look mama, there's an aeroplane up in the sky . .

--So, what do you remember about the situation at the Pentagon on 9/11? Never did hear many specifics, did ya?

Here's an interesting short posted by the Freedom Underground addressing many unanswered questions about that day.

(thanks to Shy Gun Willie for pointing me to this)

--Dig deep, folks. The Red Cross can always use help or check out Give.org for a list of other organizations involved in tsunami relief.

eat them up, yumm!

--Thanks to Anjela for sending me this story on the current situation of ocean critters and the potential harm our love of dipping them in melted butter can have. An excerpt:

"Stop by the seafood section of a typical supermarket these days, and you'll see a vivid testimony to the bounty of the oceans: piles of snowy white North Atlantic cod, glistening red snapper, and thick swordfish, halibut, and sea bass. But beneath this display of abundance lurks the reality that many popular fish will soon be missing from fish markets because large numbers of them are already missing from the oceans.

Last month the National Marine Fisheries Service and ocean conservation group Oceana listed species that have declined as much as 90 percent from their estimated original populations. And earlier in the fall, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, a blue-ribbon panel appointed by President Bush, released a study warning that too many marine species are being extracted from the oceans faster than they can reproduce.

While there is growing consensus about an impending underwater crisis, there is less agreement regarding what to do about it – particularly as it concerns the behavior of consumers, whose appetite for seafood seems to be growing with each passing year.

Americans ate a record 16.3 pounds of fish and shellfish per person in 2003, up from 15.6 pounds in 2002, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Now, say ocean activists, these seafood lovers will also have to learn to be stewards of the seas' bounty – or risk seeing their favorite fish disappear forever."

The fishing industry is odd in that it is one of the few sources of food that is reaped without being sowed. Just recently have folks started to realize that we need to play a larger part in regulating our wild harvests. Alaska has been particularly progressive in this respect but no system has proven to be perfect.

Fish farming has proven itself to be a pretty horrible idea--especially in nations like Chile that have set up the slimmest of standards (warning: steer clear of salmon purchased at Costco, as it is generally raised in Chilean farms. Shit, steer clear of any salmon not bearing a wild catch logo of some kind.)

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--Strange story of a corporate jet (a Gulfsteam V turbojet) owned by folks who seem to exist only on paper that has been used by the US to transport "hooded and handcuffed passengers" since 2001. This is from today's Washington Post article on the subject:

" . . . the agency is flying captured terrorist suspects from one country to another for detention and interrogation.

The CIA calls this activity "rendition." Premier Executive's Gulfstream helps make it possible. According to civilian aircraft landing permits, the jet has permission to use U.S. military airfields worldwide.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, secret renditions have become a principal weapon in the CIA's arsenal against suspected al Qaeda terrorists, according to congressional testimony by CIA officials. But as the practice has grown, the agency has had significantly more difficulty keeping it secret.

According to airport officials, public documents and hobbyist plane spotters, the Gulfstream V, with tail number N379P, has been used to whisk detainees into or out of Jakarta, Indonesia; Pakistan; Egypt; and Sweden, usually at night, and has landed at well-known U.S. government refueling stops.

As the outlines of the rendition system have been revealed, criticism of the practice has grown. Human rights groups are working on legal challenges to renditions, said Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA, because one of their purposes is to transfer captives to countries that use harsh interrogation methods outlawed in the United States. That, he said, is prohibited by the U.N. Convention on Torture. "

Kind of weird. The term "rendition" scares me.

in the marble of your animals eyes

From a Washington Post article breaking down new rules and regs for our national forests:

"The new rules give economic activity equal priority with preserving the ecological health of the forests in making management decisions and in potentially liberalizing caps on how much timber can be taken from a forest."
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"The government will no longer require that its managers prepare an environmental impact analysis with each forest's management plan, or use numerical counts to ensure there are "viable populations" of fish and wildlife. The changes will reduce the number of required scientific reports and ask federal officials to focus on a forest's overall health, rather than the fate of individual species, when evaluating how best to protect local plants and animals. "

In all honesty, this comes as no suprise. This is what we expect from the current regime, right? Still, i went slack-jawwed as i read the article. Forests to be managed in the style of corporations, profit margins given equal footing with preservation? I am amazed that folks can actually believe this is a GOOD idea. Sadly, however, the real truth is that most folks don't even realize this is happening or are indifferent to it. Hasn't the Columbia River saga taught us anything?

New Mexico's Rep. Tom Udall (D) makes an interesting point:

"With Bush's anti-environmental forest policy, you can't blame him for trying to hide behind other news, but not even Scrooge would unveil these regulations," Udall said. "These regulations, being offered two days before Christmas, cut the public out of the forest planning process, will inspire many more lawsuits and provide less protection for wildlife. It's a radical overhaul of forest policy."

sees the world spinning 'round

--Big ups to Ricky Williams! Last night's interview on 60 minutes was great. Mike Wallace was a pissy finger-pointing cunt as he carried on with his "no-holds-barred interviewing techniques." It was cool to watch the unruffled Williams laugh off Wallace's attempts at "biting" journalism.

