The Lone Haranguer

oranges

2010-04-05T01:05:00.000-07:00

hidden in the grass
a snake lies
whispering haiku
to someone else's heaven

this proud tree sheds memories
tomorrow's children will rake
off the streets of their souls
fingers caked with an absence of knowing

what green was once
the sound of birds
oranges
water you could swim in

pounding out pemmican on pavement
where previously chariots roared
careening through one lone century
so long of hate

that later generations still choke
on fumes we wrote off as harmless
but capitalism is ultimately charmless
and unsafe at any speed

2007-05-28T01:31:00.000-07:00

she covers me with time.

hands lifting mine.

beneath the sheets she sleeps serene and naked, waiting.

her eyes a mirror i see my own in.

one heart beating in two breasts.

sweat and sticky sex and smiles.

uncoercible laughter and bosom and joy-fuck sunrise.

a heart that wants to hold me inside itself.

pliable in all the right ways.

believes in my dreams with high ceilings.

my breath is listened to and breathed in by other lungs.

voice warming to new climes.

mayhaps a poem lies beneath this unsheathed sword.

have i the heart to extend it upon her papyrus day?

2007-05-03T22:00:00.000-07:00

“No — Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and shortwinded elations of men.”

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left. -Alexander Pope

2007-05-03T21:02:00.000-07:00

we silly humans attempt to hide our vices from others
so we only have ourselves to whom to whisper lies.

lines in hands worn white with the dust of books I do not have the time to read.
lungs rusty with smoke, throat coated with a fine fire of whiskey,
dreams dangled before my eyes,
a child's mobile with only slightly more mature themes after which I may drool and pine.

buxom blonde barbacks strut their slender midriffs around my icicle eyes,
hips hugging that hint of sex,
whose simple tickle has little to do with love
and much to do with nothings whispered but insincere.

it's my dick in my pants
it's my empty pint glass
it's diaper prices these days
it's society at large
it's my stagnant pond of ennui
it's my sociopathy
it's someone else's fault,
i swear

all the time

and blame it on my parents
on George Carlin
on our Beta machine and boxes of ambiguous thrift store recordings
on my father's stoned biker buddies
on the sixties
on the ninties
on MTV
on middle school, high school, public school, college
on punk kids, on adults, on the liquor

I blame it on the whispering winds
whose influence cannot be discounted
as easily as a hangover
or hanger-on.
That sly, hungry stare of a predatory beast,
which I prefer to the fallout of their makeup in the morning.
That love-all, fuck-all apathy of today's nymphomaniacs
dressed up like baristas, construction workers, suits, skirts,
judges, jurors, executioners.
Anyone's cord can be kinked.

Oh, the tell-all tits of those with too much in their mouths
and not enough on their minds. I'd like to come all over their tomorrows
and then feign guilt 'cause I'd feel none.
(see ennui, see sociopath,
see man, see man run, see man ruin everything)

if everyone loves you, then you're fucked for sure.
if no one loves you, sure it hurts, but your poetry gets better
hands hairier
heart hollower
head heavier
but everything is easy 'cause
there's purpose in everything you do
even when you feel sorry for yourself
you miserable shit
you cad
oaf
bumbler of other's love.

do we try to change what's inside? because we don't approve?
or is it easier to learn to accept that which used to bother us about ourselves?
move on to the next thing we decide to loathe, regret alter about our selves.

personally i find it hard to find the time to feel much shame or guilt.
where's the productivity in self-abasement? what a waste.
i can worry about how others feel without caring what they may think of me or my actions.
i can care about and for myself at the same time as i ask extremes to dance, push limits around, live on a few of those rumored edges.

2007-03-21T15:43:00.001-07:00

With someone who holds nothing but trumps, it is impossible to play cards.
--Hebbel

I told her she had demons blood

2007-03-15T22:37:00.000-07:00

and it made her want me more
even by telephone, I could tell
even without bacon
even with a college hangover

stars in the heart and head
and buns in someone else’s oven
her eyes still fucked mine to the wall
even by telephone
even by poety
even without music
though music helped stoke our blaze

wishes beyond the words
wanting so badly to share myself with someone
but selfish
even by telephone
even without orange juice
even through venetian blinds
even earlier than we wanted it to be

but we poured into each other anyway
that night by the fire
holding each others sweat in pockets
hidden away in our tapestry of flesh
eyes aglow
even by telephone I remember
even without time
even now, with everything and nothing
and scratch all to do with it but build

in the morning the smell of bacon
will remind me of her again
as it always does
even after college
fucking
selfish
oven
done.

2007-02-25T05:38:00.000-08:00

Too full of life for words.
Walking 'round in prose gardens
with poems on the soles of my shoes.
Homeless this morning, drifting, vagueries.
To sleep, perchance to dream!
Aye, there's the rub we've been waiting for.
The demon of truth, her mandibles locked across your forearm.

Too full of life for words, good words.
So I dabble with meaninglessness.
Fail miserably.
Begin
again.

Two years too late...

2007-01-30T23:57:00.000-08:00

01.30.2005
jon

remember smokey ruins of a friendship gone too soon
our names dusted against a heaven we barely knew
but those dark-time words
weapons against some urgent night

she swallowed you before so many of us got the chance
but in my dreams you walk on water
a slight mist in the air behind you
lending a glow to the frame of your stocky figure

remember opening up your bedroom
your clothes, books, life
lying on the floor
waiting to be swept up

now: friends go on without
we forget those times
as the ebb and flow of emotions
slowly wash each other further out to sea

[i wonder if you were here
what would have happened
i wonder if we’d work in the prison systems together
still drink 40s every other night
put the devil up our nose
or if we’d go to baseball games in seattle
with my daughters
garden
eat hot dogs
and talk about it
all.]

I find a few parts of my old life I'd rather not remember...

2006-12-18T05:01:00.000-08:00

but they treat me well enough at 3:33 a.m. on what I've come to call a "friender".

Busy busy rekindling old ties with fast friends who folly towards solitude, like me. But don't we always fail in our lonely attempts and come crawling back to the beginning, which is also us?

The narrative thread winding through my disjointed dialogue with death or something close to endings. I tied my tongue with threads thieved from tyrants tough and troubled, their audience aghast at such impurities of spirit sacred and sanctioned by said holy holiest of saints beneath our banner of dissent.

enough. relax and read, despite the distant thunder, despite the fallacy of hope, despite this breadth of bookshelves.

i remain reticent and solitary, waiting for your spark.

these are the kinds of notes I take

2006-12-09T05:38:00.000-08:00

“sweety, you can’t stand that close to fight club, you need to play in the kitchen or the window and if you don’t then I’m gonna chew on your bumblebee costume until its soaked in drool.”

jingle bells – knots on my hammock

precise fragments [title]
“it is a luxury to be understood”

a song book and a talk book
“a good morning is when the sun wakes up outside”
“not a normal daddy”

In-F-able

le mot juste – “the right word” (complete idiots guide to a smart vocabulary)
pessimism and paranoia

judiciary poetics

mealme.com

thesuperficial.com

celebritybaby.com

scrapiteria.blogspot.com

create a parental etymology

daniel – “a pattern of consciousness and wisdom” – ezekiel

judgement of god, god my judge

mesach – “that draws with force”

shadrach – ‘tender, nipple’

abednego – ‘shining; servant of light

(daniel’s companions)

cast into a den of lions

she’s my daniel come to judgement

“a wise and upright judge”

one of the 4 great prophets

NOT mentioned in the Old Testament

interpretation of dream

memes are irrepressible

‘i dink muh’

‘bing, bing, bing’

‘pitty fwowuhs fo mama at gramma’s home’

sign share – ‘eamon home’

p.5.06

upon waking (5:37pm)

lyli says 10-14 words approximating the events which led to the bandage on her forehead. i catch: ‘mama ‘ome’ ‘bandage ahhhn’ ‘fawh down’ ‘chair’ ‘wine cabinet’ & ‘cheese crackers’

thumb toe finger tummy

‘dwah on paypuh’ – mama’s home, papa’s home, shawna’s home, noah’s home

‘i dropped my crayon in a crack’

would that i could be so bold a creature as to live

big brother isn’t watching, he’s collating

‘mi papa’ ‘no, mi papa’

mi di-a-puh

mi bithycal

calling each other: ‘come sister’ - ‘coming!’

mediocrity’s momentum

stab a wager or hazard a guess

my girls play house across the landscape of my chest

s- ‘shushu haf teem bi hrsf’

to dry a fire

gitmo and the superconductor – S & M

james tate

tony hoagland

hate hotel

lyli – singular dish, bowl dish, a very categorical girl

1^st round draft pix – title for collection of sloppy baseball poems

®elationships

http://mhpbooks.com/ - book blog

http://justseeds.org/

old turtle and the broken truth

trilingual books in english spanish and sign language

illegal art 0-8118-4749-7

octopus conspiracy

they have a word for it – rheingold

the meaning of tingo – adam jacot de bolnod

anaclypsis – godfrey higgins

laci cole – bell hooks style bks, political slant, jensen, teaching material

how to be a nonconformist

happy to be nappy

cathy hansen – st. martin’s librarian head

howard robertson

passive aggression

feigned cooperation

vindictive mediocrity

http://www.2good2toss.com/

prefuse

http://liberaloasis.com/

this is the eternal struggle of the artist: to ration out those minutes so lusted for by others, when, after all criticisms and hindsights are in, would have been worth more to hold onto.

paul farmer

kidder – mountains beyond mountains

partners in health – daniel’s rex.

www.12ozprophet.com

thecityscums.com

stencilrevolution.com

think about the object subjectively and the subject objectively

the revolution will be letterpressed

sf stories set in the bookstores of alien and future civilizations

socerers covens on zlata ulicka – medieval street of gold

hulking ancients

clad in endless ivy

native like i am native

cracking a beer into the first curve headed for home

the longitude of his grimace

it had latitude

a clicka nd a half to our whiskey

a temper i’ve gotta lose or lock up

another two years of crazy

dancing without drugs

eagles may soar but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines

2006-11-16T21:48:00.000-08:00

I genuflected all my second chances away
on a wing and a a few prayers,
a scattered poem here and there
to end this static relationship with daylight.

Realizing it was merely winter in the Northwest
I broke out the whiskey and limericks,
stocked up on sugary snacks and sold my high metabolism
for a blanket and two dozen fat cells in a syringe filled with sunlight.

Me, who laughed too much at bad jokes,
choked on one too many garter belts
and devoured whole chocolate bars unbeknownst
in the dark dark single nights of a lonely
intoned by the absence of a fog drunk on daylight.

As salmon slapped their tales away on a river with no ears
you poured wine out on my skin before the fire and had everyone's way with me
before the sun rose on our stuffed schedules
and we sobered to the scuffed reality of the despicable clicking of clocks.

Seven chapters, a six pack and a bottle of cab sav later
I decided to Google true love once and for all
but all I came up with was some dude named Haysus
who didn't say enough but we wrote too much of it down.

Right now I collect milk crates from dark gas stations,
romanticize people named Pablo late at night atop the keys my tipee-yo-yo,
dream of tropical beaches with a great beautiful, brilliant nothing stretching out
to the absolute limits of my fancy, fantasy, folly or fucking el fin.

My daughters sleep upstairs while I commune with Bacchus,
piss wine-red beet blood out beneath the rotting apples.
They sleep, mourning their stems on strike for autumn,
as I press their ancestors into a fine pulp we guzzle down around the fire,
blessing blood and fish and fruit and root and worm alike.

Remembering that nightmares used to only happen in our sleep
the newspaper leaves my hands read with blood.
My scrambled eggs lack the substance they did before war tore
my breakfast cereal asunder and wore my patriotism ragged,
eagles may soar but weasels don..t get sucked into jet engines.

You know there's something wrong when you read
about Tibet and Cuba to cheer yourself up.
You know there's something wrong when your recycling outweighs your regrets.
You know there's something wrong when signs become confused with sins and sighs,
when someone else's tomorrows masquerade as our todays
and we regret to remember days better than this one.

We who invested our happiness in Hollywood daydreams
could not bear the blinding light of reality boring into our artwork,
tumbled coffee mugs in some diner we gambled against bombs
before someone wrote it down or remembered to remember this time,
or remembered how to speak so people hear.

We who invested our veins in someone else's bloodbank.
We who bought our seats in heaven from a devil in disguise.
We who have the luxury of poems and the time to digest steak.
We who muddy the waters of slaughter in a poem someone else dreamed last year.
We who bleed the blood of others out upon a canvas dedicated to the dead.

Our humble empty words strive to fill the stomache of some God we only think we desire
as our systems crush our systems and we struggle for a breath in this landscape bereft of beauty that we only envisage as being real. We fall, failures for freedom, under a flag set rigid with wire so that not even the slightest breeze may tickle its...

2006-11-12T18:25:00.000-08:00

it's hard tell the truth to someone every day... it's hard to tell the truth to the same person day in and day out. to try to bring one's whole self to bare and share it with the same individual over and over again. I prefer to part and parcell pieces of my self, shards of my one whole truth, amongst a multitude.

2006-08-20T16:30:00.000-07:00

goddamn but i want your poetry in my veins again like thunder under stormy skies and eyes upon us as in olden days when we thought we were so much younger than we really were.

my anger bubbles up and over sometimes and I long for your presence to diffuse my tempered steel, water to quench my just desert. just desert. your trees sway for me with you in them, branches dreaming of roots and vices versus us forever and another ever and a day like today, hollow but for emptiness.

salesmen of our selves we run rampant through whatever ramparts rise before us, braving battlements and raingutters alike for the sake of salvation and her gemstones. forget about whatever it is you think you lack, for you lack only me.

2006-08-15T23:35:00.000-07:00

She fucked me until all the beer was gone from my refrigerator
and then the lonliness got the best of me.
So I learned how to subtly destroy myself
without anyone noticing,
with everyone thinking quite the opposite,
in fact or fantasy.

See, everyone always thinks the writer is so romantic
so capable, jovial, affable,
bullshit.
Anyone who actually falls in love with them,
finds out their little ineptitudes and daily failures,
begins a quietly adamant loathing,
a hate untouchable by change.

