Friday, August 29, 2003

Newcastle Island Pavilion
Newcastle Island
Our tenth anniversary today.
Coming in from a one am backyard under the plum tree cocktail with PC of T found a spider in a ball resting on the tallest icecube in the bourbon. My touching the edge of the cube gently caused it to unfold itself like a hand opening, and it sank bank waving into the drink, assuming as it sunk the same hunched posture. Fishing it out with a spoon I rested the now unconscious spider in a dry part of the sink. PC said I should have drunk it, that such a thing was considered "good luck". This morning, warming the mug for my coffee I saw the spider, who had climbed out of the sink and was now enjoying something sugary on the counter, but it had already started spinning, so was able to lift web and spider with a knitting needle and deposit it in the front porch planter. Off to Newcastle Island today.
Japanese Prints: The Dutch in Nagasaki

Wednesday, August 27, 2003

Perfect Front Door
Two Poems by Steve Malmude
Philip Guston's Poem-Pictures
Steve Malmude: The Bundle: Selected Poems
76/03/12
FOUL ON THE FIRST PLAY
T: Stephen J. Cannell [19]
S: Chas. Floyd Johnson [2] & Dorothy L. Bailey
D: Lou Antonio [5]
Rockford's former parole officer, a con artist par excellence, tricks
him into investigating the shady dealings surrounding the cutthroat
competition for a pro-basketball franchise.
Marcus Hayes/O'Brien [1] . . . . . . . . . Lou Gossett [1]
Manny Stickells. . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dick Davalos
Martin Eastman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . David White
Greg Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pepper Martin [1]

Steve Sorenson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James Ingersoll
Tom Corell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Al Ruscio [1]
Todd Morris. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John Mahon [1]
Commissioner Bob Tremayne. . . . . . . . . Chuck Bowman
Ray Fairchild. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vincent Cobb
Receptionist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Pamela Serpe
Sherm Addison. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ji-Tu Cumbuka
Leasing Agent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Al Checco [1]
Secretary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Janet Winter
Janice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jayne Kennedy
The Smoke, 1753
Canuck pot: 'Crack of marijuana'
Illegal smiles: "... the smile amnesty will run out on November 3, Meunier said"
Selections from the Oprah Book Club or Episodes of Magnum P.I. ?

1. Death of the Flowers
2. River, Cross My Heart
3. The Arrow That Is Not Aimed
4. Songs in Ordinary Time
5. Going Home
6. Stones from the River
7. Echoes Of The Mind
8. A Lesson Before Dying
9. Let Me Hear The Music
10. The Pilot's Wife
11. Did You See the Sunrise?
12. Drowning Ruth
13. Open House
14. Autumn Warrior
15. Back Roads

1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 14 are Magnum P.I. episodes
Arms And The Man--Iraq profiteering blog

Tuesday, August 26, 2003

Biscuit Henge
Butch Mushroom
Pearl Blauvelt
The Worst Journey in the World: " Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised. It is the only form of adventure in which you put on your clothes at Michaelmas and keep them on until Christmas, and, save for a layer of the natural grease of the body, find them as clean as though they were new. It is more lonely than London, more secluded than any monastery, and the post comes but once a year. As men will compare the hardships of France, Palestine, or Mesopotamia, so it would be interesting to contrast the rival claims of the Antarctic as a medium of discomfort. A member of Campbell's party tells me that the trenches at Ypres were a comparative picnic. But until somebody can evolve a standard of endurance I am unable to see how it can be done. Take it all in all, I do not believe anybody on earth has a worse time than an Emperor penguin."
CONTEXT: Martha Haas on Jean Rhys: "Yet her elusiveness is of a completely different kind from the tradition established by Stein, Barnes, Joyce, and Woolf, and for that she is perpetually ignored by critics of the experimental, even though she is also ignored by the critics of realism because she doesn't fit easily into a realistic tradition either. "
Neal Stephenson Rewrites History
Deep Beatle and Shostakovich listener Ian Macdonald passes: "I consider there are no experts on Shostakovich. The subject is too vast, our present knowledge too partial, and the requisite state of sympathetic insight into his life and work too underdeveloped for anyone to claim to be, or be regarded as, an expert on him . . . I certainly wouldn't, being at best an ephemeral agitator in the cause of truth . . ."
Robert Christgau's Hitchenesque decline
Lenny Bruce died for our sins

Monday, August 25, 2003

stripey guy
The Believer - Beth Orton: "It's an hour drive to beaches that look like muted over-exposed photographs, and countryside every shade of green you ever saw all at once. And the trees and bushes would have a kind of light fur a bit like skunk weed, and the trees seemed to glisten. Kissing was something I did a lot of. "
Greatest Animal Novelist of All Time?
We Have Ways of Making You Talk: "Admiral Jacoby’s rationale is fascinating: first of all, because there might be something the interrogators missed, or can find out if there are new suspects captured somewhere else sometime. And you wouldn’t want Padilla to have any sense of hope if they need to question him again: “Any delay in obtaining information from Padilla could have the severest consequences for national security and public safety.” Secondly—and this is what’s really creepy—because Padilla might reveal “sources and methods.” That is, he might talk about precisely those means that were used to make him talk, therefore he can never be allowed to talk at all.
"
Asian Historical Architecture
via Ron...
Lee Ann Brown in the Charlotte Observer

Sunday, August 24, 2003

Sardine cans
Guston from Gusto
wish Ray Bradbury a Happy Birthday
The cat, mice, the weasel

"The cat is called musio, mouse-catcher, because it is the enemy of mice. It is commonly called catus, cat, from captura, the act of catching. Others say it gets the name from capto, because it catches mice with its sharp eyes. For it has such piercing sight that it overcomes the dark of night with the gleam of light from its eyes. As a result, the Greek word catus means sharp, or cunning. "
The Aberdeen Bestiary
Le Camembert Magique - Paris, 13th district, by night
Modern Library dust jacket designers/illustrators
Russian Utopia : depository
good amazon scarlatti list
Wanda Landowska
"In the preface to his first collection of keyboard works—a set of thirty sonatas he called Essercizi—Domenico Scarlatti warns the reader not to "expect any profound learning, but rather an ingenious jesting with art . . . therefore show yourself more human than critical, and then your pleasure will increase."
The Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti
Tristram Shandy: "'Tis an undercraft of authors to keep up a good understanding amongst words, as politicians do amongst men - not knowing how near they may be under a necessity of placing them to each other.' "
Honoré Daumier and His Lithographic Work