Saturday, March 06, 2004

Salam Pax in Karbala.

Chess--A Living Fossil. (via Ptarmigan)
   'Mirage

Nobody told me when I was born
that my life would be harder than my father's and son's lives.
Nobody told me when I was a child
that life was full of pits and tunnels and trackless labyrinths.
Nobody told me when I was a youth
that my homeland was not a homeland
and that my enemy and friend are aligned against me
and my lover would be as fickle as a chameleon.
Nobody, except Brecht, told me when I was a young man
that exiles are shoes,
and only Sartre told me
that political parties are religions,
and only Abu al-Atahiah told me that mankind is a curse.
And when I became an adult,
I did not tell myself: beware of tomorrow.'

--Hashem Tafiq (translated by Saadi A Simawe and Ralph Savarese) (via Open Democracy)

(Ismail ibn al-Qasim Abu al-Atahiah (CE 748-826), an ascetic poet, was born in Kufa, Iraq, and died in Bagdhad)

Trying to explain to someone who is not from this country what it means when Cheerios offers a free replica of a vintage "Lone Ranger" lunchbox tie-in to celebrate its sixtieth anniversary. (I leave out Tonto & the silver bullet stuff...) We take our myths very seriously here. Just don't ask me about Jesus.

02 24 04

When will i be able to return to my customary omphaloskepsis, cranking out poems like Cracker Jack prizes, & mildly decrying the awarding of treats to my rivals? I cannot sleep for seeing the faces of the untimely perished; daily i discover further inroads upon freedoms i took for granted; threats make the mullions rattle.

02 26 04

   "Christian Snuff Flick"

body swallowed up
people quote anything but
that the intelligentsia. protests tendency.
via Tom Tomorrow
An even if
the last daysThe
hazy tints of your Cajun cassette is that way.
The Myth Chance experiences,
but after hearing the intelligentsia. protests
tendency.

02 24 04

Friday, March 05, 2004

The first Xenon Missive by someone other than myself just arrived:

   "Communique

In any country In which makes
training
the
light of the infidels. If we can
forget [his] Prophet, may
God they have opened their
rabies … and kill
those who preach the spirit
of good to happen thereafter. The
victory and its
presence is before him and rousing of the
lands of persons live, without
exception perished unless talk The most
of them I give an
ethnic mixture, and Conquering God
God’in our distress, among them
affirming that
Shi`i e.,
sic As a
strong media material that
the stick
in the symbolic figures God s of
the believers and targets for financial
control
the banner they hate the Islamic] nation
than orphans at what was
Revenge, against the roads.
and wealth."

--Camille Meesh

(She tells me it's based on a terrorist's letter.)
Sayonara Godzilla. (via Metafilter)

The Dead Zone. (ditto) Just like Tarkovsky's Stalker !!!

I'd like to say this is a joke, but there really is a United States Perforated Plastic Baseball Association. (And i was going to name a poemform "whiffle", so Behrle's socks could be about something else.)
"Probably the real reason that public schools face such withering fire is that fundamentalists have come to what is almost certainly a correct conclusion: that their real enemy, in the battle for hearts and minds, is education." --Orcinus

   'AN EVENING SONG TO SHE WHO EXISTS BY MY NAME

Daughter of the daughter of the daughters of the daughter Pe
foreto the apple you ate of yee
beguiling Adam's heights foreto you favorite daughter of the daughter of Pe
being the Mother of the world and the world itself and the child of the world being
open the eye of the soul of grain
open the shores and do not turn yee head about
open the fallen shadows of thrones to the larch
open through Angels singing birds
open the sighing breath in the air of the sown winds
that call you down to them that call you
that love you
that yellow find yee in life.

The steambath of your faces
the steambath of your faces
foreto opening memory's window take a look around what is situated in the distance
take a count of the moving and the restless
and count out on your hand A those restless ones
those restless ones foreto taking from movement accepting life
long to move and yet still sleeputh
or quick say: from movement comes life
but in stillness death.

