Months of Planning For 20 Minutes of July 4 Pyrotechnics

By Monte Reel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 30, 2004; Page B01

A pyrotechnician on July 4 gets a few perks.

There's the freedom to park a truck full of explosives in the middle of the Mall and avoid prosecution. There's the opportunity to combine skills from a trio of disciplines that rarely intersect (floral design, choreography and mortar fire).

MARTINS: Have you ever seen any of your victims?

HARRY: You know, I don't ever feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Would you feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you 20,000 pounds for every dot that stopped moving, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money? Or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax. It's the only way to save money nowadays.

MARTINS: A lot of good your money will do you in jail.

HARRY: That jail is in another zone. There's no proof against me, besides you.

MARTINS: I should be pretty easy to get rid of.

HARRY: Pretty easy.

MARTINS: I wouldn't be too sure.

HARRY: I carry a gun. I don't think they'd look for a bullet would after you'd hit that ground.

MARTINS: They have dug up your coffin.

HARRY: And found Harbin? Hmm, pity. Oh, Holly, what fools we are, talking to each other this way. As though I would do anything to you, or you to me. You're just a little mixed up about things in general. Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't, so why should we? They talk about the people and the proletariat. I talk about the suckers and the mugs. It's the same thing. They have their five year plans, and so have I.

MARTINS: You used to believe in God.

HARRY: I still do believe in God, old man. I believe in God and Mercy and all that. The dead are happier dead. They don't miss much here, poor devils. What do you believe in? Well, if you ever get Anna out of this mess, be kind to her. You'll find she's worth it. I wish I had asked you to bring me some of these tablets from home. Holly, I would like to cut you in, old man. Nobody left in Vienna I can really trust, and we have always done everything together. When you make up your mind, send me a message. I'll meet you any place, any time. And when we do meet, old man, it's you I want to see, not the police. Remember that, won't you? Don't be so gloomy. After all, it's not that awful. Remember what the fellow said. In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love. They had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long. Holly.

Taken from the classic film “The Third Man”
RIP OW, the best 15-minutes of my life.

War? Terrorists? No, Here's What's Really Scary
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS

TORONTO

FOUR decades after she fought to save Washington Square Park and wrote "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," a seminal book that has reshaped urban planning to this day, Jane Jacobs sits on her weather-beaten front porch here, contemplating the untended meadow that is her front yard and waving to neighbors as they walk by.

At 88, she has trouble taking even a few steps without her walker to dump junk mail into a recycling bin she keeps handy on the veranda.

"I used to bicycle to work," she recalled with a nostalgic grin and widening eyes that still twinkle through her big eyeglasses. "There are compensations, though. The older you get, the more loose ends that you've observed through life get tied up. And that's interesting."

Ms. Jacobs's tying up of loose ends has produced a quirky, somewhat scattered but typically iconoclastic new book, "Dark Age Ahead" (Random House), her eighth. As its title so bleakly suggests, it sounds a litany of warnings about Western society, which she sees as tilting toward a steep decline, or at least a critical reckoning.

"The purpose of this book is to help our culture avoid sliding into a dead end," she writes at the start of the compact, 241-page work. At the end, she concludes, "Formerly vigorous cultures typically fall prey to the arrogant self-deception for which the Greeks had a word, 'hubris.' "

In reaching her gloomy conclusions, Ms. Jacobs barely skims over such possibilities of calamity as terrorism, nuclear war and environmental degradation. Rather, she calls those mere symptoms of what she views as more fundamental, less obvious ailments: the breakdown of the family, the decline of higher education, lapses of modern science, tax systems that do not distribute money fairly and the inadequate self-regulation of professions. These, for her, are signs that the very pillars that support society are rotting.

She says it is natural for societies to "make mistakes and get off balance," but then they correct themselves. "What seems different about this situation is the stabilizers themselves are in trouble," she said one recent afternoon. "If the stabilizers go, what do we depend on?"

Ms. Jacobs also sees dark clouds looming over some staples of contemporary life. She predicts that the current explosion in housing prices will prove to be a bubble, though she cannot say whether it will pop before or during "the coming demographic bulge in retirements."

She also says the sprawling suburbs of North America are not sustainable. "One of the most destabilizing things about the suburbs and a symptom of their destabilization is the kind of transportation they need," she said, referring to gas-guzzling cars and sport utility vehicles. "Society is shaping something that is dysfunctional."