She turned my kite into a puppet -
strings severed, crossed, tied to my arteries,
bleeding out my ink to fill
a blank black canvas
with more black.
Usurping my page from my self,
my hand from my pen,
and my time from all my clocks.

But blue windows opened on my yellow eyes
drunk in the morning sun like syrup
through blindnesses drawn loose
so many pretty tales came walking
waking up my soul with coffee colored kisses
and I healed a bit
toughened a bit
forgot about a piece of my heart and kept
staying in one place while moving.

2006-08-15T23:34:00.000-07:00

Last night the stars swallowed my upwards gaping mouth
as the steam from my urine coalesced with the smoke from my dangling cigarette
and my beer bottle beat out a pulsing rhythm on my thigh
to match the muffled whump of bombs.

I think
I am.
I think
I be.
I am, I be
I define.

2006-08-04T01:04:00.000-07:00

my self subverts
evolves, disentigrates
it hurts
so I make a salve
from your arsenal of
batted lashes
wrap them around
my burning pain
whose ashes ascend to
some rendering of heaven
etched into your back

my sky bursts with crimson
orange and turquoise
you with jewels spread
over my thin thread
of a precipice
me poised to leap
into your shadowed
fading rainbow
translucently seducing
the light of my night

2006-08-02T01:00:00.000-07:00

for some reason
my words wouldn’t
work for her

I gave her my
tongue and it came
back chewed

in someone else’s
mouth it could
not weave it’s magic

so I spit blood
down into the dust
to see the color of my soul

it came back to me in sepia robes
pressing a wet Arabic
in its cheek

I said to my tongue:
“I do not know your echo.”
and my tongue replied:

“hold me…
buy me a beer
and forget you ever met me

like all the other
walking haikus
you’ve put your penis in.”

I replied:
“you don’t talk cock
unless I tell you,

don’t you know God
made it officially illegal
in this state?

Besides, johnny cash’s
ghost is making
levi’s commericals

what the fuck do
you care who my
word/cock’s for

when the federal note
is fucking johnny’s ghost
into the ground?

this rainbow’s brighter
than any black
you’ve ever worn.”

my tongue and
my word together
in the same mouth

as homeless teens
hawk theirs
in alleyways

for less than
the pocket of
my levis

fucks for bucks
to anyone
who buys

the american way
american tongue
american cock

american haiku
american pocket
word mouth

my tongue as star
on reality t.v.
thinking it owns this desert

of televised fantasies
and bazooka joe
dreams

my tongue awakens
in Yankee stadium
two on two out

my mouth full
of counting
deceits

with race and base
place, space, the heat
heart and hate of the game

my disgusted
tongue spits
itself out

wondering on
the metal
in your mouth

wishing wet was happy
dark was rich
and words

were wings
in some mouth
of God.

feeling ballsy?

2006-07-05T20:45:00.000-07:00

yes, it's one of those random word generators for slipping sex pill ads through your e-mail filters. isn't life odd? frankly, as a poet, i love this shit. is there a word for it?

cowbells. Sohu DakialAdd coke
scares outta working unplugged
sequence MUSTmatch overnight
shiny aligned CDs.
magnifing curvy denied jukebox
invasion
MBP smelled funny looked
shows issuesIn earlyth pulp
sense amount internet CDROM
carbon
Youve good universe. sharp
townMORE WORLD HEADLINES paralyze Mumbai death exceeds urges action
THIS:
PaintBall Blotter Geist
Paradox
Common ribbons
thats
literacy Second contained acid
weekthe thelast update
PROCEDURE Supp. Alone:
GHz .GHz MCE Remote
involved modern
raceUS sued trialUS courts
usually cheaply intended sale.A
lively
lengtha vs tensionto ModeI
EDTMcEwen Tours fourth
Atlantic Northwest Gulf
xaecd gundam creature pride
Daily Updates Sports
endoffile final null IMPORTANT NOTE: sequence
GameFAQs MP.com TV.com

See what selling books can lead to?

2006-06-15T16:53:00.000-07:00

Hi, Sky,

Thanks for the book, The Police Sniper. I'm doing a book on the
murder of JFk, and needed the book for it's discussions on
ballistics, trajectory, etc. My JFK book will summarize the 2000 or
so books already written covering how Lee Harvey Oswald was not the
killer, and what really happened (only 1% of the books written
support the Warren Commission, but those are the only ones you ever
hear about).

I'm not a gun person, so your book filled in the gaps in my knowledge
and will permit me to discuss the ballistics and trajectory end of
the story intelligently for the numerous shots fired from behind from
at least two locations. The shot or shots fired from the front (the
storm drain for sure, maybe the grassy knoll, too, though the
evidence on that is very weak) don't need ballistics analysis, being
so close to the target. It's really amazing how many factors can
come into play to govern the path of a bullet once it is fired from a
rifle - easily a dozen or more major considerations, everything from
wind, to rotating the weapon, to high-low trajectory complications,
moving target, spin of the bullet, and on and on. As a woodsman, you
may already know all of this.

We probably are related. There aren't that many Cosbys around. The
Cosbys came to America from England about 300 years ago, one branch
going to New York, the other branch going to Georgia and Tennessee.
Unfortunately, the Southern branch, like most Southerners, had less
than no respect for Africans being human and had children via slaves,
who then acquired their last name. Read Lincoln's Second Inaugural
Address, which is also engraved in the Lincoln Memorial in DC, for a
nice discussion of that Southern mentality. My family hails from the
New York branch, where thank God we held no slaves.

Interestingly, Sky, my eBay handle is pwcskylands, because I have 202
mostly wooded acres on a 2100 foot mountain top in NE Pennsylvania
that is one of the few places on the East Coast with genuinely dark
night skies. I'd like to put a world class telescope on my land, and
let it be used by astronomy graduate students at some major
university.

My nickname for 53 years has been "Bill." No one forgets that, and I
consider it an honor to share the same name with such a great man.
There is also a Bill Cosby in American history, who is my ancestor,
whose honor you can judge for yourself: Governor William Cosby of
New York Colony was a loyalist to the King. When the editor of the
largest New York City newpaper in the early 1700's wrote a series of
scathing editorials against the King, the King directed Gov. Cosby to
prosecute Peter Zenger for treason. Zenger chose a jury trial and
won, the landmark victory in freedom of the press, which later became
the First Amendment to the Constitution, the foundation of the Bill
of Rights.

Maybe this will be an inspiration for you to research it out and
write a poem about it. My brother, Rev. James Cosby, Los Angeles, once found a portrait of Gov. Cosby in a museum
in Northern Ireland and took a photo of the painting.

I'll keep you in mind next time I order any books. If you have any
books on the murder of JFK, let me know, and I'll see if they could
be of any use to me. I already have the key books, but I really
ought to have more of the 2000 written if I'm going to cover the
topic properly.

Sincerely,

Paul W. ("Bill") Cosby, MD, Forest City, PA

2006-06-02T00:14:00.000-07:00

The Primary and most beautiful of Nature's qualities
is motion, which agitates her at all times, but this
motion is simply the perpetual consequence of crimes,
it is conserved by means of crimes alone.
(D.A.F. De Sade)

2006-05-27T23:53:00.000-07:00

couple tips:

don't try to stop drinking while reading the ginger man by j.p. donleavy

and

don't try to quit smoking before driving a 26 foot u-haul across the state.

oh.

and don't kid yourself schmuck-o.

2006-05-27T00:05:00.000-07:00

inane seagull squak and squalor at the brew pub
some sort of soccer reunion from years i wish to forget
for women i wish i had never met
i drink several beers i wish i hadn't had the nerve to
sip whiskey
watch muted basketball replays
wonder if i'm a replay
or what i'd sound like muted
wish i had a coaster underneath me all the time
to soak up all the b, s, & t
read a little slip of the ginger
man enough for me
seagulls squak another pitcher down the gutter
love it
hate it
reminds me of the city dump

now relaxed in smoke and cyber bliss
impossible missions
dark basements
little white pills for stiff muscles
a fine meal for lonely stomaches like mine

too bad about that heart of yours
the one with all the problems
talking to itself
murmuring about that spiral staircase wrapped around the inside of your dreams
the one the rainbows waltz up and down and up again
in the mornings after mamosa and chatter on the last night's sin and squeeze
shameless like sheep's head and onion soup

a drop of sweat on the forehead of some scripture
two oceans lost at a bend in the cliche
paper cliche like the man in the phone booth next to you
your childhood thinks it knows
like the memory of silk
or the taste of mango in the sun
and when i go i hope it's toast
about mid-morning

tuesday's nightstand

2006-05-26T22:22:00.001-07:00

i awake
set my coffee on tuesday's
nightstand

it being only friday the mug falls
to the carpet
it being my old apartment there is
no carpet
it being the past it may not have
happened this way at all

so maybe it fell
maybe it left stains
stains that would have meant something
yesterday
before i cared
about tomorrow more than carpets
actually by stains i mean girlfriends
by care i mean goddammit!
and by tomorrow i mean maybe it
didn't really happen this way
at all

the weekend walks in
takes off her coats of bullshit
hangs his toast and traffic jams
all over my shabby apartment
makes out passionately with the blender
for seventeen seconds and passes out
under the toilet
this being a love poem
it doesn't really have to end this way
maybe it isn't really love?
maybe it isn't really ending

yesterday's realizations

2006-05-12T20:36:00.000-07:00

people get fat because they eat off of forks with four prongs. if they'd switch to a fork with three prongs, presto! 10lbs gone like that. Try it.

and...

i'm good at prioritizing and getting shit done in this life on time because I cracked out on warcraft for however many thousand hours back in my other life.

Reading the newestWorld War 3 Illustrated currently and perusing this strange little anti-corporate culture jamming pamphlet I discovered. Check it out at ofthebeast.com

Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason

2006-05-12T16:44:00.000-07:00

Novalis

We Interrupt This Message

2006-04-28T00:10:00.000-07:00

cool.

"the problem with these people is their cities have never been bombed and their mothers never told them to shut up."

2006-04-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

charles bukowski, the inimitable, uncompromising saint of selfish alcoholic poets.

AMREEKA SHEEKA BEEKA

2006-04-07T08:15:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to the home front Will Hewitt. Thanks for all the good work. Please come and grace our humble home whenever you make it back to this coastline.

WELCOME WELCOME WELCOME

TO THE GRAPEVINE NEWS SERVICE
*anticopyright*

A continuing e-mail list
of free poetry and prose illustrating the humanity of the situation and
news of the world direct from the eyes and ears of a wandering bard who
has been there, or whatever.

***************************************************************************

AMREEKA SHEEKA BEEKA

Ahkmed and I are sitting on the bed with the fuzzy synthetic fiber
blankets that maybe have big pictures of teddy bears on them, that or big
kitsch roses and curvilinear decorative designs with curlicues and
what-have-you. He is telling me a story from an Egyptian film; it goes
something like this:

Two brothers want to go to America-- Amreeka in Arabic-- but they can't
get the visas and papers so the government won't let them in. So they go
to Mexico and try to sneak across the border. But they are arrested by the
border cops. As the cops take them away, they start to sing:

AMREEKA SHEEKA BEEKA!!!

I ask him, what does 'Sheeka Beeka' mean?

He says it doesn't mean anything. Just made-up nothing words. . . but sung
to the right tune, by two Arab brothers being arrested while illegally
crossing the U.S./ Mexican border, it means-- impossible faraway dream
reflected in the glitz of a shopping mall window display, denied.

Why were they going to America? They had a cousin working on a master's
degree in engineering at a university in Minnesota. . . They had an uncle
who owned a barber shop in New York City. . . They wanted good jobs, they
wanted to study, the watched too many Hollywood movies. . .

AMREEKA SHEEKA BEEKA!!!

And the border cops close in with their guns and cuffs and vans with the
blue lights on top and doors that lock from the outside, and the land of
easy money and cinema glitz and freedom of marriage fades into a Texas
sunset. . . denied.

* * *

ANGELS, BABY, SUGAR, HONEY, DEAR,
I tell you there be angels here.

They ride a visionary wind
from a place beyond all suffering
and glide through sunset skies painted brilliant shades
of orange, violet, red, pink, gold!

They drift on glittering wings,
their eyes like soft rain;
they are immune to cold, bullets, and human cruelty,
need not show ID to surly teenage soldiers at checkpoints
or submit to body searches at the cloth-gloved hands
of hired guards at Erez Crossing
or fledgling cops consigned to the lower echelons
of Ben Gurion airport security--

Angels, my dear
I tell you there be angels here
they hold no nationality or political affiliation
and fly free above religious partisans of all denominations
and if you close your eyes and call
they will lend you beams of moonlight and evening sun
to guide your way, even now
when everything you thought was good
has been crushed beneath an army boot
or torn apart in a fight between friends.

* * *

TRAVEL-WEARY RODEO CLOWN

sits with his face in a bucket of cheap beer
in plain clothes lust like anyone
his clown suit packed away in a duffel bag
gazing afar
contemplating what has come to pass
and what is yet to be. . .

and as he rolls into another town
he sings this song off-key:

What goes on, what goes down, what's up,
where I been, where I be going, and what to do?

New Orleans, New Orleans,
what do you have for a wandering child?
Hurricane came, wrecked your homes
levies broke, flooded your streets
most of your people still gone away
I blew down on the wandering wind
and

here I come looking for food
here I come looking for work
here I come looking for love
here I come looking for a home
and so

New Orleans, New Orleans,
what do you have for a wandering child?

* * *

YOU SHALL NOT BE JUDGED
by your accomplishments
by how you improved yourself
by how hard you worked
by what you got done
by how far you went
down that road to enlightenment.

YOU SHALL NOT BE JUDGED
by how popular you were
by how many people loved you
by your position in society
by how little you sinned
by how good you are
or how good you been.

YOU SHALL NOT BE JUDGED
by your skill
by your smarts
by your health
by your beauty
by your success
by your knowledge
by your money
by your wisdom
by your mama
or by how many gold stars
you got in kindergarten.

YOU SHALL NOT BE JUDGED
and found lacking
or punished
or given awards or medals--
not in the end,
not by GOD,
not by me,
nor by anyone who matters.

