Something Something Watergate
Remember those activists that “busted” Acorn and earned themselves a Roman Triumph on Fox & Friends? Well, they’re in jail now for breaking into a Senator’s office and the NYT has a nice little write up on their exploits:
[They were] fostered by a group of men and women in their late teens and early 20s with a taste for showmanship and a shared sense of political alienation — a sort of political reverse image of the left-wing Yippies of the 1960s. They studied leftist activism of years past as their prototype, looking to the tactics of Saul Alinsky, the Chicago community organizer who laid the framework for grass-roots activism in the ’60s, as well as those of gay rights and even Communist groups.
They held “affirmative action” bake sales with prices set based on the age and race of the buyer, posed as donors to Planned Parenthood seeking to contribute to the abortion of African-American fetuses only, and held a mock “Love Thy Prisoner” campaign to find American homes for Guantánamo inmates.
It’s hard not to feel like we’re all intentionally tipping left on the scale here, but I’m unsure what else to expect when the other side empties itself of all substance?
Seriously, I’m not sure how to respond to these folks anymore. Any suggestions?
Follow the example of Juliane Koepcke
On Christmas Eve 1971, the Lockheed Electra she was traveling in exploded over the Amazon. The next morning, the 17-year-old German awoke on the jungle floor, strapped into her seat, surrounded by fallen holiday gifts. Injured and alone, she pushed the death of her mother, who’d been seated next to her on the plane, out of her mind. Instead, she remembered advice from her father, a biologist: To find civilization when lost in the jungle, follow water. Koepcke waded from tiny streams to larger ones. She passed crocodiles and poked the mud in front of her with a stick to scare away stingrays. She had lost one shoe in the fall and was wearing a ripped miniskirt. Her only food was a bag of candy, and she had nothing but dark, dirty water to drink. She ignored her broken collarbone and her wounds, infested with maggots.
On the tenth day, she rested on the bank of the Shebonya River. When she stood up again, she saw a canoe tethered to the shoreline. It took her hours to climb the embankment to a hut, where, the next day, a group of lumberjacks found her.
The whole article is fascinating. Now I can safely say I know how to fall out of an airplane.
“Where Feet, Fist and Faith Collide”
“Hard punches!” he shouted from the sidelines of a martial arts event called Cage Assault. “Finish the fight! To the head! To the head!”
Update:
Have One On Me
The gypsy queen Joanna Newsom releases her newest album (a triple disc!) on February 23, 2010. It’s available for pre-order here.
It has been four years since her last release Ys, three years since I last saw her, two years since things went south with Bill Callahan, and one year since I stopped spreading rumours about her dating relationship with Andy Samburg.
Alexander Christoff, the F1 Chair
Trailer for El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky. 1970)
The strangest movie I’d recommend?
Allen Klein presents an ABKCO Film.
Weekly Picture 176
Jeweled Paper, Austin, TX 1.19.2010
state of the union
I find myself wanting to link to all sorts of political commentary lately, not so much because of what it says about the political landscape but because it scares the fuck out of me. My interest in these stories — perhaps warped by my own partisanship — borders somewhere between the realms of surreal fascination and unbridled terror. I love absurdest snapshots of reality, so there’s a large part of my psychology that responds to the state of the union with pleasure, but then the survival part of my brain kicks in and I think these people are voting, these people have — and continue to want to — run our country. Which points me to something I’ve thought about obsessively lately: the greatest detriment to human progress is us.
dear clusterflock
What’s the strangest movie you’d recommend?
dear clusterflock
Looks like I will be a free agent at the end of March and my itch to move is great (assuming there was a paycheck at the other end), but I find myself asking the age old question: east or west?
My cat’s life is good
She can be feral, and then she can retreat indoors when the going gets rough.
She’s got a sweet sweet life. She gets to be a wild animal, then come indoors and be fed and petted and loved.
do you really want a link?
Dividing Line
wake
She sat in her cubicle watching as we walked toward her waiving our mini-pompoms. We gathered around and her manager, reading from a notecard, listed the jobs she’d held in twenty years with the company. Twenty years summed up in a single 3 by 5.
A box and an envelope were handed to her. Inside there was a plaque and a note with the image of the CEO’s signature.
We shook her hand and offered congratulations.
In ten years she’d get a cake.