IN her book, she writes that once the housing bubble bursts, many owners of suburban lots will "no doubt sell their land and buildings to developers who plan to put them to more intensive use by building apartment houses, low-cost condominiums and spaces for small businesses." And, "resourceful owners will convert their rec rooms to low-cost rental suites."

Diatribes against suburbia and the automobile come naturally to Ms. Jacobs, a committed city dweller - stronger on life experience than academic credentials - who led the community movement in the 1950's and 60's against a freeway that would have gone through the West Village and Washington Square. Her 1961 classic, "Great American Cities," challenged the urban redevelopment that was transforming American cities; in it, she contended that vital communities depended on the varied street life and small-scale virtues of densely settled neighborhoods.

After 30 years in New York City, she and her husband, Robert Jacobs, left for Canada in the late 60's in protest of the Vietnam War. In Toronto, she led fights to save neighborhoods and gracious landmarks like Union Station. Ms. Jacobs, now a widow, still visits New York from time to time. Here, she remains a force in urban-planning debates and still resides in the Annex, a multiethnic, multiclass neighborhood in downtown Toronto that fits her prescription for healthy urban life. Her street has plenty of trees for shade and porches for neighborly conversation and is only a block from busy Bloor Street with its wide variety of stores, restaurants and robust street life.

Her sensibilities may seem a throwback to the 60's, but she takes a view in her writings and conversations that dates back long before Bob Dylan. About her unkempt front yard, for instance, she says those are not wild, overgrown weeds but "native plants" that are far more appropriate there than some immaculately cut, dandelion-free yard of grass.

"It's not wholesome to the environment to constantly put pesticides on lawns," she said. "Such lawns came from England. It was part of the plantation age. People with large estates and lots of animals had old money. That was prestige, which was a kind of fashion."

For Jane Jacobs, breaking that kind of fashion is the way to avert the next dark age.

"We human beings are not going to get stuck indefinitely on bad mistakes," she said with hope in her voice. "We're not helpless."

You, my dear, are a strong and lovely creature; may the love of truth shine upon you until your final breath is passed between your most eloquent of lips.

My Revised View on Fahrenheit 9/11 (re: R rating)

What I said before re: the R rating wasn't particularly correct. Yeah, it is rather graphic as far as the topics of discuss and some images. I am not talking about the vast conspiracy theories, rather, for example, the idea that young American soldiers get off by killing innocent people.

The funny thing is that while Michael Moore spends a great time with the “shock and awe” of the economically poor soldiers’ murderous games, he also discusses the fact that our military is filled with these same poor souls. So, we are suppose to hate these “baby killers”, but at the same time we are told to feel sorry for them because, with unemployment rates of 50% in their hometowns, their limited career opportunities include enlisting.

No one ever said war was pretty – it isn’t. Unfortunately, many suffer from the victors of a very elite few. The war extends far past the people whose lives are lost to it.

So, which one is it Mr. Moore? I haven’t seen any press releases saying you are pleading all of your income to urban education or workforce development. I say you are part of the problem vs. the solution.

My View on Fahrenheit 9/11 (a disjointed opinion with little meaning)

It’s worth seeing. That is all I can really say. It is far too complicated an issue for me to really spend too much thought thinking about. Even writing this I am getting upset. Not upset because he talks about things I was completely ignorant about or was under some allusion had never occurred. I think I make my thoughts of such things widely known.

We are in the midst of a great battle. Not a battle for land or money (of course those things are involved), but a battle for the hearts and souls of the citizens of this nation (in particular of voting age or soon to be).

Our poorest and least educated are the most vulnerable of all. I could go on and on, but I want to stop here.

PS: No idea why it has a rating of R. There is nothing particularly graphic about it. I appreciate how the footage of 9/11 is tastefully placed in the film.

Letter from a Raining Day, 5:07 PM

I secretly keep hoping that the rains will wash away some of the filth that has been accumulating since the dawn of man. My wish is to emerge anew from under the storm clouds. In particular, I favor warm and sunny summer days for this transformation.

Sometimes, in the middle of crowded streets, I jump in puddles in hope of baptizing strangers with the goodness of the pure, clean water. Mostly people just get angry; missing my point completely.

They say that strong, unpredictable showers breed new life. In my case, it’s a chance to renew; a chance that my wishes could possibly be answered.

With the upcoming "US theatrical premiere" of ORWELL ROLLS IN HIS GRAVE at AFI's Silver Spring upcoming, my thoughts drift to Orwell's famous 1984.

