01jan2007 to This Very Daggone Minute

27jul2007 — By all means, raise the deuce! Raise it!

["Raise the deuce" = raise Cain, where deuce is a substitute for devil (cp. "deucedly")]

26jul2007 — Goodbye Jeffrey Lee Pierce, hello Beth Chapman

(See also)

21jul2007 —

Just Shoot Me (Season 1, episode 28, "Eve of Destruction"):

Here's your Herb Alpert with the whipped cream. . . .

19jul2007 —

About fifteen minutes into Burning Man: Beyond Black Rock, a special guest star appears:

It's a copy of the Larry Harvey Mein Camp book, one of the stars of our Hairy Larvae Book Signing. (Still more Mein Camp blahblah)

07jul2007 — Celebrate the kooky error message

Shut her down, I think she's pumpin mud.

(You can see it for yourself if you have pop-ups disabled and click the Click for larger image link on this page. If you don't have pop-ups disabled, the pop-up will show you the exact same size image. I like the error message better.)

24jun2007 — All Aboard For Convention Of Jakeleg Victims / Jake Leg Blues

The Jake Walk Effect	Jake leg blues

 

18jun2007 — From Bob Spitz's The Beatles:

Certainly John wasn't told anything about it, much less that he had a sister. (By all accounts, he never discovered her existence.) Without further delay, the baby was taken away from Julia and given to a Norwegian Salvation Army captain, who removed the newborn to Scandinavia, which was the last anyone ever heard of her. (27)

It didn't take long for them to hit on a surefire formula: volume. It got people off. More than anyone so far, the Beatles realized that the function of a bar band wasn't to promote artistry, expand the musical genre, or even entertain. Bar bands really weren't performers in the conventional sense, but rather were agitators. (212)

Catering to the masses, the Butlins camps were governed by vox populi, and by 1960 it was clear that rock 'n' roll had crystallized as a mainstream trend. . . . The Beatles, however, avoided Butlins like church. (323)

So as not to jeopardize the [Butlins] gig, the two boys had rented a trailer, laying out a precious two pounds per week, and parked it rather presumptuously opposite the Butlins front gates. "Ringo had one end, I had the other," Byrne recalled. They decorated it with posters of American rock 'n' roll artists and brought the record player out of hiding. . . . And it was there, on that Wednesday morning in August, just after ten o'clock, they were so rudely awakened by a knock.
Drowsily, Byrne answered the door. "It was John and Paul," Johnny recalls vividly. "As soon as I saw them, I knew what they wanted. They wanted Ringo." (327-8)

Columnist Nat Hentoff reported that a spokesman for the U.S. Treasury Department had made the Beatles "an economic issue," due to what he called "a gold drain" resulting from their record sales and personal appearances. (482)

The Beatles defused any potential controversy with their now-expected witty one-liners, stumbling only when it came to the news that while they were overseas, the prime minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, named the Beatles as his "secret weapon" in diplomatic relations with the Americans. It actually "flattered" the boys that the PM knew their names. "The thing is, I don't get the bit where [he] said, `Earning all these dollars for Britain,'" George said with a shrug, paraphrasing the item. He would learn the hard way—and before long write a song about it he called "Taxman." (486-7)

For his part, John could not resist the knife. "You want to get some teeth for these people who are cheering us," John advised the Lord Mayor, who seemed befuddled by the outrageous remark. (Little did he realize the extent of the Beatles' worldly exposure, having witnessed firsthand the superiority of other cultures' hygiene. The contrast, glaring in front of them now, with rows of "gap-toothed grins," was shocking.) King for a day—and fortified by pills—John wasn't about to let it rest. "What's the matter," John persisted, "can't you spare the money?" Then, without any forewarning, he strode to the front of the balcony, put a finger across his upper lip, and threw the Nazi salute to the unsuspecting crowd. (513)

As heartless as it sounds, it seemed there were more dying children with a last request for one of the Beatles to bid them farewell than there were healthy ones. And each request drew the same cold response: no! Not on any condition. Nada. Non. Nein.
They'd already been through this with the cripples. At the outset of Beatlemania, handicapped or deformed children were wheeled into the theaters and placed along the front, at the foot of the stage, before each performance as a goodwill measure. "We were only trying to play rock 'n' roll and they'd be wheeling them in, not just in wheelchairs but sometimes in oxygen tents," recalled George. "We'd come out of the bandroom to go to the stage and we'd be fighting our way through all these poor unfortunate people." To make matters worse, they were the only part of the audience the Beatles could see from the stage, and the distraction was unimaginable. John would gaze down at a child whose drool hung in a solid string from mouth to lap, and he'd pfumpf a line. Spastics trying to clap would accidentally smack themselves in the face. Epileptics would have seizures in the middle of songs. . . .
Fed up with the continued imposition, John took to doing "spastic impersonations" while onstage. (571)

"Taxman" was finally behind them. The scathing satire, with the slurry, psychedelic edge, is the strongest of a record three George Harrison compositions that made the final cut, and an extraordinary contribution to the album's aesthetic sensibility. Among the Beatles, true genius radiated from the Lennon and McCartney nexus, but "Taxman" is a huge achievement. It is wry, witty, caustic, and concentrated, with "sharp, incisive jolts of energy" that burst from the song's offbeat "studio-verite" introduction: wandering notes, a cough, a false count. . . .
Like many topical lyrics, "Taxman" sprang from the anger and disillusionment that followed a meeting with Bryce Hammer, the Beatles' accountants, weeks before the session began. "I had discovered I was paying a huge amount of money to the taxman," complained George. Paul recalled George's "righteous indignation" in those business meetings. "Well, I don't want to pay tax," he'd fume. "It's not fair."
George's response would open the album. Everything is taxable according to his account: the street, your seat, the heat, and your feet. No matter what you do or how much you have—pay up and shut up. And it doesn't stop there. After you are dead, he advises listeners, be sure "to declare the pennies on your eyes." "Taxman" is as sly and critical as anything Dylan was writing. . . . As far as first-rate songwriting went, with "Taxman" George had finally arrived. (611-12)

A headline slashed across the cover shouted, JOHN LENNON SAYS: "BEATLES MORE POPULAR THAN JESUS," and inside, CHRISTIANITY WILL GO! The reaction was swift and predictable. Southern fundamentalists went apeshit over the remarks, labeling them blasphemous. . . . It would come to be a personal joke among the Beatles that in order to burn their albums, one first had to buy them, "so it's no sweat off us, mater, burn 'em if you like." (627)

But John had one last trick up his sleeve: combs were distributed throughout Studio Two in lieu of instruments, after which Mal was dispatched to the loo for ample lengths of regulation-issue EMI toilet paper (each sheet was stamped PROPERTY OF EMI) to complete the kazoo orchestra. (670)

All the Beatles smoked pot in vast quantities; they really enjoyed it. . . . Paul has reported—quite surprisingly—that "the one hard drug used during the making of Sgt. Pepper was cocaine." . . . Had harder drugs further encroached, they might have seriously impeded the work, but even the buttoned-down [George] Martin maintained that "looking back on it, Pepper would never have been formed in exactly that way if the boys hadn't gotten into the drug scene." (670)

There was a lull between takes, during which John staunched the boredom with what he thought was a blast of amphetamine. "By mistake this night he had acid," Paul recalled, "and he was on a trip." . . . Martin may have exuded common sense, but he knew less than nothing about drugs. In his naivete, he suggested John get some air—on the roof. Fifty feet above the concrete driveway, shivering in the biting air, the two men stood perched on the edge of the studio's flat roof, staring at the stars. John hallucinated wildly. . . . George Martin . . . felt him "swaying gently against my arm . . . [and] resonating away like a human tuning fork." . . . At some point George and Paul "came bursting on to the roof" when they found out where John was, but by that time he was safely out of danger—or at least nowhere near the ledge. (671)

[The other Beatles] couldn't understand why [Paul] wouldn't try [LSD], or why, as they put it, he was "holding out." What was the point? And why did he have to act so high-and-mighty about it?
. . . It had become such an issue that late in 1966, against his better judgment, Paul succumbed to the pressure. . . . Overall, he found it quite "spacy," a "very, very deeply emotional experience," ranging in sensations from godliness to depression. Most likely, Paul was too uptight to give it a fair ride. (672)

[On "A Day in the Life," John's] parting contribution: inserting a high-pitched whistle only dogs could hear immediately after the piano chord but before the gibberish began. (674)

After a brief Hindu prayer was intoned, the Maharishi whispered a handpicked mantra in the disciple's ear, along with advice that he or she was never to share it with anyone. "It has been specially chosen to harmonize with your personal vibration," he said. Weeks later, after the novelty had worn off, Mal Evans divulged that his mantra was I-ing, at which point everyone discovered they'd been given the same word. (712)

