.

Crane tried on various identities as a young man and failed at most of them. He was frank about his homosexuality only with close friends — his sexual appetites were voracious and involved far too many sailors. (The definitive work on the United States Navy’s contributions to cruising has yet to be written.) Crane dreamed of being a poet much more often than he sat at his desk and wrote poems; and he was forever complaining in letters that he had no time to write, though he found plenty of time to drink. He conceived his major poem, “The Bridge,” as early as 1923 but made only desultory progress toward it. (Remaining drunk all through Prohibition proved surprisingly easy.) It was hard work, avoiding real work; but Crane became an expert at writing cadging letters to his divorced parents and playing one against the other.

Forever broke, dramatically threatening to slave away on the docks or drive a truck, Crane took to writing begging letters to millionaires, or at least one millionaire, and got lucky. The financier Otto Kahn, the major shareholder in the Metropolitan Opera, offered to loan him $2,000 to write “The Bridge” (Kahn also backed Gershwin and Eisenstein). The poet was soon ensconced in a shabby house in upstate New York, spending his benefactor’s initial installment as if it would last forever (on snowshoes, as well as wood carvings from the Congo, among other things) and asking for advances on the remainder. Kahn hardly lacked the wherewithal — his fireproof castle on Long Island grew to 100,000 square feet, and his 80-room Fifth Avenue mansion was stuffed with old masters.

Crane usually bit the hand that fed him, but you have to like a poet whose revelation of his own genius occurred in a dentist’s chair (“An objective voice kept saying to me — ‘You have the higher consciousness. ... This is what is called genius’ ”). He told his father that critics believed his first book, “White Buildings” (1926), would be the most important debut in American poetry since “Leaves of Grass.” These critics, who happened to be his friends, loyally judged him by the poems he had yet to write.

Chronically out of sorts, creatively ill (his life would have been far happier after the introduction of decongestants), prone to “enthusiasms” we might now call mania, argumentative, often spectacularly drunk, Crane would have gotten on anyone’s nerves. He had spent most of the millionaire’s thousands when he departed abruptly for his mother’s ramshackle plantation off Cuba (his family owned houses all over the place). There, after much grouching and complaint, he completed half of “The Bridge,” which he saw not as an epic but as a “long lyric poem, with interrelated sections.”

It would take Crane three more years to finish the poem, spending months in California as companion to a neurasthenic stockbroker, squandering an inheritance from his grandmother on a trip to Paris, his drunkenness meanwhile growing wilder and more uncontrollable. When “The Bridge” was finally published in 1930, Crane felt betrayed by the mixed reviews it received from Allen Tate and Yvor Winters, his old friends, who had begun to have second thoughts, not about Crane’s gifts, but about his ability to profit from them.

Much of “The Bridge” seems inert now —overlong, overbearing, overwrought, a Myth of America conceived by Tiffany and executed by Disney. Crane imagined the Brooklyn Bridge as a mystical symbol for art, for history, for America, for any old thing; in this spiritual version of Manifest Destiny, he threw his poem backward to Columbus and worked forward to the invention of the airplane. The canvas was broad, but its success would have required a language less Alexandrian than Crane possessed. At his best, he stayed just this side of wild-eyed prophesying, though his grandeurs might easily be mistaken for grandiosity:

How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty —
Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
— Till elevators drop us from our day.

This is a beautifully managed passage; but even Crane’s most thrilling lines can be cloying, always an adjective too rich or a noun too boisterous, the most beautiful stanzas naïve as history or infused with a crude faith in progress almost embarrassing now. He was drawn to a high-amp schmaltziness he must have taken as the proper emotional tone for a visionary.

Crane wanted to drag the language of Marlowe and Webster into the Jazz Age. Beneath his jewel-encrusted lines, however, the poem seems trivial, its ideas torn from the daily paper or the pages of a high-school history textbook:

While Cetus-like, O thou Dirigible, enormous Lounger
Of pendulous auroral beaches, — satellited wide
By convoy planes, moonferrets that rejoin thee
On fleeing balconies as thou dost glide,
— Hast splintered space!

We have no long poems this close to being great that are greater failures. (Why do American poets so often lose their bearings, and their taste, when writing about America?) The poem’s creaky swiveling through time, its brassy versifying and its phony demotic seem dated now, not because Crane was heavily indebted to “The Waste Land” (despite frequently disparaging Eliot), but because he learned so little from it. Reading “The Bridge” is like being stuck in a mawkish medley from “Show Boat” and “Oklahoma” — you’d buy the Brooklyn Bridge to make it stop. Critics since have tried to make a case for the poem, for the coherence of its incoherent parts (criticism, like poetry, is often wishful thinking); but “The Bridge” remains a fabulous architectural blueprint that wanted a discipline Crane could never provide.

The poet’s last year was spent on a Guggenheim fellowship in Mexico (we are lucky he left nothing of his projected epic on the Aztecs). He behaved so badly that his friend Katherine Anne Porter ratted him out to the foundation, which almost terminated the fellowship. In his final months, exhausted and miserable, he began an affair with Malcolm Cowley’s estranged wife, an older woman Crane called “Twidget,” and wrote a homosexual friend that he had “broken ranks” with the “brotherhood.” Perhaps the romance was merely a sign of his boredom and mental exhaustion — it did nothing to slow down his secret pickups and Jack Tar chasing.

The Library of America edition, edited by Langdon Hammer, contains more of Crane than most readers will ever need. The poems take up so little space, this well-edited volume has been pieced out with more than 500 pages of letters (Crane was an energetic correspondent though rarely one memorable or even bearable — great ones don’t usually whine so much). E. E. Cummings once remarked that Crane’s mind was “no bigger than a pin”; but Crane had a sharp critical temperament that appears to best advantage in his letters: “God DAMN this constant nostalgia for something always ‘new,’ ” he wrote, and “I detest a certain narcissism in the voluptuous melancholics of Eliot.” The edition’s scattershot notes are helpful, but the chronology of Crane’s life averts its gaze from his athletic philandering and the exact events leading to his suicide — he had been badly beaten during the night by a sailor he propositioned.

Crane still makes young men want to write poetry — his best lines are extraordinary, even if there are few major poems, or even very good ones. He failed to write the poetry of the American continent Emerson was calling for before the Civil War: if the ideal seems naïvely nationalistic now, the country was once younger and less cynical. Crane was no innovative genius like Whitman; he was perhaps closer to a peasant poet like John Clare, an outsider too susceptible to praise and other vices of the city. Defensive about his lack of education, a Midwestern striver out of a Sinclair Lewis novel, Crane tried to make it among the big-city literary men, gripping a rum in one hand and a copy of “The Waste Land” in the other. Had beauty been enough, he might even have succeeded.

William Logan is a poet and critic whose most recent books are “The Whispering Gallery” and “The Undiscovered Country.”

ethical realism

by day brown

may be a new trend in politics and culture. Underlying it, is the tacit agreement that there are fundamental flaws in the system of values and/or those who must manifest them. There is an overt call for more moral action. But *whose* morals?