According to the synopsis of the film:

"Has America entered an Orwellian world of double-speak where outright lies can pass for the truth? Are its citizens being sold a bill of goods by a handful of transnational media corporations and political elites whose interests have little in common with the interests of the American people?"

Almost daily, it seems, I am reminded of The Ministry of Truth, Winston and of course New Speak. For many years I likened myself to a charter member of the Junior Anti-Sex League; even feeling, at times, as if Julia and I were sisters separated at birth.

Were Orwell's thoughts foretelling of a great looming threat or merely observations by an astute man of what was already afoot? In my mind, it was the latter rather than the former, but I guess I will have to wait till the film opens on July 30th to see for myself.

The Day I Chose to Die, part 2



"Police described him as a Mexican immigrant with no known family in New York."

Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@

Part of me wants to say WOW WOW WOW..what an amazing man and I am so glad to see something like this written by him. Then I re-read this short interview and realize that there is more to this than Mr. Vonnegut is interested in seeing.

Perhaps, part of it is my immaturing or inexperience or maybe it is because I haven't been turned bitter yet. Or maybe Mr. Vonnegut is just an angry old man.

Anyway, check it out and judge for yourself. Our society is set up in a way to promote "rightists" vs. critical thinking...that, I believe, will be its ultimate downfall.

"Responsibility to which society? To Nazi Germany? To the Stalinist Soviet Union? What about responsibility to humanity in general?"

Oklahoma Judge used penis pump while on the bench.
He literally was jerking off as he was in session. This is one of the strangest stories I have read in a VERY long time. BIZZARE!

To RB

I was re-reading some of my past blog entries re: u and realized you may get the wrong impression regarding how I feel about you. 1) I don't hate you, I just strongly dislike you. Why? Well, I could sit here and list specifics, but that is not going to help either of us. We both know how we feel about each other and, most likely, no amount of time will change that. I just hope you start acting like a man and take responsibility for your "creations" vs. running away and making excuses for WHY you shouldn't be responsible.

Eventually all that bottled up frustration is going to surface. Look, it is already affecting your relationships with people and I am sure it makes you doubt yourself too. Be a man, face the music and try to make up what you have already taken away from the people who trusted you.

Listen, you don't owe me anything and me the same. Basically writing this is a waste of my time, because even if you read it you would never follow through. Most likely you will be delusional the rest of your life. It's ok to fuck your life up, but its criminal to screw with the lives of others.

One last thing, regarding me paying you back with a holiday...come here whenever you want. I will give you free food and shelter for as long as you like (within reason).

Either way, I wish you peace even if you wish me pain:)

These “girls” are the most trifling tramps I have ever seen. I suppose their whole shtick involves being bitches, but wow….is American culture this devoid of heroines that we must support people like this? Or is it just one big joke?