Origin and Power will fit into thy shoulder
Origin and Power will fit into thy forehead
Origin and Power will fit into the sole of thy foot
but you will never take fire and arrow into your hand
but you will never take fire and arrow into your hand
foreto the ladder of thou head
daughter of the daughter of the daughters of the daughter of Pe

O fy lily of mine eyes
fe the inkwell of mine cheeks
trrr the ear of mine hair
quill of happiness reflection of the light of mine things
key of ashes and bosom of flowing pride
take cover in silence people of this mine country
foreto wink number height and horse's ride

Of willfulness shall we sing sister
of willfulness shall we sing sister
daughter of the daughter of the daughters of Pe
name-day girl of your own name
of your own legs the wind and of your own bosom the bee
of your own hands the strength and my breath
uneasyseeable depth of my soul
the light that sings in my city
joy of the night and forest of the graveyard of stillstanding times
with courage come into the world and life's
witness
come to me in my dreams.'

--Daniil Kharms (21 August 1930, translated by Matvei Yankelevich) (via Dumbfoundry)
Listening to "Turangalila" while watching Mary Pickford's "The Shop Girl".

It will be easier to understand if you picture the world as one huge coliseum where slaves are sent to die & once in awhile the emperor lifts his hand to mysteriously let somebody go. --Or say it was just the repressed guilt of a world everyone knew in their hearts was wrong...

02 26 04

   "The Architecture of Famine"

  Silver dream
In the frog's dharma
  Radint log
Sheer bop to regale
  He gospel
Orb kingly collapse
  Pascal Krebs
Pup (Sirian) bark

02 24 04

After the Red-Assed Baboons left America in shambles, the treasury looted, the air & water despoiled, & all the world against us, the White House itself was found to have everything stripped that wasn't bolted down,
the curtains torn & the carpets scorched, & ape feces smeared across every available surface with maniacal glee.

02 26 04

"Jewels and After

On the precious verge of danger
Jewels spring up to show the way.
The bejewelled way of danger,
Beautied with inevitability.


After danger the look-back reveals
Jewels only, dangerlessness,
Logic serened, unharshed into
A jewelled and loving progress.

And after danger's goal, what jewels?
Then none except death's plainest,
The unprecious jewels of safety,
As of childhood."

--Riding

Thursday, March 04, 2004

A Budget of Gimmicks and False Promises.

2004 DW FAQ. Size comparison picture.


Lyx Ish Audio Wake.

"Of other care they little reck'ning make,
Then how to scramble at the shearers feast,
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouthes! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A Sheep-hook, or have learn'd ought els the least
That to the faithfull Herdmans art belongs!
What recks it them? What need they? They are sped;
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs
Grate on their scrannel Pipes of wretched straw,
The hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed,
But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread:
Besides what the grim Woolf with privy paw
Daily devours apace, and nothing sed,
But that two-handed engine at the door,
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more."

--Milton
"An autobiography is the ritual burning of the facts of one's life..just as thought is the ritual burning of whatever goes into it." --Codrescu, op cit

"What we were experiencing [in the early 70's] was the departing esprit of the previous decade, going out in firework splendor. Its demise filled our minds with meaning. After it finally left, the empty shells stumbled into places kindly kept warm for them by the guardians of order. ...those were the days of the rapidly closing crack through which light had miraculously squeezed...the best minds started sucking greedily just as at high altitudes the lungs go crazy. Today the crack is closed and you can take all the LSD in the world--there is nothing there." --ibid

Wednesday, March 03, 2004

The New Obscenity. (via Ptarmigan)
Umbrist Thoughts. While it may be true to a considerable degree of all "movements" that they are defined less by common characteristics than by the consent of association, it may be useful now to have such a thing as an indefinable movement. Remember the Rosicrucians!--who affected history more by not existing, than they ever could have if they really existed.
Listening to- Maria Yacubovich.

A letter from Zon.

Viridian note on the Secret Pentagon Climate Report (via Worldchanging).