George . . . was paged around 5:00 by his wife, Pattie. There was a team of police at their home, she reported, tossing the place in preparation for a drug bust. They had already found a hefty chunk of hash stowed in a box on the mantel. (George insisted that the police had planted it.) Some grass would later turn up as well. (This was his private stash.) In any case, there was going to be an arrest, and when it came it would vie with Paul's wedding for the morning headlines.
Pete Shotten, who lived nearby, was at Esher when George, dressed in a flamboyant yellow suit, arrived in a stretch limousine with Taylor and a lawyer. The indiscriminate atmosphere in the parlor resembled nothing if not "a party." Several cops were slouched in armchairs with their feet propped up, watching television. Others drank coffee and thumbed through George's record collection, while a police dog clad in a beet-red neckerchief nosed through the bedroom closets. George scanned the scene with a sweep of his head, at which point his eyes went blank. Shotton had seen George riled up before, often, and he could be mean. But this was different. "I'd never seen George so angry in my life," Shotton recalls. "He came into the house—and went berserk." He would have told the police where his dope was stashed, but they seemed more interested in playing out the bust, as though it, too, were being stage-managed—which, in a way, it was: even the press had been tipped off to chronicle their handiwork. When a photographer popped out of the front hedge, that was the final straw. "George chased him murderously around the garden," recalls Shotton, who couldn't help laughing at the improbably scene. "George was chasing him; the police were chasing George. It was like something out of the Keystone Kops." Leaping over garden ornaments and bushes, George kept shouting: "I'll kill you! I'll fucking kill you!" Later, being led away by Derek Taylor, he pointed at a reporter and yelled: "The fox has its lair, the bird has its nest. This is my fucking house!" (825-6)

16jun2007 —

I'm not happy about having to offer the opinion that V. Vale's Pranks! 2 is a wildly unworthy successor to Pranks!

Robert Duvall's capsule review: "Too thin, Rooster, too thin!" To our knowledge, Mr. Duvall is not talking about the book's lack of pages compared to the original Pranks but rather to the book's lack of content compared to the original Pranks.

Among a certain crowd the standing of the original Pranks book approaches as near to Holy Writ as can be among a crowd that largely recognizes no Holy Writ. "When the first Pranks book came out, it was such a great, influential book for me. My copy is all dog-eared. It was like the Bible. I saw it in a bookstore next to the Book of the SubGenius and realized, "Oh, there are other paths." Pranks gave me models. There were helpful suggestions, inspiration—there were lots of laughs." (Reverend Al, Los Angeles Cacophony Society)

If Pranks was the Torah, sadly Pranks 2 is no New Testament. It's more of an Apocrypha—interesting in its own way, but lacking power.

Worse still, there are many pages of meandering bloviation having nothing at all to do with pranks—such as page after page of hackneyed statist claptrap from Ron English, with the active abetting of Vale (who, in his introduction, notes that "Americans have definitely become less free since 1776, hundreds of thousands of laws later," yet in the paragraph right before that moans, "It is too much to hope for our so-called legislators to come up with a bill outlawing all corporate advertising in public space." So you're simultaneously complaining that there are too many laws and that "so-called legislators" don't get busy with the lawmaking? Figure it out already, Vale, c'mon.

Granted, it would be a massive achievement if Pranks 2 came anywhere close to its predecessor, and its failure as a followup doesn't mean there isn't interesting reading to be had:

Andy, of the Yes Men: There's a French word invented by Michel Desarto: "perruque," which means: the principle of using time at work to do your own stuff. Nice concept: a widespread practice that just needed a word! (41)

John Law, of the Suicide Club: Meanwhile, I'm talking to the sergeant outside. The cops are just trying to figure out what the fuck we are doing in this abandoned building. And we just told them the complete truth; we didn't tell a single lie. (You never, ever lie to cops.) The sergeant is intelligent, trying to understand and get a handle on the situation. Finally, I said, "Well, we're kind of like a theatrical group." He goes, "Oh, a theatrical group!" He could handle that. (48)
[Cp. "It's for scale, see?"]

John Law: Fawn Brodie wrote a brilliant biography [No Man Knows My History] of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormons. She documented the literal contradictions and lies that were part of the initial genesis and growth of the Mormon Church, from court documents and newspaper accounts from the 1830s. Smith's creation theories were the ravings of a lunatic—much like virgin birth or the underpinnings of these other silly religions. She was excommunicated from the Mormon church, and she later died under mysterious circumstances. (50)
[Not until 1981—36 years after publication of the book—of a fairly non-mysterious lung cancer ("although she had never smoked," notes Wikipedia, as if no one but smokers gets lung cancer).]

John Law: The Mormon church tried to suppress that book; they bought up copies of it. It's hard to find. Unfortunately, I gave my only copy to Larry Harvey, back when he was first starting the Burning Man cult, and I think he took a lot of lessons that Joseph Smith laid out to heart. (50)

John Law: We infiltrated the American Nazi Party; Eckankar (a peculiar "spiritual" group led by Paul Twitchell); and we tried to do est, but it was too expensive. We took a bunch of Scientology personality tests, but just as with est, at a certain point you have to start giving them major amounts of money, and we were all broke.
When we actually met the American Nazis and were around them, they weren't obvious, hideous, monstrous ogres. Yes, they had monstrous, horrible beliefs, but they were married and had families; they loved their kids; they had jobs; they were human beings who, aside from these odious views, seemed fairly normal. I found that profoundly disturbing, because aside from their confused ideas, they reminded me of people I knew. That was most disturbing. (50)
["The SS were not, by and large, psychopathic sadists. To pathologize Göth as Sadist, to demonize him and make him a monster is precisely to miss the most disturbing knowledge we now have of the average Nazi perpetrator: that he was, in an overwelming majority of the cases, not a sadist, a "deviant" or an "aberation," but rather a dutiful, law respecting civil servant carrying out his orders.
Zygmunt Bauman has persuasively argued concerning the Nazi Genocide that it is precisely this fact—that most of the perpetrators of these crimes against humanity would be considered "normal" and would have passed tests administered to our own police officers—that poses the real challenge to our advanced form of society and the scientific disciplines which attempt to understand it." — Robert S. Leventhal, "Romancing the Holocaust"
"I am entirely normal. Even while I was doing this extermination work, I led a normal family life, and so on." — Rudolf Höss (in G. M. Gilbert's Nuremberg Diary, p. 258)]

Harry Haller, of the Suicide Club: Downtown Detroit now has literally dozens of abandoned skyscrapers. Remember the Detroit race riots of the sixties? Detroit's population shifted from being, like, 80% white to being 75% black and 10% white, and many businesses just left these buildings behind. Two decades later in the Cacophony Society, I visited some friends there, brought my climbing equipment, and we spent an entire week entering abandoned skyscrapers and rappeling off them. And we didn't get caught. I love Detroit—it's a great place if you like "urban exploration." (53)

Harry Haller: The Suicide Club was very underground, because the only thing that allows group pranks like this to continue happening is secrecy. The Internet is seductive when it comes to publicity and fame—everybody wants their fifteen minutes—and everything gets publicized, and in no time "The Man," who uses computers just as well as the rest of us, gets wind of it and implements measures so you can't do it anymore. And now, you mostly can't do things like this anymore, so you may as well talk about what's been done. (54)

John Law, Cacophony Society: Last year we spent 24 hours underground in Paris limestone catacombs a hundred feet underneath the city. Very few people know where the entrances are. Same thing in Berlin; we hooked up with the people who wrote Underground Berlin, and they took us to underground chambers left over from World War II—we were in the secret escape tunnel which Goering used to exit the Reichs Chancellor Building. (56)

John Law: They hoisted me up over their heads, threw a rope over a lamppost and strung me up so I was hanging about twenty feet in the air. Then all the Santas started chanting, "Kill the scab Santa! Kill the scab Santa!" [laughs] It looked like I'd just been executed by a lynch mob of Santa Clauses! That's when we realized where the line is drawn between a group and a mob—it's probably just below a hundred. We had procured bullhorns for a couple of "Control Santas" who ostensibly were supposed to lead this mob, but as you can guess that didn't work very well. (58)

John Law: Chuck Palahnuiak [sic] joined [Portland Cacophony] in '94 and became good friends with Chuck Linville and Marcy [sic] McFarland, [sic; actually, Marci "Cupcake" Macfarlane] some of the Portland Cacophony organizers. (59)