90 Memories in 11 Minutes (or less)

1. Buying herbal shampoo, Israel
2. Buying desert in Sweden in the AM/ giving them out @ lunch in NYC
3. Virgin Megastore listening stations, Union Square
4. Seeing skinheads piss on the street, Gramercy
5. Wondering why girls at the NYU locker room walk around naked so much, Village
6. My weekly "date" with DH before he went insane, NYC
7. Kissing DH for the first (and only time) when we were both drunk, East Village
8. Taking dance lessons when I was 20, NJ
9. Making travel arrangements to come back to the USA, Germany
10. Buying super last minute tickets to Hong Kong, Germany
11. Being told that I have a pretty hmmmm over and over again, Everywhere:)
12. My one and only time at a nude beach, NJ
13. Slip and slide on a hot summer day, NJ
14. Crowded English pub on a Friday night, London
15. Attempting to sneak a cute Irish boy into my room, Dublin
16. Chantal dumping me, Ireland
17. Chantal’s ass, UK, Ireland, NYC
18. Napster nights, mostly NYC
19. Throwing McDonald's coke at KK and missing, NYC
20. Scuba diving in Mexico, Cozumel
21. "Vamos!" and being offered pot by the dive boat captain, Cozumel
22. Thinking that I would eventually marry DH (or so I was told), all over
23. CK and his stupid satin purple shirt, NJ
24. Having to drop out of a literature class b/c the professor was too hot, NJ
25. Getting As in Stats, NJ
26. Organic Grooves & getting high in Williamsburg, Brooklyn
27. First time I saw a Hasidic guy buying gay porn, Bushwick
28. Eating at GV aunt's house, Stockholm
29. Fresh seafood, Hong Kong
30. "Air Products", NJ
31. Skipping work to go to the UN, NYC
32. Being in love with the "wrong person", (same person) too many places to mention
33. Motu in Miami, South Beach
34. Waking up in the morning next to Motu with his middle finger in my face, FL, NYC, NJ
35. Hating RB, till the day I die..hahaha
36. Tight shorts, belly shirt man, DC
37. Lost cell phone, Brooklyn
38. Jennifer, NJ, NYC
39. 4'11 90 lb black girl, Manhattan
40. 6'5 girl, Manhattan
41. The priest who got shipped to Guam after confessing to his bishop about me, NYC
42. Getting involved in a hit & run bike accident, NJ
43. IV medication, NJ
44. Train to Detriot, ........
45. Marc the heroine addict, Philadelphia Train Station
46. City Gardens, Trenton NJ
47. Vomiting in high school at a Cramps concert, NJ
48. Working retail in high school for $5.25/ hr, NJ
49. My boss making me take my nose ring out in HS, NJ
50. Piercing my own nose, NJ
51. The hippie who stole my razor & wanted to mediate at 6am, NJ
52. Tantra sex, NJ
53. Calling my dominatrix friend to take care of that JJ executive, NJ
54. JUSTIN LEVINSON of BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, NY
55. Leo's driving, NYC
56. Elijah, NJ
57. Leo's "PASTOR" sign, NYC
58. Making out with XP on my 21st birthday, NYC
59. "THE COCK", NYC
60. XP's wedding, CT
61. Meeting JB for the first time, SI
62. Seeing KK across the room at CBGB's for the first time, NYC
63. The other guy I was interested in that night, NYC
64. Jennifer the righteous lesbian & the unauthorized videographer, NYC
65. Dumping Jennifer, NYC
66. Having Jennifer lecture me re: The Beastie Boys, NYC
67. Step class at Equinox, NYC
68. Shower room in that spa, Philadelphia
69. Sewing at summer camp, NJ
70. Babysitting for $7/ hr, NJ
71. Doing mushrooms with DH, NYC
72. My vestibule encounter, NYC
73. My Denver boy toy, Colorado
74. Great steak and company, NYC & Denver
75. Meeting on an airplane, Vegas to Denver
76. Oliver, NYC
77. Losing my glasses & dropping 600$ to buy a new pair that same day, NYC
78. Giving flowers to elderly people, NJ
79. Giving my flowers to a homeless lady, WTC, NYC
80. Liking RB, Philadelphia
81. Flying to Bologna, Italy
82. Driving to Venice, Italy
83. Driving through the Alps, Italy & Austria
84. Meeting KK's parents, Germany
85. Having KK's parents tell me that he is a bum, Germany
86. Having my passport photo taken in a instant booth, Frankfurt
87. Order 10 pillows for our bed, Frankfurt
88. Giving CK a broken laptop, NJ
89. "Losing my date", New Hope, PA
90. Getting into a "hit and run" car chase with HW next to me in the car, NJ to PA

Gov Schwarzenegger's office is holding a phone poll vote to the electorate on the issue of same sex marriage. It just takes a second to call! We are fighting for equal rights, and civil liberties....please help!
(916) 445-2841
hit #5 for hot issues
then #1 for gay marriage
then #1 for SUPPORT of gay marriage

(received from an informant)

This is my favorite photo my Motu in Vienna. The actual size is much more detailed and captivating. Please click on his website to see more!

I used to believe that our night dreams were reflections of our true, inner selves. That they somehow conveyed secrets that weren’t easily passed through unwilling lips. Then I began to realize that the dreams that I had once held as prediction of future self were nothing more than a soothsayer’s $5 guess based mostly on my reaction to key questions.

The foretelling of my dreams has no place in the photo realism of everyday life. For in my dreams, I am as likely to be killed as kill, to win the Nobel Prize as to take a permanent slot at the local battered women’s shelter.

For in my dreams, I feel boundless; the common laws of physics have no more importance to me than the GDP of St. Helene—the place that Napoleon was exiled.

St. Helene is, in my musings, paradise rather than dismissal isolation seen as a befitting banishment for a tyrant; whose mental afflictions, I suspect, aren’t far from my own.

In my dreams, I have no political or religious affiliation; not simply because I am opposed to any one side, but merely because the idea of alliance had never occurred to me.