Shakespeare has Caesar say:"You will have to forgive the man Mercutio; he is a barbarian who thinks the customs of his tribe are the laws of Nature." But what *are* the laws of Nature? We have history, archaeology, anthropology, sociology, etc that all try to tell us what one group or other, at one time or other, thot those laws were. Part of the problem however, is that the very people giving us these reports have been themselves, bound by the customs of developed cultures, which were, in turn, evolutions of the very barbarism Shakespeare refers to.

The results have been a lotta spin put on the data. After 100 years of anthropology, only recently have researchers actually taken the sacred psychedelic potions shamen have been providing all these years, and thereby gotten a missing handle on where the tribal head is at, as well as some understanding of the psycho-phobia that their own academic traditions have suffered from ever since Bishops began burning witches for providing similar potions.

One of the effects of the hippie use of these same potions was a skeptical view of the claims of scripture, for which Christian control of the legal process demanded repression just as the Christian Bishops had begun doing nearly 1500 years ago. And archaeology has revealed the *original* sources of scripture in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Mithraic & Zoroastrian texts, and the earliest of all, Gilgamesh.

And yet, despite the obvious plagiarism, the claims that one Levantine text or other was divinely inspired goes so largely unchallenged that most voters dont even know the challenges exist. Which does reveal one of the Laws of Nature: if you tell men something that will pander to their egos, they will believe it, no matter how asinine.

Another law of Nature is that not only will men deceive themselves, they will try to deceive others. We have the video of Chimps in the jungle. We see how a chimp will steal food, hide it, and then try to deceive others about where it went. Nobody claims the chimps who do this grew up deprived in a ghetto. No, baby, this is hardwired in Chimp *and Hominid DNA*.

But contrary to what scripture says, not all Chimps & Hominids are like that. Not all men are such sinners that they need divine forgiveness. No, the primate field studies, which give us the term "alpha male" show us that it is *they* who organize the goon squads to go out into other territories, find a foraging couple, murder him and any progeny she may have, kidnap her, and gang rape her until she is pregnant again. But what do have, are the records, written by the scribes at the behest of alpha male warriors to craft a cosmology and a history that panders to their egotistical instincts. Which another Law of Nature says scribes will do.

The field studies show us the bloodwork from darted primates that show us that alphaism is handed down on the Y chromosome. The alphas expect their sons to be just like them, and a Law of Nature is, that they are mostly right in that. Video also shows us that it is the alphas who commit all the rape, 'domestic abuse', and warfare. And we can see cosmologies that have been crafted to offer redemption to the alphas. Furthermore, the DNA shows us that it is the daughters of the alphas who are the abusive and incompetent mothers. And now we understand why there are any betas left in the gene pool: it is their daughters who provide the love the young need. And it is the betas, both male & female, who adopt the abused and abandoned young.

And since we are talking about DNA here, another Ethically Realistic fact is that the ratio of alphas to betas in various gene pools varies, which has an enormous effect on development, or the lack thereof. Cultures which have high ratios of alphas use draconian methods to control the violence. We see abundant examples of this in history. But it is the cultures with high ratios of betas that are able to setup higher degrees of cooperation that have resulted in the military industrial complex that has been so effective against cultures that had a more warlike spirit, but lacked the innovation betas provide. Another Law of Nature is, that as the percentage of alphas increases, so does the problem of too many chiefs, but not enough Indians. They cannot cooperate, build consensus, or compromise; they tend to prefer dualistic scripture with simple good/evil choices since they lack the intuitive powers to handle ambiguity.

Certain Eastern traditions, that once had more betas, produced Vedic & Buddhist scripture that appealed more to the nuanced sensibilities of betas. Who, unfortunately, have entered monasteries for millennia, taking themselves out of the gene pools. The remaining jackasses have viewed women as no more than the ground to sow seed in, and have similarly sent off their more troublesome, smarter girls to nunneries, and used the stupid bitches to bear their sons. Then, in more recent times, advanced cultures have sent people in to help with development, and when they saw a talented girl, sent her off to some Western University to be educated. The smart girls never returned. The Law of Nature, which hands down intelligence more on the mtDNA has had the iterative, compound, effects we see, with the jackasses getting more stupid with every generation.

Thus we can see that the exquisite art and architecture done by their forefathers in early times was created by a much smarter class of men. But there are other problems in the developed cultures that again derive out of the DNA, genetically determined levels of various brain hormones like adrenalin, serotonin, dopamine... and the psychological effect they have, which is in turn driven by 150 or so neurotransmitters that are used in laying down new neural pathways in the mind during learning. And these neurotransmitters are often affected by environmental contaminants. Whatever else they are, pesticides used on food are neurotoxins. And while there is no immediate observable effect, which gave rise to the idea that they were harmless, they do interact, even at extremely low, homeopathic levels with the above neurotransmitters.

The result is an epidemic of autism, ADD, ADHD, and a quarterly increase in the pathology journals every quarter of more acronyms. The Law of Nature, that there aint no free lunch seems somewhat applicable; the easy way to grow food aint the healthy way.

But the upshot of all this, psychology, sociology, archaeology, anthropology, & chemistry, is that the Nature of Man is far more varied than any of the scriptures or other forms of received authority have claimed. The notion of Universal Laws of Nature needs to be stripped of these false assumptions, and more accurate rules, which can deal with the psychopathology, such as using meds rather than prison, would have better results.

But one more Law of Nature is, that the powers that now be have investment in these falsities, and may with their inflexibility, their convictions, fail to adapt to reality as seen so often in history, and lead to a total collapse of the entire power structure. It is certainly not upta us. We can study ancient value systems, like the pagan
Stoics, and consider them in light of the primate field studies, the DNA, and psychological experiments on group think or obedience such as were carried out by Milgram and Zimbardo... and gain a clearer eye to our own past and our own DNA endowments and challenges.

That will enable us to see the masses for what they are, more able to see when, and which direction they will move, not be swept up in disastrous mob action, but able to stand aside to let it all go by. All this may come to pass, but it wont come to stay. I dont advocate revolution; but we live in the Untied States of Denial of fundamental economic realities, like a 8.6 trillion dollar debt, that if there is a global intervention that wakes people up, they will be angry.

The Roman Stoic Epictetus noted that when someone proved him in error, he was grateful to no longer be thinking wrongly. But, he went on to say, that when he performed the service for another, he always went away angry. One of the most important Laws of Nature is that mass anger is dangerous shit... often caused by errors in Ethical Realism.

With results we see

suburban development 1906

this picture is from the MTA website. the contrast of the weedy dirt track that would develop into a dense urban area. this is the build it and they will come attitude, i assume. the nearest thing i can think of to this in the present day is the outer highway ring they've just finished in Denver & San Antonio, and other western cities where they put in an expensive off-ramp that leaves you off by empty lots and a small, windy country road. p0rnst0rm is pro-development. the global population is growing exponentially, don't forget.

Gina Hughes on Internet Addiction

p0rnst0rm:: addicted to the internet? what about vapid tech columnists named gina who are addicted to whining like a moron?

watching the heavens

Thursday, October 26, 2006 01:02 PM ccadden::
Perhaps some of our fellow gnostics might dig this. Perhaps not. All I know is, for some reason, I'm on this lady's spam list, due to an extremely new-agey group I joined a few years ago, back in the fall of 2003, when the Harmonic Convergence occurred in the heavens. Everyone here know what that was? Probably not---because I think the only people who knew about the Harmonic Convergence/Concordance were people who watched the heavens a bit too closely. I do have to say though, it was a magical night when it happened. There was a thing or two going on, I'll admit.