Vale: You recently narrated some kind of critical documentary on the Salton Sea in Southern Caliornia—
John Waters: I don't know how critical it is; it's a good documentary. The movie was completely finished and they came to me and asked me to narrate it. I said, "Let me see the movie." I liked it because it reminded me . . . of Baltimore and Provincetown put together—the two places I live in. So it is this outsider community—they are outsiders, believe me, I'll give 'em that. And it's almost like they're in this cursed heaven. Just the whole subject matter and the whole idea of it appealed to me. It was a place—very seldom do I see new places I would like to see one day, because my idea of a "vacation" is to come home, because I live in airports, basically. So to me, it was something I knew nothing about, and I don't know that that many people know about it. And the people were so bizarre and almost like desert communities which I always like, like going to Needles, California, and places like that—I love the name, there. (141)
[Cp. Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea]

Ron English (painter & billboard modifier: What turned a corner for me in the art world was when I did collaborations with Daniel Johnston. Somehow that made me "legitimate." A lot of people who hated me quit hating me. I was making paintings of his drawings, and his drawings are super-crude and weird, and people found them interesting.
Vale: A documentary came out, The Devil and Daniel Johnston. Were you in it?
Ron English: No. Actually, I was a little mad about that. Basically, my sister and I rediscovered Daniel Johnston living at home in Texas. He hadn't done much for years. We visited him and he gave me a huge stack of drawings. He came to New York and we did a show together; then we did a bunch of shows together. He's been active ever since, painting and making recordings.
It turned out he had been on the wrong medication that had made him kinda crazy, and our visit started a chain of events that got him put on medication that made him "normal" again, so he was able to work again. However, the director of the movie had a particular story in mind. My wife had written a book about our Daniel Johnston experiences, and this director used that book, but didn't give her any credit and he didn't mention me, either. But that's pretty common, I think. Still, it's a good movie. (146)

Vale: You could also do a website of billboards that never really happened, but which look like real billboards—all thanks to the miracle of Photoshop.
Ron English: But that's like faking a picture of you winning the Super Bowl—it's no good unless you really did it! (149)

(See also: Pranks!)

15jun2007 — From Trent Harris's Mondo Utah:

My first encounter with Mondo was at age nine. Uncle LeRoy and I were sitting in church, next to my grandmother. Uncle LeRoy had suffered a stroke and had not so much as mumbled a word in five years. Suddenly, in the middle of sacrament meeting, LeRoy stood up and shouted, "Oh bullshit!" He then sat down, looked at the leader and said, "Go on with your speech, Gumby." It was at that moment that I developed what I call a benevolent respect for the bizarre. (3-4)

Sometime in 1993, God told Cody Judy to tape batteries to an old radio and go to a BYU fireside meeting where apostle Howard H. Hunter of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was speaking. Once there, Judy walked onto the stage, held his fake radio-bomb to the apostle's head, and announced that he, Cody Judy, was the new Prophet, Seer, and Revelator of the Mormon Church. 17,000 students sat silently for a moment, then spontaneously broke out in a rendition of "Thank Thee Oh God For Our Prophet." Judy thought they were singing to him. The tactic worked. Mr. Judy dropped his guard. Security jumped in and beat him to a pulp. (5)

David Shane Shelby, sporting an orange jail jump-suit, stood and addressed the court. "For years, I've been listening to a voice in my head . . . the commandments of God, and I obeyed them . . . I was listening to God." I remember reading this statement in the paper and thinking to myself, God has a constant dialogue with the people in Utah. He guides our state legislators to pass incomprehensible liquor laws. He's in direct contact with every eight-year-old that gives a Sunday School talk. He even helps BYU win football games; so why is it so unreasonable to assume He'd devote a few minues to talk to a fry cook at Arby's in Ogden? (40)

Richard's books were not your everyday kind of books. He read about the Sumerians, and the Babylonians, and dozens of other long-lost civilizations no one has ever heard of. He read about astrology and astronomy and water-skiing and King Arthur and airplanes and dogs and everything medieval. He liked stuff about genealogy and religion and archaeology too. . . .
He worked washing dishes in retirement homes, saved every penny, and lived off the interest. He never bought clothes, or cars, or TVs or insurance or anything that normal people bought. The only purchase I ever remember Richard making was when he bought property up by Strawberry Reservoir. He would take the Greyhound to the middle of nowhere and make the bus driver let him off. Then Richard would walk a couple of miles to where his land was, look at it, read a book, and come home. He had plans to build a yurt (a tent kind of thing popular with Afghan nomads) on his land but never did. He was just too busy reading and doing dishes. (59)

Yes, Congressman Jim Hansen loves Utah. He loves it so much he wants to sell chunks of it to Holland. Actually the chunks I'm speaking of are coal from southern Utah, and even though a Dutch company would make most the money off this deal, the black stuff itself would probably end up in Asia. There the coal would be burned and turned into smoke and power. The smoke would be used to make things like souvenir rubber tomahawks that can then be shipped back to Utah and sold in Kanab. It's a hell of an idea when you think of it. (65)

[If you read this book, see if you don't think page 65 has the exact same clip art—only reverse—used for the Ghost Planet Industries logo (now the Williams Street logo).]

[Re: the Mormon church's film, Legacy:] This movie pretends a lot. It pretends that Joseph Smith looked like Tom Cruise and wasn't a polygamist, that blacks were welcome in the Church, and that the "Book of Mormon" is simply a supplement to the Bible. It never mentions Danites, or Nephites or Zarahemla or white salamanders or the Urim and Thummim. There's nothing about the Jaredites in submarine type boats crossing the ocean in 600 BC, or Kolob, or the Doctrine of Eternal Progression, where men but not women get their own planet. (81)

Contrary to popular belief, actor Crispin Glover is not the only fop to grace our city of salt and charge an exorbitant ticket price to allow entrance to a show designed to educate and introduce bewildering aesthetic theories to an audience that really just came to look at a celebrity famous for acting weird.
Over a century before Crispin's "Big Slide Show" which he put on at the Tower Theatre, there was an even bigger side show at the now defunct Salt Lake Theatre. The star of that 1882 event was none other than Oscar Wilde himself. . . .
From all accounts Oscar's lecture was about as boring as a boot and had all the levity and wit of a bull moose's fart. But he did look funny and that counted for something.
Oscar told a reporter from the Deseret News "I am quite conscious that much of what I say may be annoying, but after all I came to say it, and so long as audiences with such forebearance and good breeding allow me to strut my brief hour upon the stage I should be singularly stupid not to take advantage of my hobbies." Who can argue with that?
Perhaps a more eloquent way of stating the same thing would be, as long as people want to dish out 15 bucks to Crispin so they can observe him while he shows slides he would have to be a complete dope to say no. (82, 83)

(More Trent Harris)

06jun2007 — A lyric that cracks me up every time I hear it

"Electrically, they keep a baseball score."

---

05jun2007 —

Who's going to convince me this photo of Cremona Cremains tearing apart the Rhythm Room isn't as cool a photo of a bass player as has ever been?       5-Star Grade A recommended: James Bilagody and the Cremains, Sacred Stage. "Bow and Arrow" will reach inside of you, no fooling, even if you have only one feeling.   RobbL writes: Yes, that's a great photo, but at best it's #2, because Paul Simonon on the cover of "London Calling" is the champion. By the way, she gets MAJOR points in my book for playing a Jazz Bass, much cooler than the more common P-Bass. But P-smashin' Paul still wins.; Rejoinder: 1. Instrument smashing was old hat years before Simonon did it. 2. Fishnets. 3. FISHNETS.   (See also)

03jun2007 —

Isn't this a swell Demolition Doll Rods poster?

(John Hobbs)

01jun2007 — "Enhanced interrogation techniques" = "Verschärfte Vernehmung"

Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic:

The phrase "Verschärfte Vernehmung" is German for "enhanced interrogation". Other translations include "intensified interrogation" or "sharpened interrogation". It's a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. The methods, as you can see above, are indistinguishable from those described as "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the president. As you can see from the Gestapo memo, moreover, the Nazis were adamant that their "enhanced interrogation techniques" would be carefully restricted and controlled, monitored by an elite professional staff, of the kind recommended by Charles Krauthammer, and strictly reserved for certain categories of prisoner. At least, that was the original plan.

(via LewRockwell)

30may2007 — U.S. foreign policy as explained by the Brothers Warner

Our special guest today is The Bad Boy from the great old Warner Brothers cartoon A Day at the Zoo (1939).

(By the way, does anyone know the origin of that old cartoon staple "bread 'n' butter / bread 'n' butter," as performed in A Day at the Zoo by the pair of panthers? That is, why "bread 'n' butter" rather than, say, "bread 'n' water," or "sugar 'n' spice?")