Then, exactly six to eight hours after it first happened it ends. Then suddenly, I am, shocked into the mournful reality of functioning existence. Monday through Friday I am able to silence the heed of the “greater cause” at 10-minute intervals. Two or three times later, I rush from paradise and suddenly realize that I have a mere 15 – 23 minutes till I need to start my forced morning run.

Worse than the New York City or Boston Marathons, whose entry is, in practical terms at least, strictly by personal choice or passion, my run yields me, if fortunate, the chance to feed myself yet another day. If “it” all works out, that fortune may extend, in time, to the ability to feed my sorrowful husband and miserable children.

I find comfort in the reality that I see on TV. For, in my dreams, I live a quite more romantic existence than most likely is legally possible on this plane of existence. I relegate my life to 16 to 18 hours of bounded singularity while my real world awaits me – a blink of an eye away.

FBI Probing Anti-Bush Teddy Bear

Converted cigarette machine selling used school girl panties.
Toyoko, Japan

Free Room & Board this Summer at HIPPIE HOUSE
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Ella, Indeed
A Story for Hailuta’s Daughter

At half past dawn Ella awoke and sprang from bed--feet first, of course. She had hoped to catch the moon, high and bright, before it gave in to the power of daytime light.

"Goodbye, Mr. Moon!" she cried and cried and finally said her last good-byes.

"For tonight we shall meet again!” she sighed, "be strong and oh do not cry!"

Ella was, by nature, a curious and cheerful lass with long thick hair, bright eyes and a warm, welcoming laugh.

"You can't get by on your looks alone!" again and again she was told and so her future was foretold.

"Ella, Ella, you silly thing," shouted the passerbyers in cars, buggies and other moveable things.

At first Ella thought it was her looks that made others so mad.

"Am I so displeasing?" she would ask her mother as she cried.

Then she thought perhaps it was her curiosity and the way she was always eager to meet a new face. So she started to show up to school late and sometimes not at all. Still things didn't seem to change! The teases went from occasionally and every so often to a regular thing.

"You think you’re so smart!" people would cry, for no apparent reason and at the worst of times.

On her way home from school it was always the same:
"You’re ugly!"
"You’re nasty!"
"Oh you stink!"
“You look so bad!”

Soon the sounds of their voices all seemed as one and Ella was convinced that she had done great wrong and even some miserable harm.

“I am not very interesting”, she would say to herself, “and too short and too fat and too uppity-up!”

Soon she needed no prompting to dislike herself and so the stage was set for the play of her life. Once a happy and excited girl she became a sad woman—alone and fearful of her once beautiful self.

To EF: my godess, my siren.

"I underwent, during the summer that I became fourteen, a prolonged religious crisis."

Inmates Use Smuggled Cellphones to Maintain a Foot on the Outside

"She was a poorly educated black girl, whose only qualification was a high school diploma, making only $9 an hour," Mr. Gaston said. "The pay is so bad, it's obvious she is going to take the money."

EXCUSES!

Time to move on.

I met many interesting people this weekend. Although many of them had different skin colors and passports a common thread seemed to perminate throughout them all...

LAZINESS!

Usually I am not so forthcoming here and never speak about specifics...therefore today will not be different....

As promised to my DuPont friend...I will be giving you that piece later tonight.

Scenes from my day (within 5 hours) in their proper order

from
"Let's Rock Again!"

It was a perfect evening to see an outdoor film at Silver Docs last night.


"Going to the underground--checking things out--that is certainly how I am going to live."
RIP Joe Strummer (1952 – 2002)

my new office

I wanted to write something re: the 'events' of the day...but honestly I am far too upset from the film I saw earlier at Silver Docs.

To quote the movie, "Foo-Foo Dust"....

"I never thought something would be powerful enough to break apart a mother/ son relationship until we started using drugs."

Mother/ son drug addicts!

And the 12-year old who went to school with guns today? The administrator who was ARRESTED because they had "prior" knowledge?

The 17-year old who shot herself in the head with a starter pistol?

The beheading of an American contractor? To NWA: perhaps me quoting Stalin am not "original", but you must admit that his words are quite telling.

"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic."

I think the reason why they are so contemporary even today is because the reality of human existence hasn’t changed.

God save us all.

Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed

By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, June 17, 2004; Page A01

The Sept. 11 commission reported yesterday that it has found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda, challenging one of the Bush administration's main justifications for the war in Iraq.