Thursday, October 26, 2006 07:25 PM mr hardenberg::
is it possible to watch the heavens too closely?

Thursday, October 26, 2006 10:52 PM ccadden::
In this group, there were people who forced a heavenly coincidence/miracle into every configuration of planets the heavens shat out. Yeah, it was too much. Still, the configuration formed by the Harmonic Concordance was a rare and special one.

Arcology for Southern China

read on, my friends, for here is a fact sheet from a professor at the university of hong kong on just why it's time to build an arcology of xx centry sci-fi fame in southern china. YES i'm sure it can be done for a small fraction of total chinese government spending. read on, explorers of the twenty first century, and perhaps you shall find more than just the drought apocalypse of the first few sections.

garrison keillor puts down bernard-henri levy's articles about "america"

'American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville,' by Bernard-Henri Levy reviewed by garrison keillor-- it was a series last year published in the atlantic monthly that i read some of, mostly for entertainment when i discovered that it was barely serious.

since excesses of 60s research frozen in time

this article on hallucinogens speaks of adding these old drugs, mostly unresearched since the sixties, to the wide array of opiates, amphetamines, and mood-alterers availible to the self-medicator.

some internet music thing

i haven't read this yet. it's probably another wonder of the internet-- a window into senseless individual expression, i think-- some kind of new form that's come out of the internet medium. that's my idea. let's go see if it's there in this magazine, too.

the inferno

it's something i have yet to read, though i have little doubt that it sheds some light on our existence here in the 21st century pornstorm. i've heard it said one must know the bible, the aeneid, and st. augustine's confessions in order to begin to follow all the references and whatnot. i'm only a little way into the aeneid at this point. here's dante's inferno read by john cleese divided into four files (1) (2) (3) (4) on putfile.com. and two images of the inferno.

Psychopathia Sexualis

here is the plot summary of a movie with limited engagements in US cities. just keeping the readership informed via our friend NERDMANN.

"Employing a complex multi-narrative structure, Psychopathia Sexualis dramatizes case histories of turn-of-the-century sexual deviance, drawn from the pages of Richard von Krafft-Ebing's notorious medical text. Among the cases are a sexually repressed man who discovers an unhealthy appetite for blood; a homosexual man who submits himself to a doctor who promises to 'cure' his condition; and a masochist who hires a pair of corseted prostitutes to enact a most peculiar performance. In the final chapter, a woman who has spent her life suppressing her lesbian desires is hired to tutor a sexually curious young woman. These stories are bound together by the thread of an ambitious doctor who not only studies the patients, but uses them as pawns and playthings."

Bosnian Pyramids: Great Discovery or Colossal Hoax? - Yahoo! News

in the great crank tradition, this archaeologist claims that like, galileo and columbus, he will bring about a revolution in human knowledge. read the end of the article. without cranks, would there be anyone with actual runaway optimism for the future? without them, would we be antiquarians mournfully attending to the ceremonies of the satus quo?

rainbow gathering

yo hippies, when are you headed to your next rainbow gathering? as the U.S. democratic social structure fractures into many independent self-interested religions, diasporas, economic fortresses, and immigrant communities, the old celtic druid traditions will find their way to the surface in these wilderness hippie gatherings. from these photos, there appears to be some sense of an inclusive community. what must you sacrifice to join? i'm not sure. let me know if you find out.

The Place of Iraq in Geopolitics

THE CHINESE SUPPORTED 9-11 TO DISTRACT U.S. IDIOT ATTACK DOGS

(idiot in the old medical sense: a person of profound mental retardation having a mental age below three years and generally being unable to learn connected speech or guard against common dangers.)

in the years before 9-11, the U.S. blood-thristy war mongers were writing texts on the rising threat of china and describing a U.S. -- China bi-polar world. they were setting up antagonism for an object for the war machine. the chinese, not stupid, knew of adolescent islamists wallowing in their own agony.

the chinese helped al-qaeda scale up their ambitions. now the senseless u.s. war machine that always needs and "evil enemy" had someplace to fixate. a brilliant feint to allow continued peaceful prosperity for the chinese people.

applaud the chinese for their intelligence on this count. their continued ability to manipulate the U.S. idiots in favor of global stability is perhaps the only hope for the global economy and preventing massive worldwide currency collapse and famine.

OUTLOOK: we're in best possible hands with the chinese playing 1st fiddle.

you can see C. Rice going after the chinese a la pre 9-11 in the article i've linked.

blog troll accuses nation of conspiracy mongering

a snip from some blog commenter called MASK: "we'll get a 3000 word cut & paste article from www.hooversilencedjudygarland.org from RESE (or PLUNGER) on how Cheney shot JFK from the Grassy Knoll with an invisible ray-gun created from Roswell technology, to silence him from exposing how Zionist bankers were planning on sinking Alaska with electro-plasma earthquake machines, built by Nazi scientists living in Antarctica taking orders from Hitler's brain which had been transplanted into the body of Marilyn Monroe!"

Markovian Parallax Denigrate

here's a conspiracy theory woven fairly intricately complete with links. it's an impressive one.

Mock Trial of Bush Prompts Meeting

the school officials are going to sit in. i would like to see it myself.

Angel's Trumpet Follow-Up: Salvia

From: tink
To: vox@mindvox.com
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2006 10:32 AM
Subject: Re: [Vox] Nightshade varieties poisonous but beautiful

my father is on some bizarro salvia kick right now, and has gone justa little bit crazier than he was before. Which means he's nuttier than a cheap fruitcake. It sounds awful, from all of the descriptions i've gotten so far- have you tried it? what do you think? I'm a little wary of anything called "the little death" these days..

love tink

From: ccadden
To: vox@mindvox.com
Sent: Thursday, February 02, 2006 14:32:42 -0500
Subject: Re: [Vox] Nightshade varieties poisonous but beautiful

It's worth it. And it is a 'little death' because this entire world and reality completely dies. You feel literally like you've stepped inside the life force of some rain forest plant; there's no up or down anymore, everything human about you evaporates and becomes another life for about 20 minutes. If your father's nuttier than a cheap fruitcake, then it's going to be no good for him. But, on an intellectual level, I found it great and fascinating---you just get that little 20 minute glimpse into that other world, but if you stayed longer there, you'd be nuttier than a cheap fruitcake too. On a spiritual level, I don't know what to make of it yet. On an emotional one, I was fucking terrified the first time because all my orientations were suddenly bombed. Everything as I'd known it for 35 years was different, suddenly. The frameworks of my reality all shot down. But now I'm fascinated by all that. Everything gets kind of fuzzy and you feel these embers burning in your body as you cross over into Salvia's domain.

christopher
cadden

US plans to 'fight the net' revealed

remember that movie The Day After Tomorrow where a rapid ice age flooded then froze people to death before they could escape to the south? well, the script was based on a pentagon report that proposed that exact scenario as a national security issue. here is the article in Fortune Magazine where i first heard of the report.

and now again with this report blogged here on controlling global information flows, running psyops, battling the internet, and developing the ability to disrupt any communications system that uses any portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, one wonders how much of this writing is science fiction and how much is a genuine possibility or course of action that is going on now or in the near future.

i mean, if the PSYOPS consist of making the United States the laughing stock of the globe, and the butt of jokes and anger, then that department needs an overhaul. if these "hackers" are the people who run amazon.com to sell books, or those on yahoo! groups selling t-shirts, or those ripping copies of Underworld: Revolution and posting them on Bittorrent sites, then again this report is some science fiction that will make a fine good movie.