Blogs Vs Listservs--a good wrapup. (Me, i think the only valid format is cuneiform on clay tablets...)

In Britain a child rescued by firemen sneaked back into the burning house to watch the end of the TV show he was watching.

"I have laid too many eggs in the hot sands of this wilderness, the world, with ostrich carelessness and ostrich oblivion..." --Coleridge, Biographica Litteraria ch. II

"[Poetry] is at all times the proper food of the understanding; but in an age of corrupt eloquence it is both food and antidote. In prose I doubt whether it be even possible to preserve our style wholly unalloyed by the vicious phraseology which meets us everywhere, from the sermon to the newspaper, from the harangue of the legislator to the speech from the convivial chair, announcing a toast or sentiment. Our chains rattle, even while while we are complaining of them. The poems of Boetius rise high in our estimation when we compare them with those of his contemporaries, as Sidonius Apollinarius, &c. They might even be referred to a purer age, but that the prose, in which they are set, as jewels in a crown of lead or iron, betrays the true age of the writer." --ibid, ch. XXII

Limitations are mostly only steep learning gradients, but what we lack is an appetite for the difficult. Much of my life so far has been passed in developing such an appetite. Only, i'm like a soldier who only fights in duels: i don't regard just any challenge as addressed to me--my honor or something like it, has to be impugned. Job-hunting does not give the Lie, it merely bores the shit out of me...

"The writer is a meticulous self-cleaning object, always scraping the grime of certainty from his perception." --Andrei Codrescu, In America's Shoes

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

To be where communication is impossible, and to suppress your thoughts, is to become a walking image--and for many, this represents safety: having predetermined their image. The society of such persons amounts to a hall of mirrors, except every mirror is turned away from you; and if you in turn refuse to pretend to be another image, you become, even in the presence of your own thinking, almost nothing, for the inner dialog only flourishes in true solitude. You attempt conversation that transcends the game of images, and meet the same words in everyone. Beyond that--if anywhere--lurks a nascent self. Much patience and long observation will teach you to know when you really do glimpse another (and aren't just fantasizing a twin or utter exotic), and much more experience might even enable you to discover what to do with those glimpses... But we are born and grow up knowing nothing yet forced to act. Communication still happens by accident. So "free will is a joke". And artists put messages in bottles for the sea. Anybody's eschatology offers more hope--and more orders to act upon. Even i, rather than try to utilize my solitude, often imagine my force multiplied by the mere proximity of other bodies... That is an eschatology (of recurrent apocalypses). For, today, post-production amounts to anti-production. Building a community would be far different than "marketing". More like--friendship. But it was the impossibility of friendship that turned me toward Art. Do i dare invent a friendship that is an art? And does anyone dare accept it? These are questions i get too busy to ask.
  I do not know their answers. Though i act as if i do.

"Retreating, day by day,
we come across echoes
of humans like ourselves
in preceding dark ages." --Dick Allen

   Video Addenda.
The semantic units of real-time are changes.
Words are not (usually) perceived as changes. --e.g. talking this way is one texture, another way is another texture; only their beginning & end count as changes...
Vidstyle of infoprocessing transfers to conversation. (The death of discourse/describing/drawing.) Then everything is on TV or pretending to be. Watching but never seeing.

   "Career"

Deciding that the origin of evil
resided in this floccinaucinihil-
   ipilification
   of vilification,
 my libels i started to retail.

02 22 86

Monday, March 01, 2004

Madcownald's.
   'ARAMAIC

On a night's drive in an open Jeep
you go past signs on corrugated tin:
Rashaya, Hatzbaya, Kafraya.
As if I sail and travel
beyond times, in a living Aramaic land.
Only the field radio keeps me posted:
an escort, wounded, a chopper landing.
And someone, agitated, beset by horrors,
hurts both my ears:
shrilly, with a trembling sputter,
bungles the Hebrew.'

--Elisha Porat
Translated from the Hebrew by Tsipi Keler.

