==pla|\|ing lakes==

Friday, June 11, 2004

A good time to die -- accidentally at least -- in southern AZ this summer: a death industry conglomerate is offering free services (not "receptacles" though) for anyone who dies under the age of 18, or any age if it's accidental

9:33 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, June 10, 2004

I hope the Pentagon gets its ass sued off: after denying Gulf War Syndrome for over 10 years, a new study by the Pentagon concludes that unknown thousands of Gulf War I vets were exposed to chemicals that could make them sick

How do the people who hide this stuff sleep at night? Of course they knew it all along...

Sorry about all the political posts. Just can't help myself.

10:35 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, June 09, 2004

Mike Ruppert says the 2 high profile CIA resignations recently are the harbingers of an intel plot to unseat the Bush administration

The Bush administration has proved itself to be an insular group of inept, dishonest and dangerous CEO's of the corporation known as America. They have become very bad for business and the Board of Directors is now taking action. Make no mistake, the CIA works for "The Board" - Wall Street and big money. The long-term (very corrupt and unethical) agenda of the Board, in the face of multiple worsening global crises, was intended to proceed far beyond the initially destructive war in Iraq, toward an effective reconstruction and a strategic response to Peak Oil. But the neocons have stalled at the ugly stage: killing hundreds of thousands of people; destroying Iraq's industrial and cultural infrastructure as their own bombs and other people's RPGs blow everything up; getting caught running torture camps; and making the whole world intensely dislike America.

These jerks are doing real damage to their masters' interests.

But (not surprisingly) Tenet and the CIA were and remain much better at covert operations and planning ahead than the Bush administration ever was. Tenet and Pavitt actually prepared and left a clear, irrefutable and incriminating paper trail which not only proves that they had shunned and refused to endorse the documents, the CIA also did not support the nuke charges and warned Bush not to use them.

12:09 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

From the Ronald Reagan entry in David Thomson's The Biographical Dictionary of Film:

It was the greatest career move in the history of entertainment -- simple, audacious, revolutionary. Washed up as a movie actor, spun desert dry over the years on television, he had secured a West Coast daytime talk show, Ask the Governor, from 1956 to 1974. But he was vigorous and amiable still, and advertisers could imagine a bigger audience. He could learn lines overnight; even when he forgot them, he spoke naturally in movie-ese. Only occasionally did he confuse camera right and camera left, and his double-take recovery was an unfailing delight. His walk across the White House lawn, his cupping of a deaf ear to catch questions, his humble "Well..." -- these strokes became epic. Babies had them down flat. And so, he made is a nationwide series in which, for eight years, he played Mr. President -- That's Me!, amassing more camera time than anyone else in the Actors' Guild and deftly feeding the lines and situations of Warner Borthers in the 1940s back into world affairs.

He was a hugely successful and evasive president, as blind to disaster iniquity and humiliation as he was to the Constitution...

To paraphrase Gore Vidal, the wisdom and integrity of someone told where to stand and what to say for twenty years were made manifest. The fraudulence of the presidency was revealed so that the office could never quite be honored again.

Lastly, here's a series of links detailing the stellar record of Der Gipper.

11:10 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, June 07, 2004

"Whaaaaa?" file:

Chris Hitchens, who's been among the notables who seem to have um lost their heads post-9/11, now does a 180° and gives The Gipper the props he truly deserves.

One could go on. I only saw him once up close, which happened to be when he got a question he didn't like. Was it true that his staff in the 1980 debates had stolen President Carter's briefing book? (They had.) The famously genial grin turned into a rictus of senile fury: I was looking at a cruel and stupid lizard. His reply was that maybe his staff had, and maybe they hadn't, but what about the leak of the Pentagon Papers? Thus, a secret theft of presidential documents was equated with the public disclosure of needful information. This was a man never short of a cheap jibe or the sort of falsehood that would, however laughable, buy him some time.

The daily amazement quotient continues to bubble over regularly.

6:13 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

R.I.P. Robert Quine

The ex-tax lawyer and guitarist with Richard Hell and with the Raybeats, not the director of The World of Suzie Wong.

I remember Brian Eno mentioning him in the liner notes for On Land, as he gave Eno Miles Davis' "He Loved Him Madly" to listen to.

He also worked with Lou Reed, Matthew Sweet and John Zorn, among many others.

Peace, Bob.

6:07 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

For the first time American policy and perceived values may be starting to make consumers turn away from US brandnames [Metafilter thread]

Never thought I'd see the day. But it makes sense in a way: the logical conclusion of the apotheosis of the Management Way of Knowledge married to the myth that whatever America does (no matter how morally questionable) is justified by it's self-identification with Democracy and Freedom, fused with apocalyptic and hysterically self-righteous Protestantism in the wake of the "failure of Communism".

We're way past canny Republicans selling short when a Bush is elected; shrubco has actually managed to make people think twice about buying Coke.

No small feat.

1:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, June 06, 2004

2 new films of note from Metafilter: The Corporation and Ryan

A gentleman panhandler. One of the pioneers of Canadian animation. Oscar nominee. Poor beggar. An artist unable to create. God observing the world. Fallen angel. Arrogant. Shy. Broken. Not destroyed.

Ryan, directed by Chris Landreth, hovers between animation and documentary, and defies easy definition. It is based on the life of Ryan Larkin, a Canadian animator who, thirty years ago, at the National Film Board of Canada, produced some of the most influential animated films of his time. Today, Ryan lives on welfare and panhandles for spare change in downtown Montreal. How could such an artistic genius follow this path?

In Ryan we hear the voice of Ryan Larkin and people who have known him, but these voices speak through strange, twisted, broken and disembodied 3D generated characters...people whose appearances are bizarre, humorous or disturbing. These appearances reflect Chris Landreth's personal world of "psychological realism."

A world encapsulated in the words of Anais Nin:
"We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are."

Metafilter thread for The Corporation.

2:57 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Careful with that text message, Eugene

2:46 PM - [Link] - Comments ()