Winona Minnesota Mississippi River (Internet) Sutra

From: "Bobby G"
To: terrasoluna yahoogroups
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2006 5:10 PM
Subject: TerraSoLuna~ presque vu

spring of 1973, and the Mississippi valley was full of water, from one bank to the other. from the bluffs above Winona, looking out over the valley, the sun's reflection off all the water made it look as if a miniature archipelago had formed in the valley. at sundown, out at the old farmhouse a group of hippies had congregated, for there was fellowship, and windowpane, to be had. he felt comfortable with windowpane, those tiny gelatin squares that you could be pretty sure held only acid, because not enough of anything that could really harm you would fit in that small a space.

four, or maybe five, of them had consumed the tiny windows, oh maybe an hour or more earlier. he'd forgotten to check the clock. it didn't matter. there was a square slab of sawn limestone sitting in the big living room and in the dim light he could swear there was an amazingly clear pattern suddenly revealed in that stone, something geometric, logical, as if drawn that way. he remarked to Rita, sitting on the battered old sofa, "i'm seeing pattern. in this stone. in everything. it's amazing. wish you could see this."

Rita, a tall girl who seemed very young, but very wise for someone so young, regarded him for a long moment. "there's a pattern," she said through a big grin. "but it's not like you're thinking, exactly. the pattern is Mind (he could hear the capital letter in Mind, he was sure). Mind is reflecting back on itself. everywhere Mind is at work, searching for a pattern, for a meaning to it all, there's the pattern. that's what's so way-out about it."

he reflected that this girl always found a way to say the most incredibly profound things. she could make the most bland cliche even sound profound, like newly-discovered wisdom.

"sometimes," she said, you think you've found the one big pattern, like pattern of patterns. but," she said, "you nev...

"wait!" he exclaimed, rising up out of the overstuffed chair. "i've gotta go outside and walk!" he was sure he'd heard a voice say, "get bundled up and get on some walkin shoes. i'll show you the pattern, how it all works. what i'm about to show you, will be astonishing to you..."

outside the night was one of those frozen Minnesota spring nights bathed in a brilliant moonlight that beckoned him to walk. he started walkin, accompanied by an insistent voice-track, "yes, you will see. it's right up ahead. see that hill? right over the hill, you will see it revealed..." things like that kept cycling through his head.

he walked for a long distance, in a speedy head, thinking the whole time. people kept coming to mind, his mom & dad, siblings, friends, people he'd been working with. they all seemed amusing, funny, lighthearted, and profound. it seemed that finally, the things they did, the way they were, all made sense. they were perfectly logical, they had to act as they did because their life-scripts were crafted so... even the loading-dock guy, the one with the incessant stream of racist jokes, even he made sense. he found himself really liking the people who populated his tiny world. he would seek them out, give them a really big hug and say, "i know!" ... no, wait a minute. these were "straight people," that hug idea wouldn't do. maybe there was like a handshake, or a special phrase, a knowing look, you could give that said in a universal language, "i know..."

the walk grew longer and longer. the voices had promised that in the revelation of the Pattern to All Things, there would be "a mantra, your mantra, which you can chant to remind yourself if you forget..."

always he was egged on---"see that grove of trees? just past there, you'll see, you'll see."

it seemed as if hours had passed. he was pretty sure the acid was wearing off now, and had been circling back on the dirt road back to the big farmhouse, and he had been chanting his mantra softly, just under his breath, for it seemed like the last quarter-hour now. he had found the Pattern, and knew the chant. it was an easy chant, and it went...

"whoa." he said out loud. "what the heh---" he
realized he'd been chanting,

"what i'm about to show to you
will be astonishing to you
astonishing to you

what i'm about to show to you
will be astonishing to you
astonishing to you

what i'm about to show to you
will be astonishing to you
astonishing to you..."

"damn." "un-fucking-believable..."

Rita was sitting outside gazing toward the brilliant red sunglow off in the east. to her back was a bright, setting moon. she was watching him approach, wearing an amused look.

"hey. long walk, huh?"

"yeah. i was uh...the Pattern...i was... wow, i'm really hungry. and chilly. i'm gonna go in and find something to eat and stand by the wood cookstove and warm up. you comin in?"

"in a while," she said, as he started up the creaky steps. "hey?"

he turned back. "yeah?"

"i started to say--you never really get to see it, ya know."

he gazed at her for another long moment, again marveling at this girl of perpetual profundity. he shook his head and giggled, banging the rattly door behind him...

Angel's Trumpet

Angel's Trumpet, when used properly, can have an hallucinogenic effect. Much more frequently, however, it's a total disaster as in this teen's case.

"About two weeks ago, he brewed a batch of tea from the leaves or flowers of an Angel's Trumpet to get high. The Titusville teen said he followed directions he found on the Internet and accidentally overdosed." Of course separating the wheat from the chaff in this the Pornstorm can be a bit much for many adults let alone a precocious teen.

In the Northwest Indiana News Jean Starr writes of the Angel's Trumpet in her Petal Talk column. Angel's Trumpet also takes the names Datura and Jamestown Weed slurred to jimson weed according to Starr. In her last paragraph she takes a particular flight of fancy that suggests she may know more than she wants to let on in a statewide publication.

"The chemicals contained in Datura include scopolamine, which I used to use to prevent seasickness. I had to stop using it because it caused me to hallucinate, which can be really dangerous on a boat at night in the middle of Lake Michigan. Scopolamine still is available by prescription for seasickness, but if you tend to be a poster child for side effects like I am, you might want to give it a try before taking that cruise."

If you don't see how I am reading this, think about what other things being a poster child for side effects may mean besides what's on the face of it. Or think about her opening anecdote, "Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. 'Potato chips on the sunroom floor,' I wondered as the sound continued. No, it was Olive the Golden Border Retriever snacking on dried leaves that had fallen from the jasmine." She primes the theme of eating exotic plant leaves she'll take up near the end. If only the teen had spoken with Jean for some proper guidance.

Update: someone pointed to Salvia Divinorum personally, pornstorm knows nothing about this stuff.

christopher elgrekkko cadden's Blogorama

he calls these recent posts "the best shit he has written in years." his words from his mouth. in the pornstorm, who can tell if he's breaking from modesty or touts everything like this. but, hey, even you think you alone are the highest arbiter of taste.

and you are, and so, read up on this thing like i'm going to do now. he hails from the mindvox clan and the blogorama looks pretty down to earth . . .