Killing King Abacus.

Reading runic inscriptions as if Aramaic. (via Brit-Am Now 297)

Ahoy there, thou renowned ostrich.



War is a church.

Audrey Alexandra Brown. I actually have A Dryad in Nanaimo, which i bought because of the title; & it has some lovely verse (notably the long poem "Laodamia"). I was in Vancouver briefly, a long time ago, & went to a poetry reading. One of the poems i heard that night was a choral poem in which the refrain, "Nanaimo!", was repeated by the whole audience. I still don't quite know what the associations of that name are, for haughty Vancouverites, but i can guess. Anyway, i'm very glad to see this poet remembered.

Learn Assyrian Aramaic. It still has about 10,000 speakers (according to the Wikipedia).

Umbrist Poets: Submit Presto. I'm Best Stupor. Is Mob Sputter. But to Impress. Must Spite Orb.
God Hates Shrimp. Get your Leviticus on! (via Reading and Writing)

Lyx Ish tribute at Elsewhere. A fairly recent recording with Lyx playing drums for the group "Mud Lust" is here. Tribute at Vanishing Points of Resemblance.

A blogger in Latin.


from the Buffalo list:
"Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2004 23:00:01 -0800
(snip)
From: mIEKAL aND
Subject: Lyx Ish 1956-2004
(snip)
Lyx Ish aka Elizabeth Was spent an all too short life being a
musician, poet, gourd artist, painter, healer, yoga-instructor,
instrument inventor, teacher of improvisation, mother of Liaizon
Wakest, co-founder of Dreamtime Village, of Xexoxial Editions, & gave
lovingly to 100s of people who took her classes or interned under her.
We were partners for 17 years & even after our divorce remained
collaborators. After being diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer a
month ago she passed very quickly thru the final phase of her life
surrounded by friends from all periods of her past. She died
peacefully at 3:40 this afternoon in her home naturally & with
awe-inspiring dignity."

   "Edgily for Lyx Ish"

Litwight of the sotilary Klarman.
Only low i nearn to pulinguiese.

Horrows irm besind my swanmost fnik.
You made a blurgraf for my checond sapbook.

03 01 04
using four of her neologisms:

blurgraf-an electronic or digital manipulation of the look on the face of a person attempting to define a new word
fnik-The location of that tickly feeling in the nose that makes you want to sneeze but you can't.
Klarman-a military position in the Greek-German post wherein a bell is rung continually at a gate for no apparent reason
pulinguiese-to surrender by withdrawl

A tribute by Craig Hill.

A tribute by Geof Huth.
Landover Baptist webpage. Good clean fun. (Thanx to Peter O.)

Orcinus on Nader. The truth is "out there"...