Read article here.

I have never given my total opinion on this situation and that is for a reason. I do not support war, but I also know that it is part of human nature. Sometimes things aren't easily justified in rational terms, but in the case of mass killings and multi-billion dollars spend/ make, yes, Virginia, justification is needed. Which begs the question: what could ever morally justify war? And whose morals are we using?

In Detail: How bin Laden Set Plan in Motion in '99

By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID JOHNSTON

Published: June 17, 2004

WASHINGTON, June 16 - In early 1999, Osama bin Laden summoned Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to his well-guarded compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan, to confide to the lieutenant that his long-discussed proposal to use aircraft as terror weapons against the United States had the full support of Al Qaeda.

Read article here.

We begin to see the "planning" that went into 9/11. For me the most interesting part was the "guy who almost didn't make it" because he was more interested in his girlfriend. He came from a wealthy, secular family, but was still able to be "coxed" into performing. Also, the guys who failed out and the “compromise” as far as “targets” were concerned.

Funniest (if you can say that): they wanted to highjack a plane, kill all men on board and then land it and give a rousing anti-American speech. That plot sounds very Hollywood influenced to me!

Very interesting read.

Picking one quote from this book would be like picking one Miss Universe contestant to fall in love with.

I implore everyone to read the words of Mr. Baldwin for they are as true today as they were when they were written over 40-years ago.

"It probably occurred to me around this time that the vision people hold of the world to come is but a reflection, with predictable wishful distortions, of the world in which they live."

I missed this this morning, today is the 100th anniversary of Molly's 'yes.'

Not only did Google introduce Leopold Bloom and his travels in Dublin
to its 100+ million user base today, but the New York Times crossword
today had a gang of clues around 'Ulysses' and ran the following piece
on the editorial side of its letters page:

June 16, 2004
Bloomsday, 1904

"Sixteenth today it is," thinks Leopold Bloom, and the 16th it was, in
June 1904. James Joyce, age 22, would walk out that very night in
Dublin with Nora Barnacle, whom he later wedded. "Ulysses" is set on
that day — Bloomsday, as it has come to be called — in honor of
Joyce's meeting Miss Barnacle. Many Joyceans have made of Bloomsday a
literary Mardi Gras, an odyssey through Dublin using the points of
Joyce's compass, a day to celebrate Irishness and the peculiar verbal
fecundity of that nation. In a novel full of celebrated talkers, it is
Bloom, Jew and Irishman, who hovers, voice and thought, over the
proceedings. As one barroom patron in the novel says, show Bloom a
straw on the floor and "he'd talk about it for an hour so he would and
talk steady."

All these years later, one somehow thinks of "Ulysses" as being of
that day, June 16, 1904, though it was published in February 1922. It
is still as defiant a comedy as ever, as fictional as a gazetteer,
willing to make a hash of the genres its author inherited. Now and
then, a critic feels the need to tilt against "Ulysses," to complain
of a byzantine difficulty in certain passages, to lament Joyce's leaps
of logic and illogic, his utter sacrifice of plot. But by destroying
plot — reducing it to a kind of geography — Joyce succeeds in
reinventing time. Bloomsday is the most capacious day in literature.
Only the hours of Lear's suffering last longer, and there time passes
in a stage direction. Language has almost never had a surer substance
— a stronger temporal beat — than Joyce gives it in the thoughts of
Leopold Bloom and his wife, Molly, along with Stephen Dedalus and
Dublin's assembled hordes.

"Ulysses" has come to stand as the apogee of "elitist" literature, a
novel that carries a kind of foreboding in its very title, the
prospect of a hard road ahead. But there is really no less elitist
novel in the English language. Its stuff is the common life of man,
woman and child. You take what you can, loping over the smooth spots
and pulling up short when you need to. Dedalus may indulge in Latinate
fancy, and Joyce may revel in literary mimicry. But the real sound of
this novel is the sound of the street a century ago: the noise of
centuries of streets echoing over the stones."

(recieved via informant today)

Chew Shit Fun

Recommended reading for the day:

New Jack by Ted Conover

He makes two very good points:

1) That we are now building prisons preparing for future in inmates who aren't even in grade school yet.

2) Once someone gets out of jail they have little to no legit job prospects (Mc Donald's won't hire ex-cons)

Happy Bloomsday People!!!!

In case you don't know what's going on with Google's home page
today......

Re-Joyced Dublin

Dublin is a quite lovely city indeed.