Did Melville Borrow the Idea for 'Moby Dick'?

paul collins finds story browsing old books on eBay

Weekend Edition - Saturday, December 24, 2005 Literary historian Paul Collins found an odd ad in a rare first edition of Moby Dick author Herman Melville's 1849 novel Redburn. The ad was for another novel -- The Whale and His Captors -- by Rev. Henry Cheever. Collins and Scott Simon discuss the once-common practice of 'improving upon' another author's work.

yes, i only read books with some stealing. if none is done, i'm not going to believe it.

dennis hopper is dead

ccadden writes in to the mindvox list--

Say three HAIL's to Dennis Hopper, who has passed away. Hail! Hail! Hail! Thanks for the ripping memories, and the unique character that you were, and still are.

i hadn't heard anything about it. right away josh comes back with an eminently sensible reply that leaves you wondering just what kind of drugs ccadden is doing. (or if he is reading the some of the new york post's cracker-jack headlines) josh throws a nice twain line about exaggeration and makes you think about information flows of 1820 and of 2005.

What are you talking about? To borrow a phrase from Twain, the reports
of Dennis Hopper's death have been greatly exaggerated. He's currently
working on a film called "The Night We Called It A Day" about Frank
Sinatra. There's nothing about him dying in the news.

http://news.google.com/news?q=dennis+hopper

but offering a link to google as final proof is just a bit too ironic for me to hold back some laughs. will a giant news aggregator report agreement or generate 10,000 generally agreeable webpages?

WHY I CAN'T STAND PEACENIKS

YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW OUR RULES, OR BE AN APOSTATE
By Friedrich von Hardenberg

"One always hates to be shaken, because it involves getting unstuck from the comfortable rut where one has been for too lonog. But it's always, ultimately, a good thing, because it reactivates you; it makes you live again. To be unshaken is to die while living. When one is on one's death bed, one does not remember the years spent living in a comfortable rut. One remembers the times of being shaken."
- Grekmann the Wise

This is why I can't stand peacniks. It's because they are all a bunch of hypocritical liars. I guess I have some sort of thing about hypocritical liars.

Peaceniks are like a bunch of cows in a herd. EVERYBODY has to be on EXACTLY THE SAME vibe. As soon as there is the slightest discordance, the instant someone expresses any uniqueness whatsoever, EVERYBODY tweaks. The whole herd gets that spooked out look in its eye, but instead of bolting like cows do, they hypocritically attack the unique individual.

Now, in order to attack the unique individual, they have to be passive aggressive. Otherwise they would have to admit they are attacking. Since they don't "believe" in attacking, they can't view themselves as the attackers. So what do they do? They attack, passive aggressively, accusing the Unique One of being the attacker, attacking him, with all the self righteous "indignation" they can squeeze out of their passionless bodies.

Here is an example. This ugly peacenik bitch wouldnt shut up about her lying, cheating scumbag of a husband. Everyone kept telling her to get him to talk about his feelings and inadequacies, to "spend quality time with her family" and to be mutually supportive and stupid bullshit like that. This is what she expected to hear. She expected everyone to feed into her attention seeking behavior, reinforcing her behavior of never shutting up about what a stupid, ugly, undesirable twat she was.

So what did I do? Contrary to what people might think, I don't go around looking for trouble. Ask grekmann. He just told me I hate it when all this catharsis starts busting out all over the place, even though it's a good thing. No, 90% of the time I'm going out of my way to be as tame as motherfucking possible.

But in this case, I just got sick of listening to this stupid twat bitch repeatedly about the same shit over a series of several fucking months. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore, and I offered some advice.

"Look bitch," I told her. "The truth is, you don't want to be happy. All you want is something to bitch about. Even if your dumbass liar of a husband wasn't retarded, you'd find something to bitch about. I have an idea, why don't you either do something to make your life better or shut the fuck up?"

So I went into the whole list of things she could do to make herself more attractive to her husband so he wouldnt fuck her sister or her friends who were less ugly than she was. Stop being a fat pig, bitch. Wear makeup. Shave once in awhile, for christ's sake. Shut the fuck up once in awhile. Give him a fucking unearned blowjob once in awhile and kick him some threesomes.

Well, apparently these bovine bitches think that her troglodyte husband was banging her sister, because it afforded him the opportunity to have long, drawn out conversations about his inadequecies. They acted like I was the one who was talking some sort of fucked up shit. Fuck those stupid twats.

Then you have the recent flap over the photo I sent in to the pagan group. Apparently it jolted someone with a discordant vibe. Now, they are all settling back into their vegetative state, agreeing with each other about everything (mainly that, somehow, I was the one creating a disturbance, and that, at somepoint, I was the one "engaging in personal attacks") and everything is going back to socially casual.

I feel like I'm back in Sunday School, or NEW Lutheran High. At least those lying bitches fucked with passion, not self righteous depravity. Not to mention that they shave, wear makeup, and shit like that. Hell, I might as well be in church.

So, guess what, peaceniks. I'm sick of that bullshit. Yes, I am a bad person inside, a dirty rotten scoundrel, an unscupulous rascal and a rapscallion. But at least I'm not a lying hypocrite. And at least I'm not a fucking vegetable.

GO FUCK YOURSELVES!

WHY I CAN'T STAND PAGANS

PAGANS ARE ALL LIARS. FUCK PAGANS.
By Friedrich von Hardenberg

What's up with Pagans? When this shit first really started getting rolling with Paganism it pissed me off. When I said Paganism, I was always referring to the Ancient Greeks, a culture of people who had balls and weren't a bunch of hypocritical liars.
Greek culture was based upon the Greek Agon, the contest of wills between equally matched opponents. It was based upon the idea of excellence. Like Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill, we all voluntarily want to make ourselves grow stronger. It feels good.
But now, when people say "Paganism," what do they mean? They mean WICCA, which is a total bullshit religion promoted by university professors. As an authentic Superfreak of the Lineage of Cain, this disgusts me.
What disgusts me even more are the experiences I have with these so-called "Pagans." Most recently, I Posted a photograph to an ostensibly Pagan email group, which was met with extreme horror and disdain, as a result of its feartured titty.
This is my experience with "Paganism" in a microcosm. Pagans are all a bunch of dumbass liars who might as well go to the dumbass Presbyterian church down the road.
They're even afraid of nudity these days.
Let's examine this photo, which can also be seen here. It is an artistic expression of my subjective experience with the Pagan group to which I sent it. It signifies greatness, and the aesthetic power of women, encompassed by nature.
Here we see two powerful, beautiful women, on a mountaintop, as if hallowed by Gaia herself; one of them has fired an arrow, and the other seems to have caught it. This brings to mind the Zen ritual in which one catches the arrow fired at one, and I viewed it as an oblique reference to the Amazons of the real Pagan culture, back in the ancient mediterranean.
We see the wind in their hair, and their bodies exposed, unashamed, and illuminated by the sun, the most holy of orbs. They stand unafraid, looking off into the distance, as if engoddened. They embody the full sublimity and dynamism of womanhood. Hand in hand, they represent the mystical bond of all women, and by extension, the promotion of that very matriarchal world-view ostensibly espoused by these so-called "Pagans."
But what do these shrivelled up old fucking crones see? NUDITY! GOD fucking forbid, right? "Our children might see that!"
Well, go fuck yourselves, hypocritical liars. Go ahead and shield your children from all beauty if you want. Go ahead and condemn the free personal expression of others. Flee nature in terror. But you needn't leave your neighborhood Presbyterian church to do so. I tried to go along with your halfwitted stupidass bullshit religion, but you make it impossible.
In short, take your dry, shrivelled up twats and go fuck yourselves.