****************************************************************************
That's it.

2006-04-06T04:31:00.000-07:00

Stayed in Portland last night with Carly and Kevin. Good to see old faces with fresh eyes. How easily we forget those yesterdays that mean(t) so much. Arrived early and taught myself how to drive around Portland, not a bad skill to have if I'm gonna be there with the girls for 10 days next month (see Ecovillage Conference). Found a beautiful little book called Rebel Bookseller that just came out this year and was sitting unobtrusively on a little shelf inside CounterMedia kitty-corner from Powell's books. Ran into Meilani over by the 'zine rack at Powell's. She's such a badass. Gave me a few copies of her new 'zine which Steph is in to distro. Eating well so far: Burgerville on the way down, burritos and whiskey and cokes upon arrival, nice solid Hawthorne style snack before we hit the road Tuesday morning. Lyli and Scarleht were amazingly well behaved in the car. We jumped off I-84 for a smidge and coasted along the old highway 30 (historic columbia river hwy) stopped at the top and leaned over the edge with the girls in my arms. They laughed and screamed and pointed at the world down below. On the way down a large hawk glided right beside us for several yards. Scarleht's eyes got the size of dinner platters and when I asked if she saw the big bird she said "uh-huh" in a dazed tone of voice.
We all miss Steph already, with 6 days of this adventure left to go... more to follow when it isn't 5 a.m.

2006-04-04T09:18:00.000-07:00

up at six am with girls
to work on wood for 2 1/2 hours with an 86 year old man with bad knees and a pacemaker who puts me to shame with his timeless sweat and tireless chainsaw
lifting over the course of the day two or three tons worth of wood and books and babes late afternoon i collapse for a quick scattered slip of shut-eye

tomorrow to portland and then walla walla with my angels for a week with grandpa and grandma and more books and the dry eastern dusts and my old cabin and perhaps a little huffstodt thrown in

"throw your hands up if you've ever been in handcuffs
hands up if you depend on public transit"
- Saints of Everyday Failures
from their new album The State of the Art is Failure

keep rockin' olympia guys, that cd release show was the shit! catch ya on the flip-side goonie.

Myspace will burn in corporate hell

2006-03-29T01:16:00.000-08:00

Thanks Klint for digging these articles up! Will post as much anti-myspace propaganda as possible!

Their Space

MySpace Is The Trojan Horse Of Internet Censorship

Lines from a master: Snippets of The Immoralist by Andre Gide

2006-03-22T12:45:00.000-08:00

"I am neither sad nor gay; the air here fills you with a vague exhaltation, induces a state which seems as remote from gaiety as it is from suffering; perhaps that is happiness."
...
"I had lived for myself or at least on my own terms till then; I had married without imagining my wife as anything but a comrade, without really supposing that, by our union, my life might be transformed. I had just understood at last that the monologue was ending now."
...
"I had forgotten I was alone, forgotten the time, expecting nothing. It seemed to me that until this moment I had felt so little by virtue of thinking so much that I was astonished by a discovery: sensation was becoming as powerful as thoughts."

Preaching a Slow Approach

2006-03-16T09:14:00.000-08:00

By Elaine Zelmanov

May 5, 2003

Imagine a city with a call center for residents to express concerns about their quality of life. Now imagine it is New York. Stefano Cimicchi, mayor of Orvieto, founding member of Slow Cities movement and its current president, believes such a vision can be made a reality -- and so do 63 other mayors around the world.

Citta Slow, or the Slow City Association, is Slow Food's sister movement. What Slow Food means for the table, Slow Cities means for the town. Dedicated to the concept of considered living, a Slow City is judged by the quality of its physical and gastronomic environment. In order to be a Slow City, the community must be committed to ecological preservation, sustainable development, and among many other statutes and laws, a quality of life call center.
Read More... Thanks Mother Jones!

2006-03-15T15:45:00.000-08:00

A Dick Danger Ale, The Last Boy Scout with Bruce Willis and Damon Wayans, sunshine, cold feet, no wood, emotional problems, too many roosters, not enough meat in my diet, too alone to notice the crowds, floor needs sweeping, dick could use a jerk, girls will be hungry again soon, I'm a crude bastard and alone is the only home for me.

planted broccoli, chard, cabbage, peas, parsley, kolrabi, mesclum, arrugala, and some other stuff I forgot already. so instead of dwelling on my problems and plants, look at this marvelous example of downtown Olympia dining instead. The greasy spoon gets the heartattack but I still eat there once a week.

20% of world's methane emissions caused by bug-farts!

2006-03-07T16:23:00.000-08:00

No joke. Source: The Compleat Cockroach by David George Gordan

More from Andromeda Strange:

Insect flatulence may account for one-fifth of all the methane emissions on this planet. (Termites are also prodigious farters; indeed, dogs trained to sniff out termites are actually following their farts.)

Cockroaches are among the biggest contributors to global warming, since they break wind every fifteen minutes. Furthermore, they continue to release methane gas for eighteen hours after they die.

And, oddly enough, another 20 percent (or up to) of the world's methane emissions comes from flooded rice fields. From Radio Briefs.

Today's worthless knowledge brought to you by one bored papa who doesn't want to clean the house.

Dignity Village & City Repair

2006-03-04T21:42:00.000-08:00

Attended an excellent talk today at The Evergreen State College given by Lydia Doleman of Flying Hammer Productions, a strawbale construction, natural building & carpentry company in Portland, Oregon (no website I could find, sorry). She spoke quickly and eloquently on the last day of the Synergy Conference about Portland's amazing ex-homeless group: Dignity Village and City Repair, an all-volunteer grassroots organization helping people reclaim their urban spaces to create community-oriented places.

A few things that stuck in my mind:

Making social spaces into social places.

The architecture of buildings affects our social architecture, if we build our structures sustainably and naturally, our social realm will start to reflect those changes.

One-person passive solar beautiful little houses for homeless people that cost $250 !

...more as soon as I find my notebook

drunk but not alone for a short while in my home town harrowing madness lounge with burgess

2006-02-27T02:04:00.000-08:00

shooting pool at the green lantern tavern whilst beers are emptied and old times recompensed. too glad to not see anyone else i've known before, just fresh faces and easy times as I take them both two games running at cut-throat. at my mother's house my 17 year old cat, Willow, meows obnoxiously in the kitchen, 2:12 a.m. and Brando sleeps wheezing at my feet, older than I never thought he'd get. But life fools you that way some days, pulling the old time-fast on ya, wool over the soul-pulling it is and fierce and hip and wicked and necessary. just like my love for your anonymous eyes feasting on these most humble of words.

old tree down

2006-02-19T13:49:00.000-08:00

last night i walked right past the windfallen oldest tree in the park and did not notice, my mind in other bottles of night like this. a cigar with old friends and cans of beer and books and good times and talk and my poor social skills surfacing as yesterday's tall tales flourish into memory being raw and wild times that they were. and my heart aches for my own sorrow and befuddlement, selfish in times when great giving is called for, secretive when the words belong to rooftops and echoes.

THE CALM EYE OF THE HURRICANE

2006-02-16T13:03:00.000-08:00

another installment from:
THE GRAPEVINE NEWS SERVICE
*anticopyright*

A continuing e-mail list of free poetry and prose illustrating the humanity of the situation and
news of the world direct from the eyes and ears of a wandering bard who has been there, or whatever. OK I'm abandoning the idea of attempting to write things that don't contain obscenity or that are designed for publication/ a wider audience. . . so you get this mix of poetry, satire, etc. with something happy about flowers and singing birds at the end.

***************************************************************************
THE CALM EYE OF THE HURRICANE

The tanks and armored bulldozers that rumbled along the Egyptian border,
cutting a line through Rafah,
grinding this colonial borderline wider day by day,
turning half the town into Egypt and the other half into a jailed city
already packed with refugees displaced by the State of Israel in 1948
then displaced again by house demolitions—

The tanks and bulldozers that broke into the neighborhoods
to crunch the houses with their steel blades
or to machine gun anything in sight whether it was made of flesh
or concrete—

The tanks and bulldozers that sat with the vast weight of mortal threats
in the wasteland of raw dirt and concrete wreckage,
spiderweb tangles of rebar reaching out from clumps of debris
and grasping for the sky,
as if they had not come from Israel or America
and were not machines designed by human minds
driven by human hands and commanders’ orders to clear a ‘buffer zone’
along the Egyptian border--
as if instead they were mythic beasts of destruction
and the wasteland in which they sat and moved their natural habitat,
where they were born with a hunger to devour houses and people—

The tanks and bulldozers have gone away,
gone behind the jail wall borders of the Gaza Strip
to wait in some guarded military parking lot,
and the sun smiles down on a man and a boy who drive a donkey cart
through the rubble of a demolished house, collecting scrap metal—

and on my return to this place the sun smiles down
like the calm eye of the hurricane.

* * *

THE HOUSE IS FULL OF HOLES

Counting the holes in the house would be a task as endless
as counting the stars.

Small grey and brown birds flit in and out of the holes,
and beneath their nests inside the cinderblock walls
lie the slugs of the bullets
that punctured the first layer of concrete and,
their velocity dimished by this obstacle,
hit the second layer of concrete,
ricocheted,
and fell into the hollow insides of the cinder blocks.

All four sides of the house were machine gunned,
not only the side that faces the Egyptian border,
where tanks parked every day,
but also the sides that adjoined the neighboring houses
before they were demolished,
and the side that faces the dirt road and the city of Rafah.
The porch and part of one wall were demolished;
the family has rebuilt the wall but not the porch.

Abu Ahkmed stands in the yard in the sunshine
chipping residual mortar from a stack of cinder blocks
salvaged from the wreckage of another demolished house:
with these he will rebuild the porch
where we sat and drank tea amid the intifada.

The metal cylinder with perforated sides
which contained the fire made of twigs and scraps
and the teapot that held twelve cups of tea
lie in the dirt gathering rust.

The tanks and bulldozers have gone away
to wait in guarded military parking lots,
the house is full of holes
holes and bullets and birds,
the hurricane has not passed,
we only stand now in its calm eye.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

REFLECTIONS IN THE WASHTUB

Under the counter, beneath the bathroom sinks, two round plastic tubs sit stacked. One is blue, the other green. Unless you know that the tubs are there, or happen to enter the bathroom while someone is washing clothes, you will never discover these tubs, or learn how important they are. . . if you have come from the land of washing machines and dryers, if these twin laundry appliances have always been nearby, in the basement, the utility room, the garage, or the alcove near the back door, as taken-for-granted as the lines in the middle of the road. Should you come this far, should you arrive, by journeying east, west, or south to the other side of the world, eventually it will become necessary to wash your socks and underwear by hand in a green or blue plastic tub, and then to hang them out to dry on a plastic cord that winds through the metal grates over the windows in the outside corridor.

And by doing this, out of necessity and economy, rather than by choice, you join the majority of the world’s people: the hand- washers of few clothes. Thus you are linked to the grandmothers of America, Palestine, Germany, Bolivia, Mozambique, Thailand, and everywhere. Do not overlook the fact that this is in many places traditionally women’s work. However for now consider primarily that it is the work of those who do not have access to household laundry appliances, and that, whether or not you are a woman, it is the work that you must now do with your own hands in the sudsy water, or else you must walk through tommorrow in filthy rags.

And if nobody ever taught you how to wash clothes, because the machine was always there, in the garage or the utility room, and you threw in the laundry, added detergent, and walked away, then this is your initiation and first lesson: because when all the wars and marriages and television drama miniseries and mobile phone text message romances and office jobs are blown away in time’s hurricane, and all the literature has been left out in the rain and melted down to earth, and your young body wrinkles and bends, and the fire in your veins turns to coals, these two shall remain: the story of who you have been, what has happened, what you have made in
the world—and the washing of clothes.

And if by chance or design you pass from the World of Laundry Appliances into the World of Round Plastic Washtubs, then you shall gain the perspective needed to contemplate and attempt to fathom the ultimate precarious vastness and macroeconomic as well as social implications of the electrical grid on a global scale, municipal as well as household water supply, sewer, and gas systems, in addition to the current and future geopolitics of water.

The nature of ignorance is expressed in the assumption that EVERYONE has a washer and dryer, without so much as a passing thought about the origins of the electricity, gas, and water used to operate these machines, or the population and average income of the residents of Mexico City’s impoverished neighborhoods. As the plumber said, if you want to find a leak in the system, follow the pipes. . . out of your house, under the street, to the city water tower, to the reservoir, to the aquifer, to the sewage treatment plant, to the sea, to the leachfield, to the rain, to wind currents that move the clouds, to the river and the desert and the land of round plastic washtubs. Ignorance is not not-knowing: it is having all the information at hand, but not paying attention to it.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

NO COFFEE

There is no coffee and I blame Israel. I do not blame the people of Israel, although most of them have coffee this morning, if they want it, although the electricity to their houses has not been cut, and the utility workers there do not have to wait two months for their paychecks, as they
do here, in Rafah, and no occupying army has, over the past 5 years, blown up or sabotaged extensive parts of their city electric, water, and sewer systems, while selling them electricity and preventing them from building power plants, and no occupying nation is threatening to cut their electricity as punishment for attacks carried out by a militant minority within their society, and no economic strangulation policy prevents them from exporting and importing goods from their land, or going to other places in search of employment, thus impoverishing their society to the extent that they are dependent on foreign aid to provide any electrical
service at all, and whatismore, the United States government is giving them so much money every year that if their goverment had any sense it would provide the people with a few simple luxuries for free, such as minor stimulants in the morning, rather than blowing millions on bullets that just get shot at stuff and usually don’t even kill anyone, but just get smashed against walls—NO NO NO there is NO COFFEE this morning because there is no electricity so the electric burner doesn’t work, just like too many days this week, there is NO COFFEE and I blame Israel, as an idea, as a nation state. It’s not fair and if tomorrow the power is out again and there is NO COFFEE then I will vow to destroy Israel, and continue to work toward this goal until the Israeli government ends the occupation of Palestine and gives everyone here coupons for free breakfast at some swank restaurant in Ashquelon and pays everyone’s cab fare to get there. . . all I want is to fill the metal coffee pot with water and put it on the burner and add 3 spoonfulls of sugar and 3 or 4 heaping spoonfulls of cardamom scented arabic coffee, ground as fine as sander dust, and to wait until it begins to froth and boil, and to stir it with a
spoon until the grounds settle to the bottom of the pot, and to pour the thick brown liquid into a cup and drink it. . . NO NO NO I do not blame the Israeli people that this simple morning habit so vital to my enjoyment and functionality during the first half of the day is unjustly denied,
they are people just like me and the Palestinians here in Rafah, and some of them are also not getting their morning coffee due to circumstances beyond their control, and I sympathize with that, you know there is no problem between the people of the world, we just want our coffee, the problem is between the governments, and it is at them that I direct my withdrawal suffering irritable and drowsy caffeine junky rage.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE DREAMS OF THE ANT PEOPLE

Seen from an airplane taking off or landing
people shrink down to the size of ants;
meet one face to face and their body is as big as yours;
lie with one, bodies entangled
and your worlds merge.