(recieved from an informant today)

Did you hear that Kazari declared a Jihad on Opium production? Jesus Christ! The area was a high production zone prior to Taliban. So these "poor" people have now gone back to its production.

Of course I do not support the production of drugs, but think about it -- these people in the fields, these people who claim they are "feeding their families" are the ones taking all the risk in this "pyramid".

The gov't destroys their $1,000/ kg crop -- they are left with zero cash crops. Therefore, an entire growing season (where they could have grown wheat, corn, etc --- forgetting the price difference for a moment) without anything to sell.

A family goes hungry. Money is lost in the local economy. Another family goes hungry.

My problems:
1) Calling it a Jihad is blasphemy
2) We need to work on the structure of the pyramid, but of course that would affect many of our “friends”!

Baptist activists: Pull kids out of school
Resolution urges members to reject government education

A resolution supporters hope will make it to the floor of the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting next month calls on the millions of members of the denomination to pull their kids out of government schools and either homeschool them or send them to Christian schools.

Read article here.

They think that the education that their children is getting is "un-Christian" i.e., evolution. I did home schooling my last 2 years of high school and am very grateful for it (I had tutors vs. my parents).

I will not go so far as to say that the "Christians" are the problem. Hell, I even think it is unfair to say that their "interputation" of Christianity is dangerous. What I will say is dangerous is the close-mindness associated with these radical, yes radical, individuals.

What do you think?

Of the more than 98,000 students who began their freshman year in Virginia's high school Class of 2004 -- the first required to pass state Standards of Learning exams to graduate -- fewer than 70,000 are expected to receive their diplomas this month. A child-advocacy group charged yesterday that the exams are partly to blame for the gap.

In other words,

28,000 will drop out....29% that is...or 1 in every 3.44 students will NOT graduate high school this year in Virginia.

Of those who do graduate, what percent do you think would pass without intense tutoring/ prep?

Are you as scared as I am?

Modernise or die

"The future has more rights than the past, and with an ageing population and new forms of employment it is time to rethink the welfare state."

Arrrrr Captain Gerhard...perhaps you should work on that little unemployment issue!

Recommended readings for the day:

The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen

"My Dungeon Shook" and "Down at the Cross" by James Baldwin (together make up "The Fire Next Time"

PREPARE!

The change must start internally. It is a movement of the soul, of mind, of spirit. It is only after long, drawn out deliberation and confrontation that the internal struggle has a chance of survival: thus the revolution has begun. To be genuine it must start within.

The seeking is bitter alienation. It is humiliating, isolating and awkwardly uncomfortable, but worth every bloody second.

(I have understood the true nature of God.)

I have embraced a reality in my soul that no longer exists to my kafir lips – my forgotten gospel.

...Now she’s a swinger dating a singer....

"It is difficult to start a revolution...

more difficult to sustain one....

and still more difficult to win one."

It is funny how we can be so close, yet so different, but alas one in the same.

Askshay went on to graduate first in his class at Harvard. Later in life he would win the Nobel Prize for his research in the field of Neuroscience. Unfortunately, he was still best known for his disastrous fainting spell at the 2004 National Spelling Bee. In retrospect, it was quite a schwarmerei moment, although the meaning of the word alluded him in the midst of his fall. He spelled the word correct that day, but the time he spent passed out cost him the gold cup.

More than a class system, fascism specifically targets, dehumanizes and aims to destroy those it deems undesirable.

The Illustrated Twelve Warning Signs of Fascism

"With a sheepish grin, Ms. Diaz said her parents could hardly believe how she lives. She and her husband have a 48-inch television, satellite dish, gleaming kitchen with track lighting, and his-and-hers pickup trucks. His is a dark green Ford 150 with a "Bad Boy" decal."

Case in point, what they NEED is now what they WANT; their new index of "MAKING IT" is their material "wealth".

"Creating Higher Skill, Higher-Wage Jobs Opportunities in Your Community"

"Powter's version of feminism comes down to women achieving power, as usual, through their bodies. "This is a strange version of feminism," Says Bordo. "Her feminism has to do with making yourself the most attractive, invulnerable, compelling object that you can. And the degree you're in control of that, then you're in power."

There is something so amazing about her body. It's totally incredible.

Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2004 05:11:58 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Boy"
Subject: RE: Thinking of you
To: "Girl"

Thank you for thinking about me!!!

I have not forgotten you either...