Jesse Sullivan, the World's First Bionic Man

progress marches inevitably onward. hold that. let's not say there's something called "progress" that moves along without you or me. no no. there's some smart dude, todd, & some of his friends who don't give a shit about the rest of it. and they use there minds to work out some crazy shit with motors computers and the human body and the human mind. and that is definitive.

"Developed within the Neural Engineering Center for Artificial Limbs (NECAL) at RIC, Dr. Todd Kuiken, MD, PhD, pioneered the muscle reinnervation procedure which takes an amputee’s own nerves and connects them to a healthy muscle. In this case, four of Mr. Sullivan’s nerves were dissected from the shoulder and transferred to the muscles of his chest. Doing so allows the user to move his or her prosthetic arm as if it were a real limb – by simply thinking about what they want the arm to do. The "Bionic Arm," or myoelectric arm, is driven using electrical signals from the muscles of the chest, now activated by the user’s own thought-generated nerve impulses. These impulses are sensed, via surface electrodes, from the pectoral muscle and carried through to the mechanical arm, causing the arm to move."

Contemporary Uses of Liberalism

ok i'm blogging this now. it's 8 questions 5 respondents answer each one. p0rn st0rm will respond later ...

cultural re-enactment and the american dream

p0rnst0rm says:
heh this another funny thing about the suburban dream: have a good job to pay for a nice house in a safe pretty neighborhood so that you can then be free to go to the movies manufacture the emotions (fear, excitement) you've worked so hard to get away from. heh "i can't even remember what it is i came her to get away from." haha.

daybrown answers:
Because all the land outside New Orleans was swamp, early on folks got into fixing up old houses. I lived in a lot of them, and did some of the fixing myself, but when you down thru 7 layers
of wallpaper, it occurs to you, that whatever you do to the wall, will in time be redone by another.

Only in recent decades has the freeway system enable folks to move far enough out to 'develop' the usual sprawl, with the usual notion that some dude will 'improve' the landscape with his own house. But you havta be blind not to notice all the water you drive over on the way into New Orleans, and be dense not to ponder whether it will all stay where they put it.

Thucydides:"People marveled at their successes, whether their means were adequate or not, and the day came when they confused their hopes with realities." Luck always runs out.

Back in the early 70's, I thot it was pure hubris, when "Rock & Roll will live forever" played on the radio. When I was young, I new nothing of the Big Band music my mom's generation listened to. And as time has gone on, I am constantly reminded by all the young people now listening to, and knowing the lyrics of music from a bygone era. Young folks know the words to old songs that I never did figure out. Bizzarrrr.

But it was the technology; the electric amplification opened up new ways of expression, and the media developed to spread that expression further than ever, around the globe... cheaply. It has, by now, somewhat run the course; there is, after all, only so much you can do to a guitar string. And
I detect a certain envy, a kind of reconstructionalism. just as there are Revolutionary and Civil war re-enactors, so there are neo-hippies, poor as always, outcaste, non-conformist. But they are not making music that will be listened to decades hence.

American culture has passed its classic era, is now baroque, rococo, with snippets of old art spliced together as if it'd then be new art. Nobody gives a fuck what you put on vinyl or canvas any more. Cubist oil painting became acrylic abstract expressionism, and now its just pixels.

The American dream went on like fireworks, amazed people, but now the show's over, and we're standing around saying how good it was.

fortitude at the grocery store before the big one

'You can sign my death certificate,' cigar bar owner Michael Kincaid said, standing in line at Mattassa's corner grocery with a six-pack of beer, a bag of potato chips and a package of chocolate chip cookies. 'My biggest investment is here, so I'm going to stay with it.'

Jazz singer Peyroux 'disappears'

BBC NEWS: "A record label has hired a private detective to trace jazz singer Madeleine Peyroux, whose album has been steadily climbing the UK charts. The US singer has failed to turn up for any promotional work, according to Universal Classics. It said this was not the first time she had vanished, spending seven years busking in Paris after the release of her debut album."

Patti Smith Summerstage 2005

4 Aug 2005 Central Park New York NY

The air is hot and thick and if you move too much you'll start sweating all over again. I'd waited in line and now i'm sitting in some bright white folding chairs, almost straight before the center microphone. I look over and see the sun about to dip behind a tall building. When it finally does, there's a breath of cool air and the techs come out to fix up the stage for Janet Hamill & Moving Star, the night's opening act. I've never been to a Patti Smith show before and the woman next to me, Nadia, is telling me the legends and some of the mythology.

There's anticipation in the air, like there always is at a concert. The crowd is of many ages: it probably reflects the general proportions of age groups in the city and the country. There are some people who look like real squares-- some reading the Times Literary Supplement and others discussing health care plans. Some are all the way down the line like the look-at-that-dude & Nadia-taps-her-forearm-dude. Nearby an Indian mother who doesn't seem to know much about Patti Smith seems to be chaperoning her two young Indian-American teens who have convinced her to go. When the ambient music on the speakers shifts from Latin & Salsa instrumentals to an Arabic singer, and the mother and daughters want to know the language (Arabic) we can't help but perceive 21st Century global realities in U.S. Culture set the stage for the post-world-war-II almost-historical music we're about to see.

Twilight is falling and people are looking up just who Janet Hamill is on the program. She's Patti Smith's mentor from the 60s. She's a beat poet who's taken on a backing band. And now she's taken the stage letting us know she's from Goshen NY. One guy in the crowd calls out Goshen as if he's from there. Her drummer, bassist, and guitarist crash into a Credence Clearwater Revival style groove, and Janet jumps into a poem. The way she recites it her voice climbs through each line she recites like she's just gotten up off the rooftops and is reaching for the sky. In fact one refrain is "What is heaven for" if you can't get there in an earthly human way. More than one bird crosses her poems. She calls out to stay up all night and in another refrain she proposes one of the elements of the party should be backyard telescopes trained on the stars. There's a long sea metaphor. Her second poem is an explicit tribute to Jack Kerouac. Now there are billboards twice their normal size dazzlingly alight. And there's people going to and fro under the great Night.

She goes into a third poem. She has a flutist, a guy with white hair working the keyboard like an alchemist making accompanying sounds and scapes. Some members go and an acoustic guitarist comes on. She lays down some rhythm guitar for another poem. Janet plays the harmonica not for harmonies but very frankly and unconcernedly before a final stanza. Nadia and I are listening to the words and we institute a three strike rule. If a word comes along that totally falls flat she gets a strike. "bloody prayer" comes down. Strike One. Three poems later we're wondering how many at-bats she gets. I get a hot-dog and fries. Everyone looks like they have a Stella Artois in hand. Someone opens a Greek dish in a white styrofoam container and all rows around note the delicious smell. When her set closes, we decide she's not perfect, but she's unafraid, uncompromising, and capturing something serious of the poetic traditions.

Paul Schaeffer, word that he's a regular keyboardist on television comes down the row, comes on to announce that Patti will be on soon and that we should all get a refreshment and prepare ourselves. Nadia is seeing lots of people she knows; there's a strong contingent of those who've been on the scene for a long time. Nighttime is fallen and when i look up, the stage-rail has been crowded so that anyone who thought he'd sit near the front has now found that to be an impossibility.