22may2007 —

19may2007 — From Michael W. Kauffman's American Brutus:

Because military commissions were not subject to judicial appeal, they were not legally bound to follow the common-law rules of procedure. That gave [Judge Advocate General] Joseph Holt and associates the luxury of relying instead on the "laws of war." They refused to define the term. . . . It was a new form of jurisprudence -- fluid, unwritten, and in short, anything Joseph Holt wanted it to be. [Defense attorney] Walter Cox could not resist giving it a verbal jab.
"What a convenient instrument for trampling upon every Constitutional guaranty, every sacred right of the citizen!" said Cox. "There is no invention too monstrous, no punishment too cruel to find authority and sanction in such a common law. Is it possible that American citizens can be judged and punished by an unwritten code that has no definitions, no books, no judges or lawyers; which, if it has any existence, like the laws of the Roman Emperor, is hung up too high to be read?" (359)

(How shocked would Cox be if he could see ahead to our day, in which—according to the Supreme Court—not only accused criminals but everyone in the U.S. is subject to "secret laws"?)

At New York's Cooper Union, Abraham Lincoln issued his own closing comments on the Harper's Ferry incident. He denied that any member of his party had been implicated in Brown's plot, and he told his listeners that the raid had always been doomed to failure. "That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts . . . at the assassination of kings and emperors," Lincoln said. "An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures into the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution." The same might have been said of John Wilkes Booth in 1865. (107)

(Or ten-thousandfold moreso of Abraham Lincoln at any time from 1860 to the end of his life.)

18may2007 — If only

If, however, the military fortunes of the Confederacy had followed a more favorable course leading up to 1864, a dissatisfied Northern electorate just might have voted in a new president who would have been willing to extend overtures to end the war. — Roger L. Ransom, The Confederate States of America: What Might Have Been (121)

17may2007 — Breaking news: Only you care that you ran 10 kilometers.

Scourge of internet person name searching: Lists of footrace results.
Scourge of thrift store t-shirt browsing: Freebie t-shirts commemorating footraces.

SILENCE THE RACES

14may2007 — Last night I watched Animal House with a grown-up, adult person who had never seen it. I know! I have no idea how anyone could have missed it. But it was fun, like seeing seeing boobs and beer and hijinks through virgin eyes. Awwww! I'm like an Enya song.

Anyway, thanks to Robb for being some sort of Commie who grew up in a hollowed-out log deep in a remote forest, I would have to guess.

13may2007 —

DP, on Weschler's Mr. Wilson's Cabinet: That's amazing that it almost got the Pulitzer Prize. It must be written pretty good.
DoC: DP, you are a prize.
DP: Well . . . it must be written pretty good, if it almost got a Pulitzer Prize.

(Note the chiasmus (cf. Spontaneous Ancient Literary Structure in Modern Colloquial Speech.)

12may2007 — From the Arrested Development DVD commentary, re: Charlize Theron's coonskin cap:

Mitch Hurwitz: We got the call from the network about her hat—they hated her hat.
Portia de Rossi: What?
Hurwitz: Yeah. We'd already shot a day. And Jim Vallely came up with, like, instead of trying to get rid of the hat? Let's really highlight the hat.
[Laughter]
Hurwitz: That's why we have that scene: "Don't forget . . . your hat!"
[Laughter]
Hurwitz: And then we actually even zoom in on the hat, at the end of the show.
David Cross: What a ridiculous waste-of-time note that is.

Bonus:

11may2007 —

♣ The moment I switched on the radio yesterday morning, Diane Rehm was asking Cullen Murphy to "give us a brief summary of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire."

♣ Bruce Bowen = dirty punk? (YouTube)
What’s funny is that off the court Bruce Bowen is one of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet. Although there was this time when I went to interview him and came down on his foot and was out for four to six weeks.

♣ Stoned Cop Thought Wings Win Was a Hallucination (Be sure to listen to the 911 audio linked from that page)
The great thing is how the cop and his wife were not charged with any of the multitude of crimes you or I would be charged with in the exact same situation.

10may2007 —

With Romney in the race, journalists will have to update one of the staple questions of penetrating modern campaign inquiry:

Boxers, briefs, or temple garment?

09may2007 — From Julie Burchill & Tony Parsons, The Boy Looked at Johnny: The Obituary of Rock and Roll:

Rock became the sole property of white dopes high on punk. (2)

Spungen had introduced Vicious to the full-time occupation of wondering where the next fix was coming from. (30)

Verlaine and sidekick Hell shared a chummy chuckle when they auditioned fellow heroin-enthusiast Dee Dee Ramone and blackballed the blank bassist's entry to the band when it transpired that one could count the number of chords Dee Dee knew on his waxy ear-holes. (52)

In the UK, punks are prepared to pay out hard cash for expensive albums by bands who could just as easily have been standing behind them in an audience. (59)

These days, the California judicial system only threatens to come down hard on coke criminals who have information they want—as in the case of Anjelica Huston, an actress who testified that her close friend film director Roman Polanski had taken a 13-year-old girl into a bedroom. Her revelation caused her possession of cocaine charge to be dropped, and forced Polanski to plead guilty. (70)

Acid (as it came to be known, man) was an inward-bound experience for cosmic cretins born too early to line up for Star Wars. (71)

Amphetamine—the only drug that makes you sit up and ask questions rather than lie down and lap up answers. (72)

Of the Mod bands, the manufactured Who sang their melodramatic fantasies of what they imagined the amphetamine lifestyle to be and reached a credulous mass audience, while the Small Faces were the archetype who had lived the life before they were ever in a band. In "Here Comes The Nice" they said more in three minutes about Mod than Pete Townshend said in thirty years. (73)

08may2007 — From Circle of Iron:

The Blind Man: A fish saved my life once.
Cord: How?
The Blind Man: I ate him.

07may2007 — Say hello to Brigadier General States Rights Gist

States Rights was born in the incongruous Union, South Carolina—rather than in, say, the more thematically appropriate Secessionville, South Carolina.

05may2007 —

Pop music is for sheep and we are shepherds disguised as wolves. — Laibach

04may2007 —

Schoolhouse Rock: Pirates and Emperors (youtube)

(See also: Legal Piracy)

"Immediately." — Congressman Ron Paul, asked during yesterday's debate forum whether, if elected President, he would abolish the IRS

03may2007 — The ol' Mahavi Desert Phone Booth Project

(Danke to Joanne @ Rocket Boom)

30apr2007 — From Open Letters (also featured on This American Life's episode "The Missing Parents Bureau"):

". . . maybe check out something on the net like the phone number of that phone booth in the middle of the desert so he can call it some day. . . ."

(Thanks to the soon-to-be Chatoyante)

28apr2007 — J. G. Ballard on the Mojave Phone Booth

I don't have a PC actually, but my girlfriend is a keen PC user, a great surfer of the Internet. . . . And some of these sites she's dug up contain accidental poetry that is quite moving. I remember when she first got a PC about six or seven years ago, there were these "telephone booths in the Mojave desert" sites. I can't remember the theory of it, but there was some strangely poetic business about this telephone booth which was still functioning. I can't remember what the exact point of it was, but it became a kind of talismanic object.

— J. G. Ballard: Conversations (RE/Search Publications), p. 41

26apr2007 — Compare and Contrast

From the classic Jim Jarmusch film Stranger Than Paradise:

Eddie: Cleveland—it's a beautiful city.
Eva: Yes?
Eddie: Yeah. It's got a big, beautiful lake. You'll love it there.
Eva: Have you been there?
Eddie: No.

And again:

Willie: You ever been to Florida?
Eddie: Florida? It's beautiful down there. White beaches, girls in bikinis, Cape Canaveral, Miami Beach. They got pelicans down there, and flamingos.
Willie: You been there?
Eddie: No, I never been there.

From the television broadcast of the Arizona Diamondbacks home opener vs. the Cincinnati Reds, 09apr2007:

Mark Grace: Springerville is just east of Show Low, right near the New Mexico border. BEAUTIFUL area! Just beautiful.
Daron Sutton: You been there?
Mark Grace: No.

25apr2007 — TRAGIC NEWS

Apparently the Demolition Doll Rods are quits!

24apr2007 — Say it ain't so, Crow

We can't have come to the point where we're limited to one square per toilet visit, can we?

(I wonder how "green" the Subaru Imprezas are, the ones advertised with Sheryl Crow's earworm song about the winding roads?)