So any day now
Kelsey is flying to Paris, and Phil is flying to Houston.
Just think.
Neanderthal Teeth
Three Neanderthal teeth, as well as knives and animal bones, have been found in a cave in Poland, leading to speculation that the site may be a Neanderthal burial ground.
“No one ceremoniously buries one human tooth,” said Schwartz, who was not involved in the research, but reviewed an early version of the paper.
A Criterion Out of Print Sale
Here is the list of movies going out of print:
Alphaville
Carlos Saura’s Flamenco Trilogy (Eclipse Series 6)
Le corbeau
Coup de torchon
Diary of a Country Priest
The Fallen Idol
Forbidden Games (Criterion and Essential Art House editions)
Gervaise (Essential Art House edition)
Grand Illusion (Criterion and Essential Art House editions)
Le jour se lève (Essential Art House edition)
Last Holiday (Essential Art House edition)
Mayerling (Essential Art House edition)
The Orphic Trilogy
Peeping Tom
Pierrot le fou (DVD and Blu-ray editions)
Port of Shadows
Quai des Orfèvres
The Small Back Room
The Tales of Hoffmann (Criterion and Essential Art House editions)
Trafic
Le trou
Variety Lights (Essential Art House edition)
The White Sheik
quote out of context
I will never be able to listen to George Clinton and Parliament’s funkadelic classic, “I just want to testify, what your love has done for me,” in the same way again
Terminal
A Chinese human rights activist has been living in a Tokyo airport for three months.
“After staying here for more than 90 days, I kind of miss this place,” said Feng, wearing a black sweat suit donated by a supporter. But now he is ready to leave, Feng said.
“I want to take a bath,” he said. “That’s what I want to do as soon as I leave here.”
Coming Out in Sports: Brendan Burke’s Story
“I hope the day comes, and soon, when this is not a story.” — Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke
Imagine this.
Well before you are born, your dad plays college hockey at Providence College and wears the “C” for Friars coach and Hockey Hall of Famer Lou Lamoriello. Your dad is then a member of the Calder Cup-winning Maine Mariners AHL team. He admits to having little skill, but contributes rough and tough qualities. You know, like pugnacity, testosterone, truculence and belligerence. He’s a man, baby.
…
You eventually attend Xaverian Brothers High School, a prep school in Westwood, Mass., and make the competitive varsity hockey team as a senior, but choose not to play. You say it is because you don’t think you would get enough playing time and you are upset at the coach. But you actually don’t play because you don’t think you can go another season without someone finding out your secret.
Your hockey career is over.
I missed this story when it first hit ESPN, but someone sent me the link today. It’s this kind of acceptance of homosexual people in all walks of life that I hope makes “coming out” a term of the past.
Carnival is not a formal occasion
Handcuffed man steals Rockford police car
The suspect sneaked into the front seat of the uncaged vehicle while two officers were outside the car going over details of the man’s arrest, police said. The man was handcuffed from the back, but was able to get the cuffs in front of his body to drive the car.
Police followed the man on Interstate 90 and were able to get him to stop as he attempted to take the Division Street [Chicago] exit off the Kennedy Expressway.
Experimental
Do you like experimental or noise music?
As I sit here listening to every single cover of Stevie Wonder’s “I Believe (When I Fall In Love)” it occurs to me that I haven’t shared one of the best resources for current movements in the noise/psychadelic/noise scene. Out here in Los Angeles, this is what’s happening. I’m not always into it myself, but I’ve been surprised. Like 99% of people who read this won’t even like it, so don’t feel bad but I’m hoping maybe the one person who really could use this info gets it.
Stunned Records is an incredible small distro with all the newest stuff, well worth a look. Artists on: Andreas Brandal, Sean McCann, Connector, Pine Smoke Lodge, and about a billion more.
Not Not Fun is the label with the goods. Artists on: Pocahaunted, Vibes, Sun Araw, Dylan Ettinger, Racc-oo-oon, The Goslings, Robedoor, tons of stuff like that.
a kindle of kittens
a shrewdness of apes, a bloat of hippopotamuses, a parliament of owls, a labor of moles, and other collective names for animals.
fern
I’d forgotten all about asparagus ferns until I saw one in the window of Big Dog Coffee, on Sarah Street in the South Side of Pittsburgh.