In a flash, her band has taken the stage and have hit into the first song. She's laying the words in with a sharp edge to her voice. She's articulating some of the lines with the hiss of a snake. She's even-handed, balanced, and strong. She's confident in all she sings. In a few lines she's dispelled any doubt and people press toward the stage. She encourages us, too, waving us toward the stage. At points she puts her boot up on the monitor and lays out the line like it means everything, like she's singing to you. Now my ears are glued to everything she says, and eyes to everything she does.

She's got a dip or something spitting every now and then in the middle of the song or between songs. The dude who yelled "Goshen" yells something silly but kind of unintelligible. Patti: "Whut?". No answer. She picks up an acoustic and puts down a rapid-fire rhythm. Between verses she plays face to face with Lenny Kaye, her long time guitarist. He kicks into another gear and does as he feels, friend to the high notes. I wish I knew the words, because with dancing and everything going on I'm missing a lot of them.

Then she says: "I'm going to play an American folk song," drawling out american a little "sing along if you know the words." She opens Like A Rolling Stone a few are singing the verse. When she gets to the refrain every single member of the audience sings loud and clear, and she knows she's opened something in the crowd. She's vehement in her delivery. More and more people are dancing.

Now she points out Jerry Garcia's birthday. It warrants a week of celebration she says. A nine day week. She's rocking the vocals hard. This time the guitarist on the left takes the solo and does well with it. She's dressed in a flannel-shirt sweat-shirt I can't tell what type thing. She's got anyone's jeans and a white shirt. Her 1st decoration are these suede boots she wears that you see prominently when she steps up on the monitor and as she's constantly moving around the stage. She waves to one part of the crowd. She sings to the right. She gets down low and sings to one person in the audience. She curses a photographer who's come to the front to try to get her picture, "Get the Fuck Outta Here" in between verses. She smiles and waves to another part of the crowd. Her only other decoration is a large cross probably 4 inches by 2 inches around her neck. You can really see it when she sings the song, Jesus died for everyone's sins but mine.

She does two other songs many people know, but I don't and then she jumps into Because The Night which i know well. The whole place is rockin' and the people who were all over their cell-phone-camcorders have given it up and are just rocking out too. Each member of the band is awesome, delivering on the instrumentals. Patti dances in Lenny's face as he solos. He takes it out to a rapturous level. Everyone loves it and cheers.

Now she brings up Jerry Garcia again, this time telling a legend that begins "one hot sweaty night in the dog days of August." It's about a boy with sturdy legs and a man tired looking for a place to lay his weary head. She goes back and forth between these characters and raises her voice. Soon she puts here arms out and is looking up at the stage lights as her story and the band have reached some kind of frenzy. She could even be channeling some kind of spirit. She might be channeling Jerry, but more likely, she's getting Jerry to help her channel something else. And from there she breaks into another awesome Rock & Roll song with a real rock and even more roll. People are really dancing to this; new rhythm is coursing through everyone.

Then she goes into a song for all those who've died in the recent "strike and illegal occupation." When the crowd answers strong, she goes into a longer tirade about the things the people in power do and how "they'll do it again and again and again and again" She lays on that again word and we know it. And into a slower song. it starts slow but when we hear her sing the refrain, something like "one day if we're strong enough, maybe, we'll be able to rebuild the peaceful nation." It picks up force.

Now it's getting near the end and when the lights flash off briefly between songs everyone's worried it's already the encore. People seem to want to stay for a long time. She throws in some shout-outs to new york. She introduces her band including the competent bassist and guitarist on the right as her son. Everyone gives an extra cheer for Lenny Kaye. Patti is rushing around the stage as if to make sure she touches each and everyone in the audience before she goes. The last song is over too quickly, and the lights change. I say my good-byes to the people I met and we're released now into the hot August night out through the park into the streets and subways of New York City.

All the songs and everything are all mostly out of order.

Torrent Tracker Dodges Whiners

thepiratebay.org responds to various written threats including this response:

"As you might know American law is NOT applicable in Sweden. Even though USA seems to think, from time to time, that there is only one law, just as there is only on god. In your own law your courts claim only jurisdiction (under the "long arm statutes") over non-state residence only in certain cases. Namely when the "defendant" has minimum contacts in the state where the suit was initiated. In the case Asahi Metal industries Co., Ltd v. Superior court of CA the U.S. Supreme court ruled that such "contacts" did not exist since the defendant had no offices, no agents, no employees or property and so on. Much like our case. The only thing connecting us with the US is the fact that our torrents are accessible worldwide. Not being an expert on American law (we have something in common. Isn't it fun how people from all over the world are connected through our own ignorance?) we still are of the opinion that there is no, excuse the language, chance in HELL that you will be able to initiate a suit in an US court against our us and have us summoned to the US.

That means that such a suit will have to be initiated in Sweden, under Swedish law. As to this date Swedish law does not forbid the activities relating to having bitorrent-tracker. Nor does any Swedish precedent exist that forbids it. We are confident in our assessment that our activities are perfectly legal and they will continue until such a time that the Swedish lawmaker changes the law.

It might be hard for you to get what I'm about to say through your thick John Wayne foreheads, so bear with me. The tracker provides the user only with .torrent files which contain no copyrighted data. The actual copyrighted material is to be found on the individual machines of our users, not on our servers. "

Faux Faulkner Winner 2005

"Down the hall, under the chandelier, I could see them talking. They were walking toward me and Dick s face was white, and he stopped and gave a piece of paper to Rummy, and Rummy looked at the piece of paper and shook his head. He gave the paper back to Dick and Dick shook his head. They disappeared and then they were standing right next to me."

We’re not Afraid!

the bombers wish to strike fear in the hearts of londoners & the world. and this site is a scrapbook of one screen graphic designs letting them know it didn't work. it's high on the list of the the sites of the moment

Generation Chickenhawk

It's not hard to say what's gone wrong in young conservative minds when they speak of defending high ideals and liberating the opressed: they know little of costs and penalties. Where there is death and protracted misery; there is know way they could know it. They see only the shrouds of glory.

"And they are beating back the Iraqi insurgency when they demand that their university budget more money toward bringing conservative speakers (like Horowitz) to campus, which he also advised them to do. This equation holds a special appeal among College Republicans who are loath to risk their lives on the battlefield but don't want to feel that they are missing the action either."

Read Erotica Aloud

ok, have you every read erotica out-loud in "mass foreplay". it seems like a pretty good idea.

America's Coming Economic Crisis

about WBUR Boston's On Point program day brown says

Why would I wanna listen, when I can read 5 times faster than anyone can talk? And why would I wanna listen, when if I'm reading, and I come to something that dont sound right, I can quickly glance up to see of the premises are correct? Nobody stands up to challenge bullschitt from the pulpit, but we do it here all the time.

If the dude has anything to say, let him put it in ascii like this. Then, we can see if his case is reasonable.