23apr2007 — His Ninth is most strange. In it, the author hardly speaks as an individual any longer. It almost seems as though this work must have a concealed author who used Mahler merely as his spokesman, as his mouthpiece. This symphony is no longer couched in the personal tone. It consists, so to speak, of objective, almost passionless statements of a beauty which becomes perceptible only to one who can dispense with animal warmth and feels at home in spiritual coolness. We shall know as little about what his Tenth (for which, as also in the case of Beethoven, sketches exist) would have said as we know about Beethoven's or Bruckner's. It seems that the Ninth is a limit. He who wants to go beyond it must pass away. It seems as if something might be imparted to us in the Tenth which we ought not yet to know, for which we are not yet ready. Those who have written a Ninth stood too near to the hereafter. Perhaps the riddles of this world would be solved, if one of those who knew them were to write a Tenth. And that is probably not to take place. — Arnold Schönberg, Style and Idea, p. 470

19apr2007 — From Selling Satan, by Mike Hertenstein & Jon Trott (an exposé of self-proclaimed "ex-satanist high priest" Mike Warnke):

Autumn 1991. Not "church," but "Christian Center"—like shopping center—with a towering marquee on the highway side and a phony-colonial design that would fit comfortably into Heritage Village or Main Street USA. Here we stood, Christianity in America, twenty centuries down the road from catacombs, cathedrals, and steeples in the public square. (1)

That story, as told in The Satan Seller, was by now woven into the fabric of evangelical pop culture: a young orphan boy, raised in foster homes, drifted from whatever family and friends he had to join a secret, all-powerful satanic cult. First, he descended into the hell of drug addiction. Then he ascended in the satanic ranks to the position of high priest, with fifteen hundred followers in three cities. He had unlimited wealth and power at his disposal, provided by members of Satanism's highest echelon, the Illuminati. And then he converted to Christ. (3)

Yet Lois did have some good memories of Mike Warnke. . . . "I don't regret having known him. I'm just glad I didn't marry him." (61)

Formidable chronological problems exist in The Satan Seller. . . . These discrepancies could have been uncovered by anyone else in the past twenty years—with minimal research. But nobody took the time to do the math. (63)

The professor shook his head slowly in disbelief. "I taught here during those years, and we never, ever asked for or had any LSD experiments take place on this campus. For heaven's sake, this is only a two-year junior college!" (68)

"The times were right for that sort of testimony. People wanted to hear that their worst fears were true." (141)

There seemed no limit to what Christian audiences were willing to accept—as long as the main character gave his heart to Jesus in the end. (174)

One thing disturbed Karen, she recalled. "Mike liked to introduce me as a former hippie or drug addict—which I'd been, but I wasn't proud of," she recalled. "Then he started introducing me as a former prostitute, which I'd never been. I had to ask him to stop." (179)

Later the police officer did come through with some information in the form of sketchy cop-talk: "My sources within the department indicate an individual with the name you gave me was involved in activities similar to what you outlined." (182)

[Warnke] "told me about the verse in Genesis that talks about angels of God visiting the daughters of men and creating a race of giants. And he told me he and I were born out of that unique race and that we were giants with special powers." (185)

Carolyn said the two went for a drive and Warnke stopped at a convenience store. "He asked what kind of cigarettes I used to smoke, and I said, `Pall Mall Gold. Why?' He just shut the door and kept on walking. I went, `Uh-Oh.'" Warnke returned to the car, according to Carolyn, with "two bottles of Annie Greensprings wine, two packs of cigarettes, and a package of peanut-butter cookies." That day they began an affair. . . . (186)

Danny Taylor . . . noted, "Mike and Carolyn came to Nashville to hide. Because you can hide in Nashville." (193)

One question it would have been appropriate to raise at this key juncture: How could Word/Myrrh know if the satanic story they were about to mass-produce and distribute around the world was true? But nobody asked. "It was just accepted," Huey told Trott. (203)

Added Mike Johnson, who often toured with Mike on his road trips, "It was pretty consistent money for a guy with a mouth and a bag of records. He didn't need anything, not even a guitar. He just talked for forty-five minutes." (214)

Concluded Carolyn, "Mike Warnke was one of the greatest con artists I've ever known in my life. And coming from my background, that says quite a bit." (236)

Mike Warnke began offering his expertise on the horrors of Satanism to law enforcement agencies and national media. Warnke appeared on ABC's "20/20," "Oprah Winfrey," and "Larry King Live" as well as countless local shows. He was cited frequently as a reference in print media, both on Satanism and other subjects: the Warnkes did a series of articles for the Christian magazine Family Life Today with topics ranging from parenting teenagers to popular music. They also shared their parenting tips on James Dobson's "Focus on the Family" radio program. (256)

Jon Trott went on his evidence kick again. He called Larson's publisher, Thomas Nelson Publishing, and asked to see some evidence for the grisly stories in the book, like the one about the little girl who was stripped naked by Satanists and pulled through the rear end of a dead horse. A Nelson spokesperson hemmed and hawed, initially claiming evidence existed, then backed away stating that the book was meant only as entertainment. "Like the part about the little girl and the horse?" Jon wondered, "or the part about her performing fellatio on the Satanists?" Nelson eventually pulled the "based on actual accounts" blurb before the book went to press. The parts about the horse and fellatio stayed. (286)

The ex-seminar director's charges were a dubious combination: Warnke Ministries was a fraud, he claimed, yet he had been improperly discharged from that fraud. Cooper's lawyer, William Stevens, demanded a half-million dollars. (335)

One reader of the Southern California Christian tried to call what she believed was the phone number for that regional paper, but accidentally called Cornerstone. She was quickly on the line with Hertenstein. No, she said, she hadn't read the Cornerstone article, just the brief synopsis in her own regional paper. And no, she didn't want a copy of the original article to see the evidence.
"What is all this talk about evidence?" she said, offended by the very idea of checking up on Warnke's story. "I don't want to look at any evidence. God has given me the gift of discernment. And I feel in my heart that Mike Warnke is the one who is telling the truth." It was quickly obvious this discussion was going nowhere, but the woman wouldn't get off the line. Hertenstein finally appealed to the highest authority: "Ma'am, I honestly feel in my heart that God led me to do the article on Mike Warnke." The woman was stopped in her tracks and politely ended the conversation. (369)

A Texas woman named Beverly phoned Cornerstone and said she was confused. . . . "There's a lot of people out here who have always supported both Cornerstone and Warnke Ministries and now we just don't know what to do. What does this all mean?"
"Maybe it means that God is calling people to a greater level of discernment. I guess you'll just have to look over all the evidence and statements that have been presented and decide for yourself."
"But that's so hard. I don't like having to do that."
"I know," said the writer. There wasn't much else to say. (395)

[During an interview with Anton LaVey:] Jon Trott had been waiting for an opportunity for some subversive evengelism. He leaned forward and observed, "I've always thought of Jesus as an iconoclast. He certainly presented a challenge to the status quo of his day. . . .
LaVey saw his point. "If Jesus existed," he conceded, "then he probably would have been a Satanist. Not a devil worshiper, but a Satanist in the sense of being an iconoclast."
That was something we had never considered, we said. (425)

Perhaps sensing that we might try to preach at him before the evening wrapped up, LaVey announced, "I get piles of religious tracts from people trying to convert me." He told us about a form letter reply he'd composed for such letters. . . .

Dear ______:
Thank you for your enlightening and inspirational letter (tract). I am touched by your prayers, and because of the dire warnings and accusations you have leveled upon me, have chosen to see the light. You are the person I have been waiting for to lead me to Jesus, when all others have failed.
I now see the folly of my actions and can perceive how I was taken in by Satan and used as a tool to destroy innocent minds and bodies....
...Surely your wisdom must be matched by your generosity, so perhaps you would like to help me bring others to Jesus who have been ensnared by the Devil's lies....
Enclosed is a return envelope in which you might place your offering....

LaVey smiled a naughty smile, revealing a missing front tooth. "Can you imagine what would happen if I suddenly announced that I'd seen the light?" he hisses, eyes twinkling. "I could really make a bundle." . . .
Jon shook his head. "If by some miracle you ever do become a Christian, do yourself and everybody else a favor: disappear. We don't need any more celebrity conversions. And we certainly don't need any more ex-Satanists on the circuit."
LaVey assured us this would not be the case. "You don't have to worry about me," he said. "There will be no deathbed recantations." Still softly playing hymns, he closed his eyes and let his head drift back as he lost himself in a private ecstasy. (428-9)

Here's the great thing: this lying clown Mike Warnke is still in the god biz. ("Congratulations on the successful completion of the recommendations that were placed on you personally and on your ministry by the Advisory Council 13 years ago in January of 1993. All restrictions have been met and are hereby lifted.") Oh, Barnum . . . even religions that don't saint should saint you.