The ant people get in a thousand tiny service taxis
and go to work if they are lucky enough to have jobs. . .
get in a thousand jet airplanes and fly halfway around the world. . .
fall into a thousand beds and go to sleep. . .

What do the ant people dream of?
Of sex and faraway lands. . .
Of plastic flowers and taxi kitsch
colorful beach towels with tropical scenes
thumbtacked to the ceiling
pimped out plywood and vinyl hearts with recessed swivel lights
up there overhead
when they ride across town trusting their lives to a hired driver
in a stormy sea of traffic mayhem
where there are no lines or lights on the road,
photos of Ahkmed Yassin the Hamas charity leader
assassinated by an Apache missile attack in Gaza
(surely you have seen the pictures of his wrecked wheelchair
amid the burnt waste of the car in which he rode?)
Photos of Ahkmed Yassin stuck to the dashboard
or hanging from the rearview mirror
and big white stuffed dogs holding red hearts
that say I LOVE YOU
lying on the ledge by the rear window. . .

The taxi driver says to the foreigners,
I want to go to America,
his America of hearsay and TV imagination
impossible, moneyrich, uncomplicated by experience. . .

Instant coffee and cigarettes
morning in a maroon leather chair
I am another ant no more, so tiny,
the ant writer says to himself,
I’m almost crazy and alienated enough to be a Great Artist
HAHAHA
but fame is a strange thing to seek,
this putting a human life under a microscope
passing someone’s image through colored and magnifying lenses
looking at them in the distorted mirror of our need for mythology
until the famous person’s reputation
becomes separate from the person,
who is an ant climbing a small tree
growing through a crack in the sidewalk,
but their fame is the long shadow of that tree
on a summer evening just before sunset:
you can’t even distinguish the silhouette of the ant,
can you?

The ant people fly in tiny airplanes
shoot tiny missiles at tiny houses which then explode
shoot each other with tiny guns
go out for dinner
talk to each other on yahoo instant messenger
eat eat eat
work work work
fight fight fight
talk talk talk
fuck fuck fuck--
one time I pulled the leg off a grasshopper
and put it down between two anthills
like a cruel god
and this started a war--
the ant people rush into the streets holding signs
calling for an end to some injustice,
rush into other streets and break their neighbors’ windows
by throwing rocks at them,
ant people dream about sex and money and faraway lands
go fishing
hold laughing babies upside down by their feet
build houses on stolen land
read books of crazy poetry
give birth to even more ant people
wash their clothes in round plastic tubs
keep 20 canaries in cages in a closed room
until some of them die
make the biggest bestest meals in the world
force visiting foreigners to eat the meals
until their stomachs burst and they die of hospitality
drink tea drink tea drink tea!!!
The ant people are us
it’s funny!!!

Alone in Manhattan nobody knows you nowhere to sleep
the End of Time waits nearby on a park bench
but you don’t lie down beside it to sleep
just continue walking for fear of cops in the night.
This is how small you are:

Everything you have known and seen, thought and dreamed
your body yourself your story
all your desire, memory, plans, and perception
amounts to one in six million new yorkers
each an ant with their own world and story as big as yours
all you can possibly imagine is one in six billion human beings on earth.

Lost in a crowd on a foreign street
pause to consider the actual size of stars
a thousand times bigger than earth, each one.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I’M PART REDNECK

WOE
everything that ever went wrong is all my fault
I’d sign up to be the scapegoat
if it paid well

ALMOST HAD ME A GIRLFRIEND
even though that ain’t what I set out to find
we had some good times, some bad times
now she done took her body across town
ain’t no use in trying to drag it back
it’s hers it ain’t mine

GET MYSELF A PICKUP TRUCK
shit-kicking boots
loud rock and roll on the stereo
bottle of whiskey under the seat
box of tools in the back
do a good job for a fair price
know what I’m doing from experience
will you hire me?

DON’T NEED NO MORE EDUCATION
need some new tattoos
some hundred dollar bills
and an understanding lover
with a broken heart and knowledge of hard times

GO THROUGH HELL
and come out the other side
people say you’re bent outta shape
you just say, I got character
then drink yourself to sleep.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

SOUL UNDER PRESSURE

Grey spiral of a land snail
soul under pressure
life, death, fire and ashes
no more a stranger in this foreign land
than in the town where I was born.

Take an idea and pursue it
watch it flash and fall like a meteor—
do you still believe you are on a mission
or do you simply struggle to hold on one more day
as the winds of madness howl
at the windows of your mind?

Things already fell apart
now I’m collecting moments and memories
to decorate my string of days like beads
Write the story on my grave:
NO ONE CAN SAY HE NEVER TRIED.

I don’t care about my life
only care about my dreams
need a friend to untangle my neurotic shell
and reveal the exploded star inside.

I’m no good at living by my wits
or playing complex social games
gonna go back to the country
sit under an olive tree
until moss grows on my head
sleep beside the fire
get used to an empty bed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
(wild birds singing amid olive trees after the rain when the red poppies
bloom-- these make me happy.)
*************************************************************************
This is not simply a list of reports documenting human rights violations, protests, or action in Palestine. Obviously, if you read this far. This is one project in my continuing performance of the role of writer and artist within society-- and is indeed nothing less than a series of letters in prose and poetry to my friends, family, and to ALL OF HUMANITY AND ANYONE WHO WILL LISTEN about nothing less than THE MYSTERIOUS EXPERIENCE OF LIFE ON EARTH.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW E-MAIL:
This is my new e-mail: madrone@resist.ca I have closed the old account so anything sent there will bounce back to you.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW PHONE: 54 647 8139
I recently had a mobile phone surgically implanted inside my skull and wired directly into my central nervous system. The doctors assured me that there was no risk of brain cancer incurred by the operation, that the scar would be hidden by my hair, and that these days having a stubby antennae protruding from your forehead increases hipness factor and sex appeal. They had to remove a small part of my brain to make room for the phone, but it was the part only used for quiet reflection, introspective meditative thought, ethical decision making, and practical financial
planning, and nobody has time for any of these things in this day and age, so this sacrifice is insignificant when weighed against the fact that I can now pay a phone company to talk to people who are far away while ingnoring people who are right in front of my face. So OK, here is my phone # in Palestine and Israel, where you can reach me from now until late february:

011 972 54 647 8139

That includes international calling code and country code for dialling from the U.S. Bear in mind the difference in time zones.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you do not want to recieve e-mail from me, please reply and indicate this.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
*Anticopyright: all writing sent via this list is anticopyright, free to all, not for profit. PLEASE forward, post, publish, print, copy and otherwise share and pass on anything I send out as you so desire.

OK take care
remember that water is life

WILL

I thought for years I could cram inspiration up my nostrils and words would flow out my fingertips.

2006-02-13T00:42:00.000-08:00

I believed that I could drink the world and that after I was done the world would still like me.
I went out looking for the drugs that hadn’t left the alphabet yet, the one’s not blessed with names.

And what did it give me?
It gave me the ability to feel nothing but sometimes I can’t control it.
It shook my perceptions around until I saw all ways.
It let me talk to all types of people.
It showed me the folly of fierce individualism.

What makes me full now when I’m running on empty?
A beer here and there and a couple tokes.
Splitting a few rounds of wood each night.
Listening to the shows on NPR I grew up listening to with my father.

I fill my days with a monotony of isolated activities, then get angry and defend my shell.
Nose to the grindstone doesn’t leave much room for nose in the cleavage or behind the line.
Tomorrow is my birthday and I will walk down to the beach, perhaps with a daughter.
I will sit down and I will write and I will listen to the tide and think about however many tomorrows.

My hands smell of cedar and dark beer.
Outside the stars share their immense distant luster with my tiny mind.
My girls sleep peacefully in our room.
Tomorrow I will work more on their beds.
So that I may have mine back.
I feel very unpretentious.
But my hands feel very large.

six months late I find this floating around on my hard drive

WELCOME WELCOME WELCOME TO THE GRAPEVINE NEWS SERVICE anticopyright

2006-02-08T12:59:00.000-08:00

A continuing e-mail list
of free poetry and prose illustrating the humanity of the situation and
news of the world direct from the eyes and ears of a wandering bard who
has been there, or whatever.

***************************************************************************

AND SO THE STORY GOES. . .

How much you risk is how much you win or lose
but how much you love is how much you learn.

*

Why did you go?
Because I wanted to see Rafah again,
because I still believe in peace
although there are times of fighting
to which we can see no end. . .
(and what the hell, maybe I fell in love.)

Anyway I don't have what it takes
to bring a child's bicycle to Gaza:
few people do
otherwise Gaza would be full of children's bicycles--
No, we left the little bike with the bent training wheel
and one missing pedal
under the frozen stars of a london night
laughing until there was no more cold. . .

*

I thought the rubber bullet was an olive
when I saw it lying in the orchard.

THE HOUSE IS FULL OF HOLES

HUMAN NATURE

"What is human nature?" He asked rhetorically.
"Look around you," He continued, "Everything that people are doing, this
is human nature."

*

The IDEA was to go and live among THE PEOPLE
and listen to the buzz and hum of their talking
to car horns and dishwashing and footsteps and grind
to the laughter, arguments, and crying children
of their LIVING,
until it became possible to hear the RHYTHM and MUSIC
within, underlying, all of this
and to write songs of THE PEOPLE LIVING.

*

I returned to another narrow street
lined with concrete housing blocks saturated by poverty and trauma
ground-floor falafel stands too small for furniture
lit-up portraits of posturing fighters, rifles on display
like low-budget home-grown 'Join the Army' ads--
except that everyone knows the men in the pictures are dead-- hung
from archways spanning alleys where children play football or burn
garbage--
Oh refugee poverty under occupation
I walk your streets again a foreign white-faced man
and see how my eyes and mind have aged--
I have mortgaged my AMERICAN birthright again
for airplane tickets and taxi fare
to come and live briefly in an Arab ghetto
which, like all ghettos, is constantly under attack--
SO WHAT?

The saga of occupation is written with refugee spraypaint on concrete walls
and punctuated with gunshots and bulletholes.
The boys in the street say they are 20 but look 14
they put their arms around each other and say they are fighters
one pulls out a cheap little switchblade with a plastic handle
says, "How do you like this?"
his eyes go wild like a street cat--
"No thank you," we say, and walk away.

Then the foreign soldiers come in the night
drive jeeps into Balata refugee camp,
which is built atop the ruins of a 4,000 year old city--
They shoot their M-16s, break into a house,
and haul another Arab to jail.

*

In the village the Patriarchs walk over limestone hills
worn smooth by a million footsteps
and remember the days before their was a nation called Israel or
settlers in single-wide trailers with high-power security lights
over there, across the valley, lighting up the desert night
in bright electric pools of paranoia--
They wear suit jackets over traditional robes
and the Matriarchs bake bread over the embers of sheep-dung fires and
everyone praises god in conversational litany:
Thanks to Allah there is sun, thanks to Allah there is rain
Thanks to Allah there are olive trees, thanks to Allah there are sheep
Thanks to Allah there are houses, thanks to Allah there is food
Everything is from Allah!

Then the settlers come in the night with saws
and cut down olive trees in the village orchard.

The wound on Ibrahim's ankle, left by a soldier's bullet years ago,
has healed and grown into a thick mass of scar tissue
and a lingering ache--
He wraps it with a threadbare ace bandage
his dusty feet in a pair of work boots made into sandals
by cutting off the back part down to the sole.

*

East Jerusalem at this hour is a desolation of paving stones
chiseled with irregular divots for better traction
Orange streetlight haze over retro-fit electical conduits
snaking over and into 500-year-old stone walls--

The women have gone inside the houses
a few men stand in groups and pairs smoking in the shadows
or closing down the last restaurants and shops--

At the quiet coffee stand the man with a cleft upper lip
invites you to sit in a plastic chair in an alley
and the boy makes the coffee in a long-handled metal pot--

And the hustlers on this side of town are right out on the street
in your face interrupting you in mid-sentence
with the hustler voice that grinds and slices into your brain--
"HELLO, HELLO!"
"TAXI TAXI! You want taxi! Where you go!
TAXI TAXI TAXI!!!" Nerve shattering as a TV commercial.

*

They were friendly and wanted to help
but could not speak the language
so we filled their mouths with sweet tea and bread.

*
AL QUDS

I have nothing to say about Jerusalem,
except that it is where a lion-faced tomcat paused on limestone steps and
peered into my eyes for 3 minutes.

Jerusalem is ancient and exhausted from religious wars.
You can read a fanatical text written in blood
on the Old City's fortress walls
but it ain't worth the effort--
if you want to see the cruel face of GOD
stare directly into the sun for 1 hour.

Everything that could have been said about Jerusalem
someone has already said.
Everything that can be said about Jerusalem
Someone is now saying.
Everything that it will ever be possible to say about Jerusalem
Someone will say soon enough.

The man behind the counter at the art supply store says:
"Jerusalem is a most holy place for 3 great world religions
Christianity Islam Judaism
GOD made it that way for a reason
so if people are fighting over it
this is because of money and politics."

A damn fool or a wise man came here one time
and scratched these words in the dirt:
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE JEWS THE MUSLIMS AND THE CHRISTIANS
IS THE STYLE OF THEIR HATS.