--Digging on Josephine Foster and the Supposed this weekend. Check out the MP3's for her and while you're there check out the Henry Flynt stuff. Locust has some cool shit going on.

--Painter Joe Sorren has a cool spread in the Jan/Feb issue of Juxtapoz.

--If you've got a hankering for some super 8 of hippies in make-up and feathers, check out the video for Banhart's "Little Yellow Spider" found at Neumu.

--So maybe i'm a heartless bastard, but i'm having a hard time feeling bad for anyone involved in this mess.

cold on the shoulders of giants

--some damn good bobby bare jr. live appearances on kexp can be found here in their archives.

--excerpt from Barry Hannah's essay "Christ In the Room" from the new Oxford American:

" My goods, by Christ's direction, derive from Satan, kicked out of heaveh for Pride. I am a blithe conformist. Episcopalians do not give up comfort for Christ. Neither do Baptists, Catholics, or Church of Christers. A good enough symbol of American Christians would be a Lexus parked in front of a church. It wouldn't take much of a cynic to add an Abrahms tank.

But I am relishing our guilt, my shame, now. Rolling in that good, good mud. Chiefest of sinners, never to be forgiven, etc. Though who among us with any conscience has not wondered if we're even worth saving? I have never heard a description of heaven that suffices for this human heart. I don't want to sing praises in a host of angels, and "streets paved with gold" just sounds like the last touch to Las Vegas.

On the other hand, most of us have prayed for a return to blissful ignorance and wonder. Our minds do nothing but define our worries and hatreds. This may be Hell itself. We already know it thoroughly.

We have all worked in the foyer of the lunatic asylum. Release and deliverance by work is all we know. But we pray and beg for something else across the river and into the shade of the trees. For me, that is where Christ stands."

these are the opening words to Hannah's short novel Hey Jack!:

"I go back to Korea. Do I ever. Sometimes I stand on a corner with a book in my overcoat looking up at the sky and begging it to snow. I stand there in my undefended face, no weapons on me, knowing so much it is an agony not to write it down, and thus iI have gone home, over and over, and written this down, so as to distinguish my life, which has not been so much lately, and to share the tales of our little town. In that way the sands of time will perhaps not cover us up.

You will find me changing voices as I slip into the --let us say--mode of the closer participant. Otherwise I am sane, except for once in my life, and do not speak in tongues or hear voices as they do in certain churches. My eyes get bigger than ever over the situation of this town and my passing through it. I have settled here because of the university library and the distinguished bookstore, and also the old gentlemen who sit on the chairs around the square to reminisce. These old men have not been treated well in other fictions by the authors in other states in others times. But you cannot ignore the fact that it takes a certain strength to sit out in such a hot shade in the summers and watch the cars and young scoundrels."

persecution of my brothers

these fucking bastards will pay for this. though we do prefer Clusters brand cereal over the taste of bored teenage boys of suburbia, we're not averse to exacting our own particular brand of revenge: plucking the short hairs one by one and using them in nest construction, inserting offenders own nuts into their cheeks and leaving the hairless eunich to have it's eyes plucked by the ravens and crows (eyes = bird candy).

[footage via screenhead]

testing. one, two. one, two.

testing. one, two. one, two.

just finished this. here's an excerpt:

"Having ideas or beliefs that others do not share?
Breathing into a plastic bag changes the humidity in a room. A carpet knife can be useful in the removal of ingrown toenails. Not all bad people are French, but all French people are bad. Select meats, when buried for six months or longer in fertile soil, can be used as medicinal poultice. My brother's arms are kept in a jar at the county medical examiner's office downtown. Two nails in a board will weaken its integrity, but not three or seven. The earth is bulging over Cananda. When the light hit him just right, my father looked like an outboard motor--pull the cord and off he'd go. People's breath is almost always more important than what they say. Lifting weights will get you nowhere. When rain falls, something else is always going up. Shoes are for the weak.

Blaming yourself for things?
There were holes in our basement walls where the enemy soldiers were shot during War H. We dug around the foundation of the house, but our search for their remains was fruitless. We had more luck with the arrowheads. Scott earned a merit badge with his collection. The rest of us couldn't make it further than Tenderfoot. I learned to masturbate in a tent with two other boys and when I came, the lights went out. I saw visions -- what I thought then to be the devil's palm pressing my face into the sleeping bag. The other two had done it before, and only nodded when I recounted what had happened. Later my dick grew to twice its normal size. I panicked but the others reassured me. "Rest it up awhile," they said, kneeling by the fire."

it's a collection of shorts thread together by the fact that they all take place in Derby's version of the future. (a dubliners for the sci-fi set?) clouds have become solid, all food is made of meat, inanimate objects tell a history when listened to at the right frequency. fans of George Saunders' CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and Adam Johnson's Emporium will certainly dig this.