18apr2007 — Favorites from The Onion A.V. Club's The Tenacity of the Cockroach: Conversations with Entertainment's Most Enduring Outsiders:

17apr2007 — Extra-random snippets from William Gibson's Pattern Recognition (kindly recommended to me by Puzzling Evidence, though I've now forgotten in what connection; a month can do such terrible things to a man's mind):

What is that, to be over thirty and not know where you'll be in a month or two? (88)

"The market is not entirely rationalized, you see."
"Rationalized?"
"Not yet established as a global specialist environment. As has long been the case, for instance, with rare stamps, or coins. Or, to almost that degree, with the clocks Greenaway deals in. Values are only just being established for Curta calculators. One still finds the odd example gathering dust on a shelf, perhaps for relatively little. All such markets are being rationalized by the Internet, of course."
"Are they?"
"Absolutely. Hobbs himself . . . is responsible for that, to some degree."
"How?"
"eBay," says Ngemi. "He's very adroit there, and has sold many Curtas to Americans, always for more than they would fetch here. Global values are being established." (230-1)
[So that's what happened to my dream of retiring on the proceeds of the sale of my childhood baseball cards. . . .]

His shoes are black four-eyelet DMs, the ur-Martens of the first decade of punk, long since de-recontextualized into the inexpensive everyman's footwear they'd been designed to be. (235)

"Police cars, no! Those are the cars of important people, of the rich, or those who work for them. They have purchased a permit allowing ignorance of traffic regulations. Blue lights are courtesy to others, a warning. It seems strange to you?" (285)

16apr2007 — From Reggie Nadelson's Comrade Rockstar: The Life and Mystery of Dean Reed:

15apr2007 — From "Is This The Way To Baker House?" — A Compendium of MIT Hacking Lore:

The title of this book is something of an inside joke among hackers. Etiquette dictates it is the only correct thing to say to a Campus Police Officer if you are found in a particularly inappropriate place. (2)

Above all, exercise common sense. This is another general rule with very wide applicability. When exploring, you are often in places which were not intended for normal traffic. The people who built the area may not have assumed anyone would be there without special knowledge of the area. Many of the assumptions you are used to making are not valid or applicable while hacking. It is very important that you stay alert and think clearly. (8)

Always have two ways to run. If someone comes one way, you can go the other. If possible, run along a path that has many side branches. Your pursuer will pause to check them. Change floors often. Don't start running when someone spots you. Walk around a corner and then run. Remember that the person who sees you must first decide that you are doing something wrong, and running is an admission of guilt. It's amazing what you can get away with if you don't look like you're getting away with anything. (8)

People are usually unaware of anything above them unless it moves or otherwise calls attention to itself. When hacking, remember to look up periodically. (9)

Try to account for all the space in a building. If a bump in one wall does not line up with a dent on the other side, then there is a space that needs exploring. (9)

Brute force is the last refuge of the incompetent. Carrying master keys is extremely stupid and unnecessary. Things are not always as they appear. This is true of locks, doors, walls, and people. (10)

Rush and Orientation is also a wonderful time for hacks—hacks that welcome the freshmen, hacks that lampoon the sometimes stressful events that freshmen encounter during R/O, and hacks that may inspire them to think about hacking. (13)

About 40 band members ran out onto the field at halftime, lay down and spelled out MIT with their bodies. MIT students also handed out over 1,000 flash cards to Harvard loyalists, telling them that they would spell out "Beat Yale." What they spelled, of course, was MIT, but only the last two letters were distinct. (82) [Cp. the Zug/Cockeyed 2006 Superbowl attempt]

As you become an experienced hacker, you'll find yourself seeking out the unusual. Every building has its own personality; it's up to you to find it. In Boston's theater district there's an entire network of underground tunnels connecting the area's oldest buildings. Find them and look at yourself in the ornate 19th century mirrors that line their walls. (84)

Now this is not to say that a hack involving elaborate preparation isn't simple. Nothing could have been simpler than Smooting the Mass. Ave. Bridge—all you needed was a bucket of paint and Oliver Smoot '62. (91)

Originality: A truly memorable hack needs to have a freshness about it that says it has never been done before. There was a period during the early 1990s when student groups would occasionally "re-Smoot" the Mass. Ave. bridge with their own units of measure or obscure symbols. You wouldn't put another Hilltop Steak House cow on top of the Dome, now, would you? This is boring and unimaginative and I am glad to see that this practice has been dormant the last few years. (92)

In MIT's long history no student has ever come up with a sentence that can top this one: "The sterile lateralism of the grouped utensils ( sans knife) conveys a sense of eternal ennui, framed within the subtle ambience of discrete putrefaction." (95)

The title of Brian Lebowitz' historical compendium of MIT hacks, The Journal of the Institute for Hacks, Tomfoolery & Pranks at MIT, (MIT Museum, 1990) is itself a hack. Embedded in it are the initials IHTFP, which, as everyone at MIT knows, stand for "I hate this fucking place." (102)

Here is how Arthur Koestler describes the practical joke in his Encyclopedia Britannica article: The coarsest type of humour is the practical joke: pulling away the chair from under the dignitary's lowered bottom. The victim is perceived first as a person of consequence, then suddenly as an inert body subject to the laws of physics: authority is debunked by gravity, mind by matter, man is degraded to a mechanism. (102)

At some level our students know that while they are all in the top 5% of their high school classes, they will soon be recalibrated downward. I say "at some level" because a poll taken not too long ago asked the incoming class how many of them thought they would end up in the top quarter. Something like 75% said they would! At least half of those responding were about to discover they were not as good as they thought, not an easy pill to swallow at any stage of one's life. (103)

Unlike the extreme kinds of disobedience that one often finds in living groups, the hack is a socially acceptable form of disobedience. It is easily distinguished from its more extreme counterparts by three properties. Hacks are (1) technologically sophisticated, (2) anonymous, (3) benign. They are technologically sophisticated because they need to parody an MIT education. They are anonymous because were they otherwise, the Institute might be forced, if only for safety reasons, to do something about them. They are benign because their goal is not to inflict pain, but to cope with pain inflicted. They do this by making fun of the Institute, diminishing it, bringing it down to size so that its judgments are brought down to size as well.
The hack is a pact that the Institute and its students enter into. Keep it anonymous, harmless and fun and MIT will look the other way. It will even be mildly encouraging because it recognizes, as do the students, that students need to turn the Institute into an adversary. This, by the way, is why the adversarial undercurrent between students and the Institute won't go away, no matter how supportive student services are or how solicitous our staff might be or how accessible the faculty makes itself. (104)

Hacks and living groups, then, are to the Institute what sunglasses are to the sun: a form of protection that makes it possible to live with the light. Not every student hacks. Not every student feels the same degree of disobedient dependency. But every time hackers help to place a police car on the dome, they are providing shade in a very sunny clime. (104)

[See also: Access All Areas]

13apr2007 — From Strike the Root:

As every American knows, "private property" is a joke. Like literally everything else, when real estate changes hands, the state gets a piece of the action (real estate transfer tax.) They also demand continual payment of protection money for real estate (property taxes.) When property values rise, naturally the tax man gets a bigger slice of the pie by officially increasing the "state equalized value" of one's property. Should you improve your property, after you get their permission, you'll pay higher taxes for the privilege of doing so.

In a shocking new twist, with property values falling, local governments are refusing to lower SEV's no matter what the purchase price of a property is. This will pile more problems onto the deflating housing bubble, making foreclosures even less appealing to the few buyers who are out there.

When the value of property rises - so does the extortion cost. When the price of property falls, too bad, shut up and pay. Extortion never gets cheaper. The dough must continue to roll in - how else could they keep funding their benefit/pension plans and feathering their own nests?