Melanie's Post-Oscar Roundup:
"Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Well, last night LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING joined BEN-HUR (1959) and TITANIC (1997) as Oscar¹s biggest winners, taking home 11 awards; moreover, ROTK won in every single category for which it was nominated, besting both GIGI (1958) and THE LAST EMPEROR (1987), two Best Picture winners that went 9 for 9. (I¹ve just seen/heard Good Morning America¹s Charles Gibson announce that no other movie has ever won every Oscar for which it was nominated, and that is simply not true. Again, GIGI and THE LAST EMPEROR went 9 for 9, and the 1931-32 Best Picture winner, GRAND HOTEL was, in fact, only nominated for Best Picture, making its lone win even more impressive. On the other hand, to clarify, TITANIC, for example, won 11 awards out of 14 nominations.) Of course, the Oscars for RINGS¹s director Peter Jackson (and company) were as much for the entire RINGS trilogy as the one specific film, but that¹s okay, because RETURN OF THE KING is easily the best of the three (the others being THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING [2001] and THE TWO TOWERS [2002]). It would be tempting for me to say that my favorite win of the evening was Charlize Theron¹s for Best Actress, thanks to her mind boggling performance as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in MONSTER, but there was a certain inevitability in that. The win was gratifying and well deserved, but hardly a surprise. No, the win that most surprised me was Sean Penn for Best Actor, as a grieving father who can¹t escape his criminal impulses in MYSTIC RIVER. I think more than anything else, I¹m just relieved that Penn won, and that¹s mainly because I¹ve been telling just about anyone who would listen that the award was his to lose for months (since last May, in fact, when MYSTIC RIVER first screened at the Cannes Film Festival). For so very long it seemed like an open and shut case, I never even entertained any other possible outcome, but then, lo, Bill Murray started winning all kinds of year-end awards for doing his best Bill Murray in LOST IN TRANSLATION, and, suddenly, Penn was in a two man race. Then Ben Kingsley started making noise in HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG, and Johnny Depp became something of a darkhorse favorite for the hugely popular PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN. It¹s been no secret that I¹ve been cheering Depp, and it would have been great if he¹d won, but a victory for Penn feels right (even if MYSTIC RIVER, fine adaptation though it is, left me cold; the acting, specifically, however, is superb). I want to focus just a bit on Depp and Penn before moving on to the all the other stuff. I was glad Penn showed up, I mean, especially since he usually eschews awards shows. I thought after he lost to Depp at last week¹s Screen Actors¹ Guild Awards, he¹d chicken out, but he must have gotten a good talking-to by Clint Eastwood (his MYSTIC RIVER director). Anyway, one of the reasons I was glad he won, besides the fact that I don¹t have egg on my face, is that I¹ve always wanted to know what he would say at a podium if he ever actually won an award. And now I know. I honestly don¹t think Penn expected to win, so that was kind of neat. He was just sort of winging it. On the other hand, his speech won¹t go down in the record books for its eloquence, that¹s for sure. And why is it that Best Actor winners are more likely to get standing ovations than Best Actress winners??? On the other hand, what a trouper that Johnny Depp is. First of all, I love his new haircut. Yeah, I know, his hair was was still hanging down in his eyes, but it¹s good look for him. Depp is and always has been a little bit of a rebel (which doesn¹t mean he¹s not a sweet human being), and he just sort of goes his own way and that usually works for him. More importantly, however, is just how gracious this man was to thirteen year old Keisha Castle-Hughes (WHALE RIDER) when the two of them were finally introduced (after the young star revealed early in the pre-show that the celebrity she most wanted to meet was the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN star). Depp was extraordinary during that encounter, so thoughtful and gracious. I don¹t know the man, I¹ve never met him, but I can just tell there¹s a very sweet gentle soul under that bad-boy persona. Plus, again, he is just one good looking man. Now, maybe he¹ll get his own Oscar someday soon. I actually thought the best speech of the night came from Best Supporting Actor winner Tim Robbins (also, like Penn, from MYSTIC RIVER). Like Penn, Depp, and Alec Baldwin, Tim Robbins has been known to be politically outspoken, but he toned it down, wwwaaaaaayyyy, wwaaaaaaayyy down, last night. I had no problem with him speaking out for victims¹ rights (or whatever you might want to call it), because it was a perfect fit with the theme(s) of MYSTIC RIVER--and I for one truly believe that Robbins had the more compelling role in MYSTIC RIVER (that is, compared to Penn). I also thought Robbins was a sweetie when he mentioned longtime love Susan Sarandon (looking appropriately misty-eyed.) I can¹t say I¹m especially thrilled for Renee Zellweger, the Best Supporting Actress winner from COLD MOUNTAIN. Of course, Zellweger is a Texas gal, and, lord knows, she put on a heck of a show in 2002¹s CHICAGO, but I don¹t think COLD MOUNTAIN is her best work. Yeah, she earns every one of the intentional laughs she elicits from the audience, but the role is cartoony, and Zellweger is a major star who deserves more than second-banana status. I think I¹ll just pretend that Zellweger¹s Oscar is for NURSE BETTY, or CHICAGO, or JERRY MAGUIRE instead. Meanwhile, hats off to Zellweger for thanking some of her former co-stars, including Vincent D¹Onofrio (THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD), and, especially, Tom Cruise (JERRY MAGUIRE). Finally, yes, it was a great moment when Sofia Coppola won Best Original Screenplay for LOST IN TRANSLATION. Yeah, it was a consolation prize (for losing Best Director), but Coppola has endured a few hardknocks in Hollywood (specifically, her dad¹s disastrous decision to cast his daughter in GODFATHER III) and has now found her own way. It¹s a good story, and now let¹s hope we don¹t have to wait another 10 years to see another woman up for Best Director. (Oh, and let me back-up to Theron for a second. I¹m glad she praised her MONSTER co-star Christina Ricci.)

Were there any outright disappointments? Well, I still can¹t believe the Academy didn¹t take the opportunity, after all this time, to honor DESTINO, the animated short-film which began as a collaboration between Walt Disney and Salvador Dali. Also, it would have been a great, great thing if the Academy had honored the arty GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING for its cinematography, a movie every bit as beautiful as a Verneer painting. (The great Dutch artist being one of the two lead characters in an otherwise fictional story.) Finally, I was really, really hoping that A MIGHTY WIND¹s ³A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow² would win Best Song, and judging from the applause both and before and after the performance (of it) by Eugene Levy and Catherine O¹Hara, I thought there was going to be an upset, a temporary reprieve from the ROTK landslide. Oh well, at least all three of the above films were nominated and will forever be recorded in the film history books, and that has to count for something. Also, I don¹t remember the particulars, but there was an instance when a member of one winning team didn¹t get a chance to speak at the microphone, and that¹s too, too bad. I¹ve said it before, and I¹ll say it again. When there are team nominees, for Best Sound (for example), they really should coordinate their speeches, so that each member gets to have his moment in the spotlight.

This was one of Billy Crystal¹s best-ever hosting jobs. The montage of him inserted into some of the year¹s most high profile films was actually funny (especially the bit involving SOMETHING¹S GOTTA GIVE), and his Best Picture song medley (especially singing about MYSTIC RIVER to the tune of SHOWBOAT¹s ³Ole Man River¹). The highlight of the whole show, for me, was, as already noted, Levy and O¹Hara performing ³A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow² in the guise of their A MIGHTY WIND characters. It was just a marvellous moment, and my hope is that it inspires folks who haven¹t already seen the movie to go rent it and watch it at home. The TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE production number was cool, but, I¹m sorry, the other three Best Song nominees were a dreary lot. The Sting/Allison Kraus number from COLD MOUNTAIN was interminable, and the follow-up, also from COLD MOUNTAIN (with Kraus, Elvis Costello and T-Bone Burnett), was only nominally more interesting, though awkwardly staged: a huge choir shuffled out onto the stage just for a few seconds of glory. Annie Lennox¹s ³Into the West,² from ROTK isn¹t a total wash-out, and I actually like Lennox (but not as a platinum blonde); she¹s a truly special talent, but I don¹t think the song in question is one of her best. I¹m glad, on the other hand, that Jack Black and Will Ferrell were there doing a silly parody of the music that is played when a winner overstays their welcome at the podium. Black¹s SCHOOL OF ROCK will be available for home-video this week, and is definitely worth a look. Other cool presenters: Own Wilson and Ben Stiller (with the latter decked out in character for STARSKY AND HUTCH), and Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith, taking to the stage to the strain of venerable ³Love and Marriage.² I also liked the bit with Blake Edwards in the runaway wheel chair, and his gracious speech. And, okay, how about that Adrien Brody and his breath spray (referencing last year's lip-lock with Halle Berry).

Okay, now, with all that out of the way, who wins Best Dressed? For me, the hit of the evening was Jennifer Garner in a flowing, one shouldered orange gown with a luxurious train (my husband the artist says the dress is actually melon-colored). Garner, perhaps, could have benefitted from stronger eye make-up, but that¹s a minor consideration. The dress was beautiful. Next in