Librarian stands up to FBI

an interesting practical story about the patriot act and the expansion of governmental powers. if you think this is "liberal whining", read what "jews for firearms" have to say about. i would imagine respectable conervatives could be against the invasive nature of the patriot act.

here's why the fuss: a person somewhat inclined to be a terrorist himself is most often the most useful agent in defending against terrorism. it's like former hackers who broke into govt. computers for the joy of it will become the best security experts. in the borderland between criminal and police, between transgressor and justice, all sorts of things can happen. that said there's no reason to keep a book about bin laden from people even potential terrorists. principle: guard the freedom of exchange of ideas over interdicting free ideas because they might be dangerous. in the long run, global society will be more stable. black and white thinkers: i'm not saying we should give away detailed layperson tutorials on how to make nuclear weapons. that would not be smart.

pacific island resourcefulness

ccadden (elgrekkko) from the MindVox list

if i were on survivor island----and this is something i think of everytime i get a glimpse of that dumbass show---i'd comb the woods daily for natural drugs. it's been driving me crazy, the last couple of seasons, where they've been out in the pacific. i see kava kava vines all over the place, but no one there knows you can pick that stuff, boil it, and trip balls.

Anthony Lane Reviews Revenge of the Sith

to anthony PORNSTORM responds:

Your criticism of the script of Revenge of the Sith is good, if an easy thing to do. I think the whole theater laughed at the screen at the points you mention. When you come to criticizing the architecture, however, I'm not sure I follow. "Alien" and "Blade Runner" do more than you have room to say. They suggest that our world on its current path leads to a world that's not only more rusted and septic but feels like it can never be fixed. In those movies, visions of heroism are small, fleeting, and far from the task of changing the tide of human society. The highest moments there, darkly, are brief where your head is above water in a life otherwise made entirely of drowning.

Star Wars on the other hand suggests that there is a founding human principle which can transform vast swaths of civilization into something peaceful and meaningful. It is perhaps the death of this particular dream that weighs so heavily on our society today. I may be reading too far into what you say. But you seem to prefer a movie that sticks closer to "existence" one filled with "clutter, quirkiness, intimacy, irony, and threatened order". Certainly Han Solo brings that kind of reality to his episodes of Star Wars: he kicks his bucket of bolts to make it fly. he makes his way through a chaos of individuals each with his own ends. But a movie made entirely of these elements fails as badly as one with none of them. "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" depicts a mind-doctor and desperate lonely individuals turning to him for a fix. And we can all see that going to such a doctor will heal nothing. But when you have a broken leg you do not want to go to a hospital filled with "tricky little threats to order", you would like a hospital that has well documented these threats and dealt with them well over years of experience. you would like a hospital that strives to solve basic issues.

We've all seen pi in the sky designs for large-scale order come up against an even bigger reality thousands of times-- in a New York City Starbuck's washroom, in a scuffed and crooked Wachovia ATM room, in the space shuttle explosions, in the failures of the university, in once grand arteries now choked with traffic. But when the poets celebrate the triumphs of clutter over order of rust over steel, are they not celebrating with awe the gumption of those who tried? they are, i think, celebrating those who dare to trump reality and existence with their dreams. The face of the statue half-buried in the sand is a sign of the large extent to which existence had to go to stymie the dream. I'm not saying Lucas is such a dreamer, but he tries to celebrate them in the Jedi.

I agree that the film in question has gone astray, that Lucas can no longer find solid words to put in yoda's mouth and make him come alive. But to criticize filmic architecture in which the floors of the capital are polished for lack of character goes too far. It takes dedicated, robotic, perhaps loving hands to keep a floor like that. In "Blade Runner" nobody cares anymore because the planet is on the far side of some nuclear winter. In "Revenge of The Sith", at least if we grant what it's trying to do, the clarity and rationality of the republic is giving way to the martial, imposed order of an empire. The existence of this kind of transition was not lost on the audience i was with.

Perhaps this is what you mean when you insist on the word vulgar twice in three lines, although i can't work it out exactly. I imagine you mean the 1950s style levitating convertibles and the quick succession of too briefly and flatly constructed planetary ecologies that come only vaguely connected to any other part of the movie. Or are you talking about Lucas-world in a more general sense? And what's with your George Bush style bravado? "... a brood of yodettes, are you saying you'd leave them behind at the first sniff of danger?" I don't think "Yoda" is saying that. Again if you haven't given up the thread of the morality tale, the Jedi are charged with the guarding the republic. If you can't see past your personal causes and those of your family (or there's nothing to see beyond those concerns) then you don't really belong in a job like that. Also, if you follow the admittedly hard-to-hold plot of the movie, you see it is his fear of loss itself which kills her, not some do-nothing attitude (not) suggested by yoda. You're right the film didn't make yoda's suggestion feel as deep as it turned out to be in terms of the plot.

19th Century Painter John Martin

Anthony Lane referred to this Victorian Painter in reference to Star Wars Revenge of the Sith.

German police baffeled by Bush poo-flags

From SF Bay Indy Media:

"'We have sent out extra patrols to try to catch whoever is doing this in the act,' said police spokesman Reiner Kuechler. 'But frankly, we don't know what we would do if we caught them red handed.' Legal experts say there is no law against using feces as a flag stand and the federal legal experts say there is no law against using feces as a flag stand and the federal constitution is vague on the issue."

dr0wning in the p0rn St0rm

Friday, April 18, 2008

Pope Further Left than U.S. President & Republicans

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Juicy Chris Matthews Profile

Friday, February 15, 2008

Dubai's Incredible Growth

Sunday, January 20, 2008

lord have mercy -- iraq vet commits senseless murder of mother of his children

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Watching MSNBC's live webcast of the new hampshire primary

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Man Sentenced in Bizarre Diagnosing Scam

Monday, February 26, 2007

war in iran

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

if only they did this to living writers

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

ethical realism

Saturday, December 23, 2006

suburban development 1906

Friday, November 03, 2006

Gina Hughes on Internet Addiction

Saturday, October 28, 2006

watching the heavens

Friday, July 28, 2006

Arcology for Southern China

Thursday, July 13, 2006

garrison keillor puts down bernard-henri levy's articles about "america"

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

since excesses of 60s research frozen in time

Saturday, July 08, 2006

some internet music thing

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

the inferno

Sunday, June 11, 2006

Psychopathia Sexualis

Friday, May 05, 2006

Bosnian Pyramids: Great Discovery or Colossal Hoax? - Yahoo! News

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

rainbow gathering

Saturday, March 18, 2006

The Place of Iraq in Geopolitics

Thursday, March 09, 2006

blog troll accuses nation of conspiracy mongering

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Markovian Parallax Denigrate

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Mock Trial of Bush Prompts Meeting

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Angel's Trumpet Follow-Up: Salvia

Friday, January 27, 2006

US plans to 'fight the net' revealed

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Winona Minnesota Mississippi River (Internet) Sutra

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Angel's Trumpet

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

christopher elgrekkko cadden's Blogorama

Monday, December 26, 2005

Did Melville Borrow the Idea for 'Moby Dick'?

dennis hopper is dead

Monday, November 21, 2005

WHY I CAN'T STAND PEACENIKS

Sunday, November 20, 2005

WHY I CAN'T STAND PAGANS

Monday, September 19, 2005

Jesse Sullivan, the World's First Bionic Man

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Contemporary Uses of Liberalism

Friday, September 09, 2005

cultural re-enactment and the american dream

Monday, August 29, 2005

fortitude at the grocery store before the big one

Friday, August 19, 2005

Jazz singer Peyroux 'disappears'

Friday, August 05, 2005

Patti Smith Summerstage 2005

Thursday, August 04, 2005

Torrent Tracker Dodges Whiners