12apr2007 — From Mark Anderson's Shakespeare by Another Name: A Biography of Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, the Man Who Was Shakespeare

As one Puritan critic wrote, during the annual progress season Elizabeth was "entirely given over to love, hunting, hawking, and dancing, consuming day and night with trifles. . . . He who invents most ways of wasting time is regarded as one worthy of honor." (12)

Tortured and imprisoned, Hales drowned himself in a stream near Canterbury in 1554. Since his death was a suicide, some of Hales's possessions (including his leases) had been forfeited to the crown. The crown had then turned around and leased one of Hales's forfeited leases to a man named Cyriack Petit. The Hales family, wanting their lease back, argued that they'd inherited Hales's possessions at the moment of his death, before the state deemed it a suicide. Thus Petit had no right to be living on land that the Hales family had already inherited.
The tortured language of both sides in this case reads like a skit from Monty Python's Flying Circus. The documented arguments on behalf of the Hales family: "Sir James Hales was dead, and how came he to his death? It may be answered, by drowning. And who drowned him? Sir James Hales. And when did he drown him? In his life-time: So that Sir James Hales being alive caused Sir James to die and the act of the living was the death of a dead man." The documented arguments on behalf of Petit: "The Forfeiture of the Goods and Chattels, real and personal, shall have relation to the Act done in the Party's Life-time, which was the Cause of his Death; and upon this the parts of the Act are to be considered. . . . The Act consists of three Parts. The first is the Imagination, which is a Reflection or a Meditation of the Mind. . . . The second is the Resolution. . . . The third is the Perfection. . . . And this Perfection consists of two Parts, viz, the Beginning and the End." (34)

[Letter from Gabriel Harvey to Edward de Vere;] Mars lives in thy tongue, Minerva strengthens they right hand, Bellona reigns in they body, within thee burns the first of Mars. Thine eyes flash fire, thy will shakes spears. . . .
Will shakes spears. At the time Harvey uttered these words, a fourteen-year-old boy in Stratford-upon-Avon was still living in obscurity. The first opportunity Will Shakspere of Stratford would have to join London society—and, presumably, to come to the attention of literati such as Harvey—was still years away. It must be one of the great coincidences of Western literature that Harvey's 1578 encomium to de Vere would reference the very name the earl of Oxford would one day use to conceal his own writings. (139-40)

By using the disguise of another man's name, de Vere had protected himself from the fate of William Reynolds—a man who had uncovered just one facet of Venus and Adonis's hidden meaning and was cast aside to the very fringes of society. Venus and Adonis represents the debut of the ruse that would enable de Vere to become Elizabethan England's most candid truth-teller. Following the recipe laid out in Castiglione's Courtier (1572) and Cardanus's Comfort (1573), de Vere had published his heart in Venus and Adonis using a Batillus—the "upstart crow" Will Shakspere—as the beard who would distract the public gaze from the regal truths to be found within. (271)

Courtiers and visiting dignitaries in the 1590s still had to pretend that Her Majesty was the most radiant star in the firmament. Any young man seeking royal preferment still was required to act as if he only had eyes for England's Eliza. She wore embarrassingly low-cut dresses, and because of her love for sweets, her teeth had begun to rot. Her Highness's breath stank. She often sucked on a perfumed silk handkerchief before seeing visitors. And yet, eternally the ingenue, Elizabeth batted her eyelashes and played adolescent love games with the boys around her. (272)

Nostalgia is a kaleidoscope. At the dawn of the Jacobean Age, one disillusioned courtier was fixing his retrospective gaze into the viewfinder: The queen had certainly indulged her lordly fool; her £1,000 annuity never stopped, although it was also never enough. She was maddeningly opaque and fickle; she was amazingly brilliant and fascinating. She was tightfisted, two-faced, and horrible tease. She was, in her day, perhaps the sexiest and most alluring woman de Vere had ever met in his life. She was a hag; she was a goddess. She was dead. (349)

The central engraving features a hidden man's hand writing from behind a theatrical curtain. The title page emblem would appear to be about a disguised playwright.
Lastly, the hand from behind the curtain writes on a scroll the words "By the mind, I will be seen." ( Mente videbor.) The hidden playwright appears to be adding the letter i to videbor. However, there is no Latin word "videbori." Yet "videbori" makes a perfect anagram of the sentence—and would also make sense of the stray period between the two words. Unscramble " MENTE.VIDEBORI," and one Latin phrase makes all the pieces of the puzzle fit together: TIBI NOM.DE VERE. Or, in English: "Thy name is de Vere." (367)

In the nine years since Queen Elizabeth's death, King James I had proved himself to be little more than a place holder for some great monarch to come. By all signs, Henry, Prince of Wales, would have been that monarch: brilliant, erudite, well trained as a military man, an enthusiastic patron of the creative arts, an unrepentant but still accomodating moderate Protestant, a decisive man of high morals. Had Prince Henry lived to assume his place on the throne, it's likely that post-seventeenth-century world history would be unrecognizable today.
Instead, Henry's corrupt younger brother Charles eventually inherited the crown and so enraged Parliament and the population at large in the 1640s as to spark the English Civil War—a conflagration that resulted in Charles's beheading in 1649 and in which Oliver Cromwell's Puritan revolution shut down all the theaters.
This sociopolitical turbulence during the early seventeenth century would be responsible in no small part for continuing the Shake-speare ruse past the lifetimes of the author and his contemporaries. (367)

Shakspere's likeness rests his arms on a pillow, upon which sits a blank piece of paper. Shakspere grasps at a quill pen with his right hand and gazes emptily out into space. The bust has been the subject of much witty chatter throughout the ages. As Twain wrote: The bust too—there in the Stratford Church. The precious bust, the priceless bust, the calm bust, the serene bust, the emotionless bust, with the dandy moustache, and the putty face, unseamed of care—that face which has looked passionlessly down upon the awed pilgrim for a hundred and fifty years and will still look down upon the awed pilgrim three hundred more, with the deep, deep, deep, subtle, subtle, subtle expression of a bladder. (369-70)

11apr2007 — What It Feels Like

In Stockholm, each laureate is assigned a stretch limousine, a driver, and an attache. I'd never worn tails in my life and I had to wear them three times that week. I think the Swedes use more starch than mos, because Ifelt like a true stuffed shirt. The receptions got very old, and there were a lot of them. They were very alien to the lifestyle I chose. I'm an academic and not a CEO or a diplomat. If there was an option to have the prize mailed to me, I would've taken it. (James Heckman . . . winner of the 2000 prize for economics)

I didn't want to be friendly with any of my captors. They asked me, "When this is over, can you get me a visa to America?" I said, "If you ever come to the United States, I'll kill you." But after a while I gave up being defiant because it only got me struck over and over again. I kept relations very formal. (Barry Rosen . . . held by the Iranians for 443 days in 1979-80)

I used to let people push the sword down my throat. But this time I chose a big, burly guy. . . . He pushed too far. . . . I finished the act with seven swords. When I pulled them out they were covered with blood. Now I have people withdraw the blade from my mouth instead of pushing it down. You can't pull out a sword too far. (Brad Byers, sword swallower)

10apr2007 — Latest favorite url particle: Farticle

09apr2007 — From Peter Carey's Wrong About Japan:

Japanese addresses rightly seem complicated to gaijin. Say your friend's address is 1-12-33 Asakusa Chome, Taito-ku. This means your friend lives in Taito Ward, in the district of Asakusa. Within Asakusa you will need to find area number one. If you're well prepared you'll have a map; if not, you ask a local. Then you use the same process to find block 12 and there, sooner or later, you'll find building number 33. Of course it will be nowhere near building 32 or 34. It is more likely to be sandwiched between 20 and 7. Imagine what this did to the minds of the American occupation forces in 1945. No street names. Meaningless numbers. The victors changed many things about Japan . . . but the American plan to render the Japanese addresses "more logical" never had a hope in hell.
"It is not because we are secretive," Takashi told me later. "Westerners think we want to hide from them. No one is hiding. Our way is logical. It is zoom shot, see. Begin wide, then zoom in until you have CU of your building." (37)

So I asked if making a sword felt like a spiritual business to him.
Yoshihara-san smiled. "You've been reading American books?"
"English," I admitted.
"Perhaps some people have spiritual experiences. They hear voices talking to them. Then they are crazy." (40)

In 1939 Yoshiwara boasted three hundred and twenty brothels. When the firebombing was over, only ten were left standing. The American army of occupation swiftly established Special Recreation centres in the few unbombed factories, and price lists were posted on the quartermaster bulletin boards: 20 yen—a buck and a quarter—for the first hour. 10 yen for each additional hour and all night for 50 yen. If you pay more, you spoil it for the rest. The MP's [sic] will be stationed at the doors to enforce these prices. Trucks will leave here each hour, on the hour. NO MATTER HOW GOOD IT FEELS, BE SURE TO WEAR ONE. (72)

[On the U.S. bombing of Shitamachi:] "Officially, one hundred twenty thousand people died in that raid, but there were really a million victims if you count everyone who lost a home or was injured or orphaned. You were in New York, Charley, when the terrorists struck the World Trade Center. Three thousand people died, and that was an enormous number. You know what that was like, so now imagine what one hundred twenty thousand is like." (80)

[Completely unrelated to Ringu] "It is kind of a ghost house."
"What makes it a ghost house?"
"Well, as you will see in a moment, there is a well."
"So?" "The well is a very animistic thing. It is a hole to another world, to ghosts and spirits. A Japanese viewer sees that well and immediately understands that this will be a story about spirits." (133)

08apr2007 — Catapult the propaganda, II

This was Easter Sunday, the day that Christians celebrate the martyrdom and resurrection of Christ. But Lincoln's death brought a new meaning to the idea of redemption and sacrifice, and ministers all across the North proclaimed a new national savior. Abraham Lincoln was now the "chief of martyrs," whose sacrifice would save the nation. The irony was inescapable: Booth had hoped to kill Lincoln on the Ides and highlight his resemblance to Caesar; but instead, he shot him on Good Friday, and the world compared him to Christ. -- Michael W. Kauffman, American Brutus, p. 251.