*
*************************************************************************
This is not simply a list of reports documenting human rights violations,
protests, or action in Palestine. This is one project in my continuing
performance of the role of writer and artist within society-- and is
indeed nothing less than a series of letters in prose and poetry to my
friends, family, and to ALL OF HUMANITY AND ANYONE WHO WILL LISTEN about
nothing less than THE MYSTERIOUS EXPERIENCE OF LIFE ON EARTH.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

NEW E-MAIL:
This is my new e-mail: madrone@resist.ca
I have closed the old account so anything sent there will bounce back to you.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

NEW PHONE: 54 647 8139
I recently had a mobile phone surgically implanted inside my skull and
wired directly into my central nervous system. The doctors assured me that
there was no risk of brain cancer incurred by the operation, that the scar
would be hidden by my hair, and that these days having a stubby antennae
protruding from your forehead increases hipness factor and sex appeal.
They had to remove a small part of my brain to make room for the phone,
but it was the part only used for quiet reflection, introspective
meditative thought, ethical decision making, and practical financial
planning, and nobody has time for any of these things in this day and age,
so this sacrifice is insignificant when weighed against the fact that I
can now pay a phone company to talk to people who are far away while
ingnoring people who are right in front of my face. So OK, here is my
phone # in Palestine and Israel, where you can reach me from now until
late february:

011 972 54 647 8139

That includes international calling code and country code for dialling
from the U.S. Bear in mind the difference in time zones.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you do not want to recieve e-mail from me, please reply and indicate this.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

*Anticopyright: all writing sent via this list is anticopyright, free to
all, not for profit. PLEASE forward, post, publish, print, copy and
otherwise share and pass on anything I send out as you so desire.

OK take care
remember that water is life

WILL

abiding the obligatory hawk talk chatter...

2006-02-05T15:00:00.000-08:00

...abounding in Olympia's dirty downtown emanating from the wide mouths of super bowl XL fans flocking to feather their annual nests with fosters cans and cigarette butts seeping into the sewers and Sound. i pray for those poor northwest souls doomed to die in detroit, bound to be mugged, raped, tormented in the strange foreign land that must be detroit, michigan on this february day we hold higher than the gods in this great land. but i comprehend the home-town fever at the same time as I openly hold the utmost disdain for its followers. I came from the losing land of Mariner baseball and understand that this is the largest bioregion (especially if you include alaska) with the fewest professional sports teams in the nation. that gives us a lot of energy and money and beer to pour out in honor of this event, our boys making it big, another excuse to get drunk and forget about the rest of this hungry world, another chance to cram a couple cheeseburgers down our swollen gullets in tribute to a pathological digital deity we have financed to pull the wool over our eyes and the grease into our guts and forced entertainment to invade education.

i started this blog about one year ago, one of the first posts being a rant about paul mccartney's performance at last year's debacle. it's nice to have a year's worth of blogging under one's belt. now let's buckle down, whip out the binocs and watch the game through the window of the 4th Ave Tav across the street. yeah! football drools! go hawks!

interesting little tidbit here:

By Steve Keating

DETROIT (Reuters) - A winter blast failed to cool off Super Bowl festivities on Sunday when partying shifted into high gear ahead of the NFL championship game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Seattle Seahawks.

While a blizzard swept across northern Michigan on Super Bowl eve, the host city managed to avoid the brunt of the storm that left behind an inch of snow and some colder temperatures.

Steelers fans badly outnumbered Seahawks supporters as they flooded into the Greektown entertainment district surrounding Ford Field drinking beer and waving their black and gold Terrible Towels.

The thousands of fans, however, were bracing for long lines in whipping winds and brittle cold as they waited to pass through tight security checks that included metal detectors and body searches.

Five hours before kickoff, a queue nearly a half kilometre long snaked its way through the city streets as fans began the process of filing into the stadium.

Only those with tickets, some being scalped for as much as $4,000 (2,270 pounds), were being allowed within a security zone that extended well beyond Ford Field.

More than 10,000 security personnel from dozens of agencies, including the Detroit police, Michigan state police, FBI and secret service will be in place for the game which is scheduled to kick off at 6:30 pm EST (11:30 pm British time).

During the game fighter jets will enforce a 50km no fly zone around Ford Field and the Coast Guard will continue to patrol the Detroit River that separates the U.S. from Canada.

Despite the increased security, the Super Bowl festivities were rocked by a series of murders over the weekend.

A man was stabbed to death early Sunday morning just a few hundred meters from the Motown Winter Blast while a woman was fatally shot on Saturday outside a bar in the same area where many of the festivities were being staged.

Thanks Reuters!

another night on 4th avenue

2006-02-04T20:27:00.000-08:00

beer and mead and coffee and cookies and an IRS audit on the counter amongst scraps of paper, scrawled notes, and haphazard happenstance.

US Army Field Training Poster for Soldiers in Iraq

2006-02-02T14:05:00.000-08:00

these are photos of the actual laminated fold-out 'guide' the Army gives our troops over there in Iraq. I don't know where to acquire one of these babies if you're not a G.I. but there's gotta be a way. Or send me some $$ and I'll make you a copy. Thanks for the tip XXXX, THIS OFFER IS FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY! If the Army wants to prosecute me for sharing trade secrets they can speak to my attorney about freedom of speech and the dissemination of information, or they can rule blogs and bloggers as a threat to national security and close our asses down. But even that won't shut us up! So use it while you got it fellow web riders. The end is always nigh.

2006-01-31T05:47:00.000-08:00

back at home recovering from a book and wine binge.

up at 4 this morning.

cannot sleep longer than 6 or 7 hours straight anymore.

the sun has yet to rise.

as do the daughters.

smoking pot, listening to brave new world on audio and repricing a bunch of antiquarian books

2006-01-26T00:10:00.000-08:00

hey, what the hell, right? it's only 12:12 in the morning.
oh yeah. i got a fucking myspace page the other day.
don't give me any shit. i know i condemned them for several months.
but i'm better now. now that i have myspace, yes, myspace, yes (rocking back and forth at my farmhouse, all alone for hours at night in the dark)

2006-01-23T00:58:00.000-08:00

sidewalks fade from my memory as the moss grows deep on thick limbs I fail to name on purpose

cities rust beneath the bloody ruin of this blanket of skies we used to call blue

clocks tick, sci-fi novels come true, mind-matter pulses dictate which way we steer

by those things we used to think were stars but now have realized are merely lamps on the riverside

shadows play cruel tricks on our hearts

hands masking movements molded to seem malevolent

I buy poetry on ebay and hope for miracles that will never come

like my inept, sterile muse incapable of love

buried under the dust mother never swept up, up to that stratosphere scientists claimed was failing but really wasn't

but we were too tired to argue with fate and her crystal ball

the tele-screen tells us that time is of the utmost essence but we know that seconds are no more real than this feeling of powerlessness before the storm

the credits roll
we root around in place
seeking something we were born with but lost
smoke in an alleyway
you do not know what your soul yearns for

letter to brendan, saint of saints in my short and sad book

2006-01-20T02:00:00.000-08:00

where we're calling from?
it's a little place called love we have deep down in each of us
that little place that survives such whirlwinds as distance and change and time
and i love it because it holds so much that we cannot
it holds those little bits of history we would have forgotten
those moments on islands we should base our lives on but we can't
because we're somewhere's else, on some other beach
succumbing to some other tide

the desert is very real Brendan
i wanted to walk through it with you of all people
but winds blew us askew and now
and now
we have but ourselves to fend for

who knows what tomorrow and tomorrow might bring?
but i know, in my heart of hearts, that you are with me
despite your many harrowing adventures
despite the drunken revelries of today which tempt you to forget our yesterdays

those movies we spoke of once, so long ago
that played forever on the backs of our adolescent eyelids
i have never forgotten those flicks, those films, those shattered dreams

if i were truly a fisherman the line i am tossing right now would hook you
where it hurts the most and bring you back to my shore
even if it takes a hundred hungry years

i will wait
with my pizza box wings and my beautiful memories and my endless stories
i will wait for you on the promontory of our tale
waiting for the end we scripted so long ago
or even the middle
or some beginning we've already forsaken

on my ship you're still first mate
and we have yet to sink
even though I've been bailing for some time now

my daughters live and grow and change daily and would love to hear
your scattered voice

please send us your words as often as you can
for they are the floatsam by which we shall guide ourselves to shore

i remain yours
-sky

home is where you lay your book and pen aside you turtle

2006-01-19T04:34:00.000-08:00

you hobo snapper
you're no ancient tortise

no monarch fluttering by history's window
wind on my neck

you're no hangman's noose

your home was in the pine the plank you walked was made of

just saw David Amram last night

2006-01-16T02:03:00.000-08:00

at the Washington Center for the Performing Arts. Magnificent act. The man played so many instruments I lost my watches. He plays the cow bell and pennywhistle nonchalantly onstage before a 1/4 of an audience (the man deserves thousands of screaming fans blind with joy) and goes home at night and writes all the music for 300+ piece orchestral symphonies. A genius to say the least. Great to hang out with The Sitting Duck and KAOS radio as well. What a joy to talk with Amram and his fans afterwards too. As if the universe held its breath for us and let the words of yesterdays alleyways trickle up our throats. If you are not familiar with Amram's work please check out the following sites:

David Amram's homepage
Jack Kerouac and David Amram
and here's what Wiki has to say, as if that's worth anything

Most of the folks there were elderly (compared to me, I suppose) but it's fun to stand out sometimes as some of the only diplomats of your generation present at such an event. Five local Olympia characters got up and read snippets of Kerouac's On the Road while Amram played piano. At one point he had us singing a chorus in Mandarin for Meanderin' Mandarin, incorporated an Egyptian flute tune into his normal rhetoric of jazzy blues rambles and walking talking rhythms. He ended the evening with the most beautiful version of Amazing Grace I have ever heard, interspersed with mary had a little lamb. cheers. This last pic shows the cast of Pull My Daisy, the 1959 film written and narrated by Kerouac which Amram composed and played the music for. Guy gets around man. His son Adam is cool as shit too.

hungry hollow farm

2006-01-10T14:57:00.000-08:00

this is where we make our stand. this is where we learn to love the soil. this is where the cliches end. this is where our words come together.

lost in the rain at hungry hollow

2006-01-03T13:55:00.000-08:00

my mind turns lazy sidewinding circles, plumes of steam rising off my eyebrows as i survey the small forest of felled cut split wet wood lying around me, air dense with mingling odors of different woods. this year our wood is wet. we moved in towards the beginning of july and i never got a good jump on it. alas, it would have been wet anyway. burning wet wood and not having a backlog (a real pun, i swear) teaches you many lessons all rolled into one unseasonably long miserable lesson. first off you lose at least 25% of your heat boiling all the moisture off, your fires don't start nearly as quickly, never reach maximum temperature or heat efficiency and just tend to sputter and wheeze their way through the day. it complicates matters when you have two little girls who need to stay warm and barely any time to split wood. plus our stove isn't nearly large enough to heat this whole huge house so i have to close down the vents to the upstairs and the doors to the bathroom, laundry room and upstairs. but we're getting by alright. with one of those oil-filled electric radiators in our bedroom we keep cozy and i've always been of the opinion that living with wood heat and experiencing those dreadfully cold first moments of morning breeds a stronger bunch. not that we'll need much of that once global warming really kicks in. shit. i should just invest in a bunch of surfboard companies now and ride that wave as long as it goes.

abrecaminos: letter to an open door

2006-01-01T22:52:00.000-08:00

for natalie, still

we walk
talk wishes like will-o-the-wisps
trade alphabets of memories
swap visions without giving up our eyes
I let your voice trickle down my throat
like sunlight filled with wine
we walk and talk of time and troubles
travels unraveled in this myth of knowing
ancient shattered souls are we
cast, recast and doomed to be broken once more
I taste tenderness inside your gaze
a longing long longed for before
back when days were plays
and all the stars were actors
youth was just another title we threw on and off
an old coat we sometimes wear to cry or die in now
and look! your youth knows larger worlds
than all my timeless thirsting wonder can divulge
we call ourselves poets and giggle
ponder valiant sunsets
counting pennies in the pond
we farm the simplest of island fantasies
crafted from romantic notions of harmony and bliss
and I’ve talked hours with your eyes by now
confirmed their depth and dedication
we talk
walk ribbons round each other’s worries
bind them tight and snip the ends
and sigh and fidget something flirtatious
a smoky sense of past and present
every poet knows it…
that drunken feeling of hopeless delight
that silent urging on
and walking talking time slips lazy
background fades to a static pulse
faint movements and noise
it’s warm for february
you’re nervous
and so am I
and my hand trembles
and I hear rum goes well with apple juice
and tiny daydreams

02.05.03
two sittings
3pm
&
9:20pm

abrecaminos – those who make a way where there is none
abre – to open
caminos - way
discovered feb. ’03 - week two - a silver sky - jim bodeen

A feast of fantasies

2005-12-29T18:12:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of Technoccult, thanks Klint!

Happy Solstice
Filed under: occult, magick — Klintron @ 1:14 pm
If you missed these links last year, or if you just want to refresh your memory, these are great conversation starters at Christmas parties:

The Psychedelic Secrets of Santa Claus Santa and the aminita muscaria mushroom.

E-Sheep: Saturnalia a Jack Chick parody about the origins of Christmas.

Pagan Origins of Modern Christmas Traditions

Wikipedia: Christmas linked Holidays

And, why not: Wikipedia: Christmas
Happy holidays everyone!

From My Friend Will in Palestine...12.15.2005

2005-12-27T01:34:00.000-08:00

HUMAN NATURE

"What is human nature?" He asked rhetorically.
"Look around you," He continued, "Everything that people are doing, this
is human nature."

*

The IDEA was to go and live among THE PEOPLE
and listen to the buzz and hum of their talking
to car horns and dishwashing and footsteps and grind
to the laughter, arguments, and crying children
of their LIVING,
until it became possible to hear the RHYTHM and MUSIC
within, underlying, all of this
and to write songs of THE PEOPLE LIVING.

*

I returned to another narrow street
lined with concrete housing blocks saturated by poverty and trauma
ground-floor falafel stands too small for furniture
lit-up portraits of posturing fighters, rifles on display
like low-budget home-grown 'Join the Army' ads--
except that everyone knows the men in the pictures are dead--
hung from archways spanning alleys where children play football
or burn garbage--
Oh refugee poverty under occupation
I walk your streets again a foreign white-faced man
and see how my eyes and mind have aged--
I have mortgaged my AMERICAN birthright again
for airplane tickets and taxi fare
to come and live briefly in an Arab ghetto
which, like all ghettos, is constantly under attack--
SO WHAT?

The saga of occupation is written with refugee spraypaint on concrete walls
and punctuated with gunshots and bulletholes.
The boys in the street say they are 20 but look 14
they put their arms around each other and say they are fighters
one pulls out a cheap little switchblade with a plastic handle
says, "How do you like this?"
his eyes go wild like a street cat--
"No thank you," we say, and walk away.

Then the foreign soldiers come in the night
drive jeeps into Balata refugee camp,
which is built atop the ruins of a 4,000 year old city--
They shoot their M-16s, break into a house,
and haul another Arab to jail.

*

In the village the Patriarchs walk over limestone hills
worn smooth by a million footsteps
and remember the days before their was a nation called Israel
or settlers in single-wide trailers with high-power security lights
over there, across the valley, lighting up the desert night
in bright electric pools of paranoia--
They wear suit jackets over traditional robes
and the Matriarchs bake bread over the embers of sheep-dung fires
and everyone praises god in conversational litany:
Thanks to Allah there is sun, thanks to Allah there is rain
Thanks to Allah there are olive trees, thanks to Allah there are sheep
Thanks to Allah there are houses, thanks to Allah there is food
Everything is from Allah!

Then the settlers come in the night with saws
and cut down olive trees in the village orchard.

The wound on Ibrahim's ankle, left by a soldier's bullet years ago,
has healed and grown into a thick mass of scar tissue
and a lingering ache--
He wraps it with a threadbare ace bandage
his dusty feet in a pair of work boots made into sandals
by cutting off the back part down to the sole.

*

East Jerusalem at this hour is a desolation of paving stones
chiseled with irregular divots for better traction
Orange streetlight haze over retro-fit electical conduits
snaking over and into 500-year-old stone walls--

The women have gone inside the houses
a few men stand in groups and pairs smoking in the shadows
or closing down the last restaurants and shops--

At the quiet coffee stand the man with a cleft upper lip
invites you to sit in a plastic chair in an alley
and the boy makes the coffee in a long-handled metal pot--

And the hustlers on this side of town are right out on the street
in your face interrupting you in mid-sentence
with the hustler voice that grinds and slices into your brain--
"HELLO, HELLO!"
"TAXI TAXI! You want taxi! Where you go!
TAXI TAXI TAXI!!!" Nerve shattering as a TV commercial.

*

They were friendly and wanted to help
but could not speak the language
so we filled their mouths with sweet tea and bread.

*
AL QUDS

I have nothing to say about Jerusalem,
except that it is where a lion-faced tomcat paused on limestone steps
and peered into my eyes for 3 minutes.

Jerusalem is ancient and exhausted from religious wars.
You can read a fanatical text written in blood
on the Old City's fortress walls
but it ain't worth the effort--
if you want to see the cruel face of GOD
stare directly into the sun for 1 hour.

Everything that could have been said about Jerusalem
someone has already said.
Everything that can be said about Jerusalem
Someone is now saying.
Everything that it will ever be possible to say about Jerusalem
Someone will say soon enough.

The man behind the counter at the art supply store says:
"Jerusalem is a most holy place for 3 great world religions
Christianity Islam Judaism
GOD made it that way for a reason
so if people are fighting over it
this is because of money and politics."

A damn fool or a wise man came here one time
and scratched these words in the dirt:
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE JEWS THE MUSLIMS AND THE CHRISTIANS
IS THE STYLE OF THEIR HATS.

*

*************************************************************************
This is not simply a list of reports documenting human rights violations,
protests, or action in Palestine. This is one project in my continuing
performance of the role of writer and artist within society-- and is
indeed nothing less than a series of letters in prose and poetry to my
friends, family, and to ALL OF HUMANITY AND ANYONE WHO WILL LISTEN about
nothing less than THE MYSTERIOUS EXPERIENCE OF LIFE ON EARTH.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

NEW E-MAIL:
This is my new e-mail: madrone@resist.ca
I have closed the old account so anything sent there will bounce back to you.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

NEW PHONE: 54 647 8139
I recently had a mobile phone surgically implanted inside my skull and
wired directly into my central nervous system. The doctors assured me that
there was no risk of brain cancer incurred by the operation, that the scar
would be hidden by my hair, and that these days having a stubby antennae
protruding from your forehead increases hipness factor and sex appeal.
They had to remove a small part of my brain to make room for the phone,
but it was the part only used for quiet reflection, introspective
meditative thought, ethical decision making, and practical financial
planning, and nobody has time for any of these things in this day and age,
so this sacrifice is insignificant when weighed against the fact that I
can now pay a phone company to talk to people who are far away while
ingnoring people who are right in front of my face. So OK, here is my
phone # in Palestine and Israel, where you can reach me from now until
late february:

011 972 54 647 8139

That includes international calling code and country code for dialling
from the U.S. Bear in mind the difference in time zones.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you do not want to recieve e-mail from me, please reply and indicate this.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

*Anticopyright: all writing sent via this list is anticopyright, free to
all, not for profit. PLEASE forward, post, publish, print, copy and
otherwise share and pass on anything I send out as you so desire.

OK take care
remember that water is life

WILL

smoke curls

2005-12-21T23:46:00.000-08:00

it always has.
it always will.
for some reason i am obsessed with its doing so.
if it is happening nearby i must bear witness.
when i drink alone i think about smoke.
i watch it do its thing whenever possible.
i feel that i must title some significant cryptic work of art after smoke.
smoke defines the way i see myself.
merciful before the wind.
unpredictably beautiful.
passionately independent.

i sat down and sketched

2005-12-21T00:17:00.000-08:00

a picture of the view from my mother's porch between puffs of a cigarette with numb fingers as my life force flowed out thru the ink: blood in yesterdays river beds. this is not what real used to be here in this place grown so foreign. but the fields grant me sanctuary from the storm of my everyday emotions. time gnaws on my backbone by the minute, an ornery old rat who has to cut his teeth on the remorse of spent youths. other ways it could have gone build their castles and crumble in the wake of an incoming wave of sleep. i dream behind my eyelids when i blink and the world rewinds at night. those four precious hours of restless nothing fuck! to think my hands have handled the millions of ages and pages and dust and words of wandering hermits i cannot know. it pains me that my path lies as it does, between the roses and the thorns. casting the die for the dead. rolling with the punches of the living. asking what we can of who will listen. listening to what we can of that which makes it through.

2005-12-18T00:19:00.000-08:00

too busy

been working on other blogs

traveling for a couple days

will post from Walla Walla a bit

hope this offends no one

cary, i'm coming for you

R.I.P. Stanley 'Tookie' Williams

2005-12-14T15:33:00.000-08:00

Stanley Tookie Williams died by lethal injection early yesterday. a great man goes to the grave, to fields beyond those that we may know. thanks to boingboing for the following link to Jasmina Tesanovic's first hand testimony. And please read this article on the actual history of the Crips street gang. You will learn that Williams was not really the founder our mass media made him out to be in the weeks preceding his wrongful death.

Stanley 'Tookie' Williams Death Rapidly Approaches

2005-12-13T00:01:00.000-08:00

I wrote Gov. Arnold. I posted on my blog. I talked with friends and family about this issue (none of whom had any idea who Williams was). This is a tragedy indeed. My only hope is that death is quick and painless for this great conflicted man who has tried his utmost these past years. Like our dear leader Mr. Bush I sort of hope that race riots do ensue so that Bush can declare an emergency and fuck some more shit up. I like it when he does anything remotely terrible because something always goes wrong on his end of the stick as well and controversy breeds growth. Death, however, does not and cannot breed life. Ask me on some other tuesday at 12:04 in the morning and I might vehemently defend the death penalty under certain circumstances (for instance: if your last name ends with or rhymes with Cheney). But right now I'm feeling green and humane and forgiving. I'm feeling like it's worthless to pin so much gang violence on one man who's hands have been clean for decades now. I'm feeling like we should take a good long deep look at the root causes of our nation's problems and stop treating the symptoms like some hack doc out to shave a quick buck off the hairy hairy thighs of his next obese victim. So peace out Stanley. I'm roastin' one for you right now my man. And tomorrow I will try to track down your kids books to procure for and read to my children in the hopes that your words will strike a chord some day in the hearts and minds of some troubled youth and convince them to go another way. And when that plunger is hovering over your arm, I hope your regrets are few and that you've thirty years in heaven before the devil knows yer dead.

Alexander Pope: Still Kicking Ass 261 Years Later

2005-12-06T23:10:00.000-08:00

From the full choir when loud Hosannas rise,
And swell the pomp of dreadful sacrifice,
Amid that scene if some relenting eye
Glance on the stone where our cold relics lie,
Devotion's self shall steal a thought from Heav'n,
One human tear shall drop and be forgiv'n.
And sure, if fate some future bard shall join
In sad similitude of griefs to mine,
Condemn'd whole years in absence to deplore,
And image charms he must behold no more;
Such if there be, who loves so long, so well;
Let him our sad, our tender story tell;
The well-sung woes will soothe my pensive ghost;
He best can paint 'em, who shall feel 'em most.

the only pope that ever mattered, alexander pope. hey, don't fuckin' knock "the first English poet who could live off the sales of his work alone."
and an excellent collection of quotes

if you want to know what the war was for find out what the victor took

2005-12-06T02:00:00.000-08:00

- old saying I discovered in an old pamphlet from 1938 entitled Life and Deeds of Uncle Sam.

Edge - Edge Foundation, Inc., was established in 1988 as an outgrowth of a group known as The Reality Club. Its informal membership includes of some of the most interesting minds in the world.

The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society.

Ray Kurzweil's Accelerated Intelligence - Raymond Kurzweil (February 12, 1948 - ) is a pioneer in the fields of optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and electronic musical keyboards. He is the author of several books on health, artificial intelligence, transhumanism, and technological singularity. Check out his book The Age of Spiritual Machines!

Woot - How strange. They sell one item per day at gross discounts. Interesting concept.

Pirate Papa Blog Launched

2005-12-02T23:15:00.000-08:00

I scoured the internet for days, turning up only vague message-board references and a few scant articles. Bare bones to be sure. But there were thousands of mama 'zines and resources for young mothers, articles, essays, books, talk shows. What about the fathers? What about the single dads and creating some community and resources for them? What about the punk papas, the anarcho-green papas, the socialist papas, the homosexual papas, the papas who never get to see their kids because of work or custody battles or some other barrier thrown up by a society willing to focus only on the symptoms and not the root causes of its problems? What about the papas who no one ever helped?

Where are our shelves upon shelves of books? Where are our homemade 'zines? Where are our legions of social workers? I always hear everyone talk about how rough young mothers have it and it's true. But our society is geared towards creating more young mothers than it is young fathers and the pieces will only start clicking into place when we stop effectively ignoring half of the equation and start fostering a truly egalitarian system of parental education in this "great nation." Read More...

Pirate Papa is currently seeking submissions, personal stories, resources, zines, ideas, words, wishes, good food and some solid rest.

Spent Years Unwaiting

2005-11-29T02:15:00.000-08:00

We didn’t know which words came first
and were too young to read the messages of rain.

But chance bet on us
and we sold our all for air
and sometimes paper
or pints over pizza.

At times the wildness took us
and our mouths swallowed whole
the dreams we dared not live by day,
sparing us a few seconds of scattered thoughts
after the facts
to wonder if we was really us
if I was an arm and you were a leg
or if we were ourselves and what alone meant.

Under tattered covers we clutched the words to our breasts
as worlds drowned outside our door
and our days were spent crying hope to death
in classrooms bored of trying.

You read me Bukowski
and peeked thru your window late at night
to see if my light was still on
and now
too late
it is.

But that was before we took the plunge,
came up gasping for time and direction,
swam with the current for once and found the sea
but for you it was not me.

So we turned a page
and burned the stage we stood on
would have burned all the way up and out
if not for the words
that gasp of last words we never spoke
for fear of falling.
too deep
too deep
that now we drown each day in words
to hold back the emotions we cannot let go
for fear of failing him
or her
or us.

The words gave us a trust,
a well we cannot seem to drink dry.
But if this life’s a lie
then what should we have done?
did we lie too long in the sun
or not long enough?

Our words become us:
miserly wicked things with
shadowy subtleties
furious tempers
and ill-begotten dreams.

The world turns
and we watch from where we stand.
Words at the ready.
Ready to drown
or be drowned.
just thirsty.

MANIFESTO FOR ESSENTIALISM

2005-11-28T15:09:00.000-08:00

Solid little essay from Jeremy Faludi, Seattle's own eco-preneur artist, innovator and upcoming green design guru. Faludi's work may also be found at WorldChanging.

"Design must return to the simple, naked essential. In America 2001, we are inundated with a dizzying array of objects, of forms, of styles, of marketing, which has alienated us from the direct experience of the world. To remedy this assault of artifice, we must strip down the forms we create to lay bare their essential nature--if the object's nature be a mechanism, that mechanism must be shown; if the object's nature be a certain function, the object must speak entirely and solely of that function..." Read More...

Bob Dylan's Musical Roots

2005-11-27T22:25:00.000-08:00

Nice little site devoted to the musical roots of the Big D, folk and otherwise. Also an old interview about playing in Greenwich Village coffeehouses. Actually the folk archive where this interview is from is worth checking out as well. This site has some decent critical analysis of Dylan's lyrics and life.

2005-11-26T00:31:00.000-08:00

we write to set our words in stone
to gift wings to our ideas
to make known what is unknown

we bring light to places of darkness
throw sparks against old newsprint
bear that fire which mankind has carried for so long

by naming things we force ourselves to remember them
by remembering we grow and change
and through growth and change we are reborn

we write to fill the slate before clearing it
we write because there are no more wildernesses to explore
we write to keep hold of some semblance of sanity

n. scott momaday said:

by means of words alone
one may affect physical change on the universe.

i pray that he is right.

reading 1984 for thanksgiving 2005

2005-11-24T01:45:00.000-08:00

scary predictions from 1949 cast our world in a different light. why weren't we better able to prepare and safeguard against such atrocities? because the LOW never have the presence of mind to look up from their day-to-day activities and they are the only ones who truly seek the full equality of human-kind? happy corporate turkey, native american defamation day. we're going to slaughter two roosters today and drink guiness floats. boo-yah.

2005-11-19T23:17:00.000-08:00

Roused at dawn to daughters whispered whimpers
these days become instinctual terrain
I move thru with a vague stealth
as routine reiterates its lengthy lessons
over this habitual atrocity called time.

So that now I aim my apprehension
towards an indistinct notion of memento mori
the grand excursion of death
the end of this beginning.

Call it a neurosis symptomatic with compulsions to watch
synonomous with silence
a dis-ease enthralled with the morbid eventuality of self-pity
insufficient pith and pathos.

An involuntary appetite for words eats away
at the insides of my fingertips
but I am inept at channeling this disembodied adrenaline sprawl
thru the alleyways of blood and synapse and muscle
to the ink inside my pen clutched like a guilty secret hunger.

But my thoughts are truant
and definitely not in the mess nighttime makes of a diaper
wrapped around my daughter's fragile form.

Mine was an obligatory static
a fierce addiction to disconnect
was inevitable
a catastrophic gnawing anticipation for tomorrow
and the next storm.

Tolerant of other people's wars
tired of my own
faith in folly
but we learn from loss
recoup our words
wake to a new dawn.

The Image Culture

2005-11-18T03:53:00.000-08:00

by Christine Rosen

An excellent essay on contemporary Semiology and American culture on a global stage.

When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana in late August, images of the immense devastation were immediately available to anyone with a television set or an Internet connection. Although images of both natural and man-made disasters have long been displayed in newspapers and on television, the number and variety of images in the aftermath of Katrina reveals the sophistication, speed, and power of images in contemporary American culture. Satellite photographs from space offered us miniature before and after images of downtown New Orleans and the damaged coast of Biloxi; video footage from an array of news outlets tracked rescue operations and recorded the thoughts of survivors; wire photos captured the grief of victims; amateur pictures, taken with camera-enabled cell phones or digital cameras and posted to personal blogs, tracked the disaster’s toll on countless individuals. The world was offered, in a negligible space of time, both God’s-eye and man’s-eye views of a devastated region. Within days, as pictures of the squalor at the Louisiana Superdome and photographs of dead bodies abandoned in downtown streets emerged, we confronted our inability to cope with the immediate chaos, destruction, and desperation the storm had caused. These images brutally drove home the realization of just how unprepared the U.S. was to cope with such a disaster.

But how did this saturation of images influence our understanding of what happened in New Orleans and elsewhere? How did the speed with which the images were disseminated alter the humanitarian and political response to the disaster? And how, in time, will these images influence our cultural memory of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina? Read More...

link courtesy of: Arts & Letters Daily

L. Ron Hubbard = Evil Genius or Annoying Nutball?

2005-11-17T00:12:00.000-08:00

Do you want to buy a bridge? article by Mark Ebner - an excellent behind the scences look at Scientology published in Spy Magazine back in 1996. Thanks Raph for digging this one up.

"If you really want to enslave people,
tell them that you're going to give them total
freedom."
-- L. Ron Hubbard

Scientology Kills All the dirt you could want on why Scientology is a crock of shit.

And I have no idea what this means but it's still funny. I love stuff like that.
P.S. all you educators out there, these are front groups for the Church of Scientology, please do not accept materials for use in the classroom from them!
Applied Scholastics
The Way To Happiness

Idaho Blows

2005-11-16T12:53:00.000-08:00

This is the most hilarious thing I have ever seen. Granted I'm from Walla Walla, the town so white they had to name it after something Native and make me suffer mounds of ridicule for the remainder of my days here. This site is rather rude and blunt at points but that's how Idaho's landscape molds the minds there. There's some beautiful places in Idaho, but not many beautiful people. My buddy Luke offers a fine example of Idaho's kind: he's a hulking behemoth fueled by booze, potatoes and cheap thrills and has come to epitomize my idea of Idaho. Of course, Les Purce, our beloved president of Evergreen, hails from Boise I believe. I ran into a few people who knew him a couple years back, talked of his crazy ways, parties, politics, the whole she-bang. Les, you dog. Anyway, this site kicks ass. Not just because they linked to Last Word's Blog a while back, or because they regularly peruse Technoccult, just because their ego outstrips just about anything else I've come across recently. Please scope this site and toss one back for old Idaho, she needs it these days.

La Casa Comics

2005-11-15T07:05:00.000-08:00

From P-town with a twist of Oly, Theo and Ahniwa have a good thing going! Add this one to your list of webcomics to check out daily. Oh yeah, and their links page has some other online comics I haven't come across before. Also, anyone who's down with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster can cuddle up to my bunker. All hail the noodly appendage!

a shrewd wit is the sharpest blade a man may carry

2005-11-14T21:41:00.000-08:00

Loveseat made from airplane first-class seats

2005-11-13T21:18:00.000-08:00

Thanks BoingBoing!

"For $1500, you can buy this pair of used first-class plane-seats to use as a sofa in your living room. You know, I've gotten the occassional first-class flight, and while the seats are infinitely preferable to cattle-class's torture-chairs, they're nowhere near comfortable enough to consider replacing a decent sofa with."

Notes on HAARP & Increasing Tsunami/Hurricane/Earthquake Frequency

2005-11-10T12:34:00.000-08:00

i'm just going to toss this up here for now while I do some more research and find a few more sites

http://educate-yourself.org/pnl/neworleansdowse05sep05.shtml - skeptical dowse
http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2005/1243 - solid

The United States, more than any other nation except perhaps Russia, embraces the techno-fix of weather modification. The infamous U.S. Air Force Academy research paper “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025,” published in August 1996, noted that, “2025 is a study designed to comply with a directive from the chief of staff of the Air Force to examine the concepts, capabilities, and technologies the United States will require to remain the dominant air and space force in the future.”

First presented on June 17, 1996, the paper’s disclaimer states the study does “. . . not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force, Department of Defense or the United States government.” The paper goes so far as to emphasize that, “This report contains fictional representations of future situations/scenarios.”

http://www.cyberspaceorbit.com/indexback178.html
http://www.abbaswatchman.com/Hurricane%20Katrina%20and%20Wilma.htm - excellent site
http://omega.twoday.net/topics/HAARP/
“Holes in Heaven; HAARP and Advances in Tesla Technology” - doc narrated by martin sheen?
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/rita_hot_towers.html
http://www.coasttocoastam.com/shows/2005/01/23.html
http://www.skolnicksreport.com/ootar80.html - more on PUTIN ties - overclass chess match?
most of these were via Google

Twenty Interesting Facts About Voting Here in the Good Ole USA!

2005-11-09T12:02:00.000-08:00

Did you know....
1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitrakis/031004fitrakis.html

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=26
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.php

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm
http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel27.html

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.
http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates/pfindex.html

10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.diebold.com/solutions/default.htm

11. Diebold is based in Ohio.
http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm

12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as consultants and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301469.shtml

13. Jeff Dean was Senior Vice-President of Global Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold. Even though he had been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree, Jeff Dean was retained as a consultant by Diebold and was largely responsible for programming the optical scanning software now used in most of the United States.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0312/S00191.htm
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

14. Diebold consultant Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.
http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/26/loc_elexoh.html

16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it! (See the movie here: http://blackboxvoting.org/baxter/baxterVPR.mov.)
http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190

17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml

18. All -- not some -- but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html
http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm
http://www.rise4news.net/extravotes.html
http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=950
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm

19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/local/7628725.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10544-2004Oct29.html

20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida -- again always favoring Bush -- have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.
http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm
http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/0,10801,97614,00.html
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/tens_of_thousands.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110904.html
http://uscountvotes.org/

please distribute this information freely

Olympia Activist Joe Carr Returns to U.S. from Palestine

2005-11-07T22:20:00.000-08:00

Joe has been working in Palestine off and on for some time now, most recently with the International Solidarity Movement and CPT (Christian Peacemaker Team) His work is a monument to contemporary social revolutions across the globe and his words will burn into your soul. His site is excellent, be sure to read his archived reports and journals from his work in Palestine, Israel, and Iraq. Good to have you back Joe.

From December to March, 2005, Joe Carr will be bringing his stories and organizing skills to select cities on the East Coast and in the Mid-West. In order to educate and inspire folks in your community, he will be giving presentations and performances about his work organizing direct action resistance to US Empire in Iraq, Palestine, and the US. He will also be sharing the skills he’s learned by offering workshops for local activists organizing against US policies at home and abroad. Help organize a talk and/or workshop for your community! Dates and organizing info is below, contact Joe immediately if you’re interested! joecarr@riseup.net

I think ISM's website is currently down but it does this fairly frequently as they publish some controversial material and death reports that a lot of powerful people don't want us free first-worlders to wrap our little hungry minds around, we might actually notice that we're starving
11.20.2005 - UPDATE: ISM's site is fully operational! Thanks.

Northwest Comics Kick Ass!

2005-11-06T21:53:00.000-08:00

This is the home page of Ezra Clayton Daniels, author of my new favorite self-published comic book: The Changers. Evidently he lives in P-Town just south of our fair city of Olympia. Check out his site, he's a talented man. Futuristic philosophy, cultural criticism, bohemian style. A cool, crisp, inspiring young voice.

from Ezra's site:

"SYNOPSIS: Two young men (Bisso and Geaza) from an apexed Human society in the distant future are sent back in time to the year 2027 to catalyze a leap in Human evolution. When a mutated 'visitor' from this altered future is sent back on behalf of his people to formally thank them, the events that follow and the things they learn about this new future of 'higher cultural potential' convince one of the men that their Mission will be a success, and the other that it will be a failure.

'The Changers' is a unique epic of subtle realism that reverentially embraces the conceptual foundations of the Science Fiction genre. The story's drama arises from the acute psychological conflict manifesting between Bisso and Geaza, and the lengths to which each will go to make the other submit. Their positions staked firmly on morally unstable grounds, these are not heroes and villains, but simply people made remarkable by nothing more than their places of origin - and the emotionally crippling burden set upon them by those they left behind.

Thematically, 'The Changers' is an exploration of the nature of perfection. When the Human race finally achieves its highest aspirations, what will be left to strive for? Bisso and Geaza collectively represent the culmination of all Human ambition, but the tension between them ultimately stems from their fundamental difference in personality. The conflict itself is in the definition of the Human ideal: Both of these men are supposedly perfect, but being so rudimentarily different, only one of them truly can be..."

Peter Russell - Business Meditation Guru or Nut-Job?

2005-11-04T09:26:00.000-08:00

Okay, so this guy is obviously very intelligent... and he's held amazing sustainable business oriented workshops with huge corporations... does he have to pose as a new ager to get them to hire him or is all this fairy dust just icing on the cake we have to take when we deal with geniuses? Check out his site and calculate how many days old you are! This dude was interviewed by Disinfo's original censored T.V. series (thanks for the link Klint!) And the dude's into swimming with dolphins, how can you diss that?

"Peter Russell is a fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, of The World Business Academy and of The Findhorn Foundation, and an Honorary Member of The Club of Budapest.

At Cambridge University (UK), he studied mathematics and theoretical physics. Then, as he became increasingly fascinated by the mysteries of the human mind he changed to experimental psychology. Pursuing this interest, he traveled to India to study meditation and eastern philosophy, and on his return took up the first research post ever offered in Britain on the psychology of meditation.

He also has a post-graduate degree in computer science, and conducted there some of the early work on 3-dimensional displays, presaging by some twenty years the advent of virtual reality.
...
his corporate programs have focused increasingly on self-development, creativity, stress management, and sustainable environmental practices. Clients have included IBM, Apple, Digital, American Express, Barclays Bank, Swedish Telecom, ICI, Shell Oil and British Petroleum.
...
As one of the more revolutionary futurists Peter Russell has been a keynote speaker at many international conferences, in Europe, Japan and the USA. His multi-image shows and videos, The Global Brain and The White Hole in Time have won praise and prizes from around the world. In 1993 the environmental magazine Buzzworm voted Peter Russell "Eco-Philosopher Extraordinaire" of the year.

His age is 21730."

EcoFuture: Dave Foreman, a Dialogue with Derrick Jensen

2005-11-01T22:51:00.000-08:00

(At-the-time) Fledgling anarcho-primitivist Derrick Jensen interviews Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman way back last century some time. It's in Jensen's book of eco-interviews Listening to the Land But it's badass as a standalone too.

The Avian Flu Fright: Politically Timed for Global “Iatrogenocide”

2005-10-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

This is some scary shit man. What if everyone who panics and gets this $100 a pop shot ends up contracting this virus bred by the government to thin the herd, keep the public docile, distracted & frightened and keep the dollars rolling in?

If avian flu becomes more than a threatened pandemic, it will have done so by political and economic design. This thesis is supported by current massive media misrepresentations, profiteering on risky and valueless vaccines, gross neglect of data evidencing earlier similar man-made plagues including SARS, West Nile Virus, AIDS and more; continuance of genetic studies breeding more mutant flu viruses likely to outbreak, inside trading scandals involving pandemic savvy White House and drug industry officials, curious immunity of these pharmaceutical entities over the past century to law enforcement and mainstream media scrutiny, and published official depopulation objectives. With the revelations and assertions advanced herein, the public is forewarned against this physician-assisted mass murder best termed “iatrogenocide.”* This genocidal imposition is expected to serve mainly economic and political depopulation objectives

* The term “iatrogenocide” is derived from the combination of words “iatrogenesis,” meaning physician induced illness, and “genocide,” defined as the mass killing and/or enslaving of people for economics, politics, and/or ideology.

Alright, here's some more stuff. Politics of a Pandemic
by Shaula Evans This essay is an excellent amalgamation of points, fingering the intentional mismanagement and cronyism of the Bush administration. Our country's government has been set-up to fail in the face of disaster, exacerbating the problems and lining the pockets of a few powerful white men. We're fucked.

Oh yeah, guess who makes money from this bird flu scare?
Who Owns the Rights on Tamiflu: Rumsfeld To Profit From Bird Flu Hoax That's right. We're neck deep in this nightmare and I don't know how to get out of it.

And just in case, here's what Wiki has to say about everything involving everything else: Welcome to The Flu Wiki

This site has some solid info as well: Bird Flu Epidemic is a Hoax ...as well as some scary stuff: "Meanwhile, the "Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005" (S. 1873), recently passed out of the U.S. Senate HELP Committee one day after it was introduced. The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) is calling the bill "a drug company stockholder's dream and a consumer's worst nightmare." This bill, spurred by bird flu fears, will broadly eliminate corporate liability for vaccines and drugs. This bill will soon go to the full Senate for a vote."

Check out this site as well, the link on Rummy is from here: Global Research

US Judge Sets December Date to Execute Nobel Peace Prize Nominee & Crips gang founder Stanley "Tookie" Williams

2005-10-25T11:19:00.000-07:00

UPDATE 11.21.2005 - ARTICLE ON COMMONDREAMS REGARDING STANLEY WILLIAMS

Please contact California Governer Arnold Schwarzenegger via this link California Gov Mail regarding this very pertinent issue. Stanley Williams turned his life around in prison and has become an exemplary model for young people today. He does not deserve the death penalty. He deserves a fair trial with an ethnically-mixed impartial jury and at the very worst should serve life in prison without possibility of parole. Please contact the governer and plead with him for a stay of execution and ask your friends to do the same.

"...since receiving his death sentence, Williams, 51, has renounced his gang past, penned children's books, been the subject of a television movie starring Jamie Foxx and been nominated for the world's top peace prize."
...
"...no condemned murderer has been granted clemency in California since 1967."
...
"Known as "Big Took" to fellow Crips, Williams helped build the gang into a nationwide criminal enterprise that continues to spawn street violence more than 30 years later.

He was convicted and sentenced to death for committing four 1979 murders, but he has consistently maintained his innocence.

The first victim in the killings, which took place during two separate robberies two weeks apart, was a 23-year-old convenience store worker.

A witnessed who received immunity from prosecution testified at trial that he, Williams and two other men took 120 dollars from the store's cash register before Williams shot the young man execution-style and mocked the gurgling sounds the victim made as he lay dying.

Williams was also found guilty of the shotgun murders of a family of three people in a Los Angeles motel.

Williams, who presented an alibi for his whereabouts at the time of the killings, argued in his appeal that Los Angeles County prosecutors had engaged in racial discrimination by seeking to keep black people off his trial jury."

Weathered Pages Northwest poetry anthology released by Blue Begonia Press!

2005-10-09T23:59:00.000-07:00

~Just attended an excellent poetry reading in Yakima this afternoon in honor of the 10th anniversary of the poetry pole at Blue Begonia Press. Words were woven together by a far-stretching family, some faces unfamiliar, but all souls holy, into a tapestry spanning several generations and many nations. The Poetry Pole's legacy is now set in stone as well as soil, to be enjoyed by the many instead of a scant few. Many thanks to Jim and Karen Bodeen, Dan Peters, Terry Martin and photographer & poet Rob Prout for all their hard work. Thanks also to my fantastic parents for taking care of the babies and thanks to Stephanie for being beautiful by my side. The book, Weathered Pages, looks wonderful! Good to see so many writers and poets and friends side-by-side: good 'ole Charlie Potts, Alice Derry, Barry Grimes, Jeremy Gaulke, Paul Hunter, Judith Roche, fellow Olympian Bill Yake and my new friends Keely Murphy and Lindsay Brown. Other authors who were unfortunately absent include: Jim Bertolino, Madeline DeFrees, Evergreen Professor Bill Ransom, Copper Canyon Press & Poets Against the War Founder Sam Hamill, Pongo Publishing's Richard Gold, klipshutz, Walla Walla poetess Linda Andrews, Walla Walla College Professor Dan Lamberton, my buddy Stephen Thomas, the wandering Dick Bakken, Andy Clausen, Yakima's Marty Lovins, Lynn Martin, author of The Light That Whispers Morning Kevin Miller, and many more! Contact Blue Begonia Press by mail at 225 So 15th Ave, Yakima, Wa 98902 and mail something to the poetry pole! until i get a picture of the cover of the book here's a cool old frans masereel block print to satisfy your eyeballs.

luxury is an object or activity whose necessity is not concrete and whose function is more emotive than productive

2005-10-08T02:25:00.000-07:00

The Other Hurricane: Has the Age of Chaos Begun? or Just How Fucked Are We?

2005-10-08T01:33:00.000-07:00

another good Mike Davis article. I like this guy's angle. highly recommend checking out his book Dead Cities. one mouthful of a word: ghettogeomorphology. City of Quartz is also fantastic. His newest book is called Planet of Slums and I'm sure it's good but in the meantime check out this article please. courtesy of CommonDreams.

*first recorded south Atlantic hurricane in history*
(back in March of 2004)
...
was Catarina a "threshold" event, signaling some fundamental and abrupt change of state in the planet's climate system?
...research on global change is pointing toward worst-case scenarios.

All of this, of course, is a perverse tribute to industrial capitalism and extractive imperialism as geological forces so formidable that they have succeeded in scarcely more than two centuries -- indeed, mainly in the last fifty years -- in knocking the earth off its climatic pedestal and propelling it toward the nonlinear unknown.
...
The demon in me wants to say: Party and make merry. No need now to worry about Kyoto, recycling your aluminum cans, or using too much toilet paper, when, soon enough, we'll be debating how many hunter-gathers can survive in the scorching deserts of New England or the tropical forests of the Yukon.
...
The good parent in me, however, screams: How is it possible that we can now contemplate with scientific seriousness whether our children's children will themselves have children? Let Exxon answer that in one of their sanctimonious ads.

Politics of Dissent

2005-10-07T22:08:00.000-07:00

A sharp blog by an Arizona attorney, smart, subtle, stylish, poignant. Some nice links too.

"The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself." Archibald MacLeish

Narco News: The Zapatistas Interrogate History

2005-10-07T00:16:00.000-07:00

An excellent up-to-date piece on the Zapatista's recent movements. Courtesy of Narcosphere.

“…We will conquer the place that belongs to us and that we deserve as indigenous people, as peasants, as the exploited. The fight is ours, our heritage is ours, history is ours.”

– Comandante David
Zapatista Army of National Liberation
September 16, 2005

“Political action is insufficient if it is not preceded by a transformation of the very structure of society and by an examination of the assumptions on which it is based.” - Octavio Paz in Labyrinth of Solitude

Mission Islam

2005-10-05T14:43:00.000-07:00

An interesting site I came across recently, not sure what to make of everything yet but it looks to be a fairly decent reference site.

Sense of Place Resource Page

2005-10-05T09:10:00.000-07:00

Not a bad reference site for a wholly unappreciated field.

Subcomandante Marcos, "The Plan for the Zapatista Departure"

2005-10-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

Latest breaking words from the father of postmodern revolution or The Zapatista Road Trip! This is actually from mid September, sorry. Just got around to reading it. Link courtesy of Interactivist Info Exchange.

Scrutiny Hooligans

2005-10-04T21:58:00.000-07:00

This blog is pretty dope but I had to draw attention to their World Blog Links section in the hopes that maybe if we're really nice us stupid Americans could learn a thing or two.

World Blogs

Adventures of Mr. Behi(Iran)

IberianNotes(Spain)

Thai Blogs(Thailand)

Bingfeng Teahouse(China)

EdStrong(UnitedKingdom)

MyLife(Belgium)

Wis[s]eWords(Holland)

SluggerOToole(N.Ireland)

Ethiomedia(Ethiopia)

Sushicam(Japan)

Editor:Myself(Iran)

Iranian Pundit(Iran)

India Uncut(India)

BlogAfrica(Continental)

TimbuktuChronicles(Mali)

KenyaPundit(Kenya)

LivingInEgypt(Egypt)

Rafah Pundits(Palestine)

Jerusalem Wanderings(Israel)

The Tiger in Winter(Canada)

Those Who Dare(China)

Beer Blog(Canada)

NewsAndViews(Venezuela)

Shanghai Diaries(China)

MABB(Bolivia)

Fotografosbrasileiros(Brazil)

AfterGrogBlog(Austrailia)

Palestine Blogs(Palestine)

ChinaShopBull(NewZealand)

Thoughts From A Rabbi(Israel)

Blogrel(Armenia)

Blah!(Phillipines)

Glutter(Hong Kong)

Subzero Blue(Tunisia)

Angry Chinese Blogger(China)

The Iranian(Iran)

Central Budapest(Hungary)

Brand New Malaysian(Malaysia)

EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers

2005-10-03T21:25:00.000-07:00

An excellent resource to keep handy, along with my lawyer, rifle, and fake passports.

Twenty-five Questions about the Murder of the Big Easy - Mike Davis and Anthony Fontenot

2005-10-03T09:22:00.000-07:00

An excellent investigative job by the author of Dead Cities & City of Quartz. By far the best list of questions I have found to date on the New Orleans debacle and it posits an interesting idea. In this world of hijacked elections, fake news, televised wars, digital sex, and corporate drugs why shouldn't we be able to commit citycide? Postmodernity has offered us many strange ideas, if only we could embrace a few of the better ones we might be able to learn something. These are just a few examples, please read the entire article.

2. Who owned the huge barge that was catapulted through the wall of the Industrial Canal, killing hundreds in the Lower Ninth Ward -- the most deadly hit-and-run accident in U.S. history?
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6. Why wasn't the nearby U.S.S. Bataan immediately sent to the aid of New Orleans? The huge amphibious-landing ship had a state-of-the-art, 600-bed hospital, water and power plants, helicopters, food supplies, and 1,200 sailors eager to join the rescue effort.
...
15. The French Quarter has one of the highest densities of restaurants in the nation. Once the acute shortages of food and water at the Superdome and the Convention Center were known, why didn't officials requisition supplies from hotels and restaurants located just a few blocks away? (As it happened, vast quantities of food were simply left to spoil.)
...
20. Who is responsible for the suspicious fires that have swept the city? Why have so many fires occurred in blue-collar areas that have long been targets of proposed gentrification, such as the Section 8 homes on Constance Street in the Lower Garden District or the wharfs along the river in Bywater?
...
24. As politicians talk about "disaster czars" and elite-appointed reconstruction commissions, and as architects and developers advance utopian designs for an ethnically cleansed "new urbanism" in New Orleans, where is any plan for the substantive participation of the city's ordinary citizens in their own future?

Link courtesy of The Interactivist Info Exchange, a blog created by Autonomedia and Interactivist.

Infiltration

2005-10-02T10:29:00.000-07:00

This is a fun concept. I always had a blast as a young rabble-rouser climbing scaffolding and getting into buildings on Whitman College Campus. Also check out the article on squatting in office buildings in Crimethinc.'s new magazine Rolling Thunder, it's superb! Link courtesy of the
Crimethinc. Ex-Worker's Collective

Infiltration offers a mix of the practice and theory of urban exploration in areas not designed for public usage. This site is the online companion of the paper zine about going places you're not supposed to go. The latest issue of the zine, focusing on military leftovers, came out in June 2005. It's black and white, but you might like it anyhow.

WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Hydrokinetic Energy in Scotland

2005-10-01T21:07:00.000-07:00

Couple this with the recent advents in sea farming technologies on an industrial scale and we've got ourselves either a great fall back for after the apocalypse or a brand new frontier to conquer!

Although hydrokinetic power -- energy generated from the tides, currents and waves -- has a great deal of potential as a primary source of power generation around much of the world, it doesn't have the visibility of technologies such as solar and wind power. This is due, in large part, to the relative scarcity of real-world implementations of marine energy. Many of the existing examples are test-beds, small-scale efforts to demonstrate that the concept is viable. But the demonstration efforts have been well-received, and Portugal will be opening the first commercial wave farm next year, and South Korea will be opening a tidal power project in 2009.

NOSWEATSTORE - Sweatshop-Free Eco Friendly Products!

2005-10-01T21:01:00.000-07:00

A little pricey but what the hell, right? It's cause everyone's getting paid what they deserve and we're already spoiled americans right? We're already used to expensive shoes.

You can make a difference:

Chinese workers making toy cars and "Bobblehead" dolls work mandatory seven-day weeks including 18 - 20 hour shifts, with only one day off every other month for 16.5 cents/hour. They are forbidden to form unions. On the other side of the world, workers in Mexican Maquiladoras would need to see their pay doubled just to have even the most basic amenities - sanitary drinking water and indoor plumbing, but such pay raises would mean those jobs would flee to cheaper locales like China.

When you buy products made by fairly paid workers in safe environments, you not only support those workers, but those plants then become examples for others that you can be ethical and treat people fairly and still prosper economically. Thats making a difference!

WHATREALLYHAPPENED.COM

2005-09-30T01:57:00.000-07:00

A perplexing site... a tad angry in spots but a good reference tool.

Dr. Eyad Serraj: What Disengagement Sounds Like

2005-09-30T01:50:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately Gaza is not free. I am sorry if you thought for an instant or two that was really it. But it isn't over.

Dropping Knowledge

2005-09-29T23:12:00.000-07:00

A fascinating idea put to practical use. Like a worldwide round-table with no back-talking. I like it. Gets the old juices flowing!

"We believe that asking questions improves the world. Dropping knowledge means dropping the assumption that we know all the answers. It means questioning the conventional wisdom. It means figuring out which questions are the most important to ask, sharing answers and then challenging those answers. We call the practice of asking questions and sharing wisdom, dropping knowledge.However one defines knowledge, by dropping it freely
to others, we all gain wisdom to improve the world.

Dropping knowledge is an educational resource and online network that connects people around the globe seeking to exchange ideas and solutions to the most pressing issues of our day. We believe that as our challenges become global, so must our communications and actions.

Our activities create collective wisdom for social change. A unique combination of interactive and audio-visual technology allows the user to engage a web archive of content from a wide variety of individuals and organizations.

Through interactive media, events, and a living library, we generate debate, enable people to participate in defining and prioritizing issues, and facilitate the exchange of solutions. dropping knowledge celebrates multiple viewpoints and insights from some of the most thoughtful leaders of our day."