07apr2007 — Catapult the propaganda

"This is the thirteenth annual Pat's Run!" — Crack KTVK (Phoenix) reporter April Warnecke, excitedly reporting from the scene of a race commemorating someone who didn't even die until three years ago

Puts me in mind of one of the few true statements George W. has made as president: See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. (Applause.)

Gosh, I hope so, Dave, but I doubt it.

04apr2007 — Great Amazon customer reviews (con't):

Alexander the Great: The Final Cut, March 30, 2007
Reviewer: D. Silaeva "Gesiona"

Film global, rich, interesting, talented. Oliver Stone the great director. Many money is enclosed in film. Colin Farrel very good actor, but it is absolutely not similar to Alexander the Great. Angelina Jolie great an actress of all times and people! The my words are more dear, that the role of supermum of Olympiad to it is obviously daring. Val Kilmer has played Phillip-super. Hopkins-is simple shine! Princess Roxane (Rosario Dawson) obviously comes not from Bactria (Afghanistan), and from Harlem. Jared Leto- genius! To play the gay so, that all girls in it have fallen in love, it it is necessary to be able! Pay attention to statues, during when Phillip opens Olympic games in day of the destruction, in my opinion they are made, is obvious from polyfoam. And names of the countries and cities on a card in a palace, grown old Ptolemy are written obviously is not Greek, and in English. Battle stages are removed fine, especially, a stage of battle with fighting elephants. If not talented actor's works film would turn out usual American parody on history in style of «The Man in the Iron Mask» Leonardo DiCaprio

02apr2007 — It Can't Happen Here Dept.

Timely tidbits from Robert Payne's Zero: The Story of Terrorism (NY: John Day, 1950):

It was not only that the secret police obeyed no laws, but there could be no laws; if there had been Law, they could not have continued their practice of lawlessness. They might arrest whom they would, punish whom they wished, hold secret trials, fake evidence, and torture; they were bound by no statutes; their excesses were pardoned as "overzealousness in the cause of the state"; and though every excess necessarily drew in its wake a new excess, they survived because there is no limit to man's desire to be lawless, once it is awakened. The highest honors of the state were showered on murderers, and simply by giving them the most magnificent uniforms and the most high-sounding titles, Hitler was able to destroy at the source any natural shame they might have had in carrying out the murderous reign of lawlessness. (126)

From his childhood Nechayev saw the world through the eyes of his father, a schismatic village priest. From him he learned the legends of the schismatics, how Father Nikhon had thrown religion into a ferment by misspelling the name of Jesus, and how Archpriest Avvakum had said, in defiance of unorthodoxy: "Let us be monsters for the sake of Christ! All things are permitted to us if we destroy this Anti-Christ who has come among us!" One of Avvakum's followers declared: I wish that every man, woman and child of this town would come to the banks of the Volga, throw themselves into the waters, and sink to the bottom so that the temptations of the world would not attract them. And what is even better: that I might set fire to, and burn down the entire city; what joy if it were to burn from end to end destroying all the aged and infants, so that none would receive the stamp of Antichrist. [Paul Miliukov, Religion and the Church, Philadelphia 1942, p. 57] The same follower went on to describe his greater joy if it could come about that the whole world would dissolve in the flames. (81)

In Russia, as in Germany, the whole people were enslaved. No other civilized state possesses internal passports, but these were introduced in Russia in 1939, two years after the Small Soviet Encyclopaedia stated that "the custom of internal passports, instituted by the autocracy as an instrument of police oppression of the toiling masses, was suppressed by the October Revolution." (220)

It was at this time, in 1936, that the Stalin Constitution was promulgated. Under article 127: "Citizens of the USSR are guaranteed inviolability of the person: no one may be subect to arrest except by order of the court or with the sanction of the state attorney," and by article 128: "The inviolability of the homes of citizens and secrecy of correspondence are protected by law." But the nihilist loophole was contained in article 127: "The state and district attorneys' offices shall perform their functions independently of any local organs whatsoever." (224)

31mar2007 —

Many turkey vultures find that morning yoga prepares them for the difficult task of catching dead things.

They would prefer to go through their routine in a Buzzard Tree but fortunately we don't have a whole lot of giant trees out here in this part of the desert.

30mar2007 —

Dental anaesthesia is a frontier in need of further research and being of pioneer spirit I'm always ready to make my own contribution to tow the ode. And so if space can repeat, can it be anticipated? If an echo were reversed, could it tell the future? — Rainer Ptacek (whose recordings are still available from his widow Patti Keating)

(More on Rainer)

27mar2007 — I think you're insane for this guy

Lewis Paine was a dashing young man in the 19th Century. Why would Booth tempt Lewis Paine into kidnapping Mr. Lincoln? I liked Lewis Paine since I was little. Now that I'm 20 yrs old now, I still dream of him. I know he's dead already. (Don't think I'm insane for this guy.) If Lewis Paine was like he was in the 1860's today, I'll freak out. My husband's name is Lewis but not Powell. I have collected several pics of Powell since I was 12 to 13. I drove my mom & dad crazy about Lewis Paine when I was 9. Hope you like my thoughts about Lewis Paine. Love, Carmen

26mar2007 — DEAR MY FANS

25mar2007 —

I'm	Im

21mar2007 — Today we are Green

1. Which causes more pollution: a Hummer, or a Prius?

2. I don't know whether The Great Global Warming Swindle [Google Video; 1 hour, 13 minutes] is swindle or science; I am (alas) no scientist. But I know something about politics, and one thing I know is that one should always be suspicious of anything that will centralize more power in the hands of politicians.

19mar2007 — COMMANDOS! USA®

Don't even think of idolizing them, for COMMANDOS! USA® "do not strive in any way to be superstars or celebrities"!

18mar2007 —

17mar2007 —

If his "murky brown concoction of seven herbs and spices" doesn't cure AIDS as claimed, Gambia's president Colonel Jammeh might want to see how it tastes on chicken; there was another fake colonel ran his "eleven herbs & spices" gambit a long, long time.

16mar2007 — Steven Torres, Mountain Lion Alert:

After killing larger prey, such as deer or bighorn sheep, mountain lions usually first open the body cavity under the ribs, remove and consume the vital organs (i.e., heart, and liver), and leave a gut pile. Next they eat the thigh muscles. (42)

Mountain lions do not recognize provincial boundaries, state lines, or city limits. (45)

Most people do not realize how elusive mountain lions are. Do you simply see them if they are nearby? Can you easily observe and take pictures of them? The answer to both questions is "no." Even wildlife researchers who intensively monitor these animals with radio telemetry rarely see them. (47)

It is easy to imagine that mountain lions occupy only remote, "undisturbed" wildernesses. This seems natural: we rarely see mountain lions, and they appear to have a natural aversion to humans. Yet mountain lions commonly wander in areas with high levels of human activity. I recall discussing the distribution of mountain lions with a Fish and Game biologist who monitored the first radio-collared mountain lions in California in the early 1970s. This was the first time this technology was used to monitor mountain lions, and small airplanes were equipped with receivers to find and document the animals' movements. The biologist was most impressed that "the cougars were commonly around campgrounds with people." He added, "I was amazed that nobody saw or reported them. We did not expect this." (64-5)

Mountain lions are vocal and can be commonly heard, if present. False. Mountain lions are better known for their silence. Vocalizations are heard so rarely that it is more likely that you are hearing some other animal. Most vocalizations by mountain lions are "close range" sounds, intended to communicate with dependent young, and you are very unlikely to hear any of this intimate chatter. Although mountain lions may vocalize loudly during mating or when fighting, even these sounds are rarely heard. Mountain lions do not usually vocalize when approaching prey or humans. (63-4)

Eye contact presents a challenge to the mountain lion, showing that you are aware of its presence. Eye contact also helps you know where it is. (79)

Mountain lions have demonstrated that all types of cats and dogs are quite edible, regardless of size or pedigree. (104)

10mar2007 — Things you cannot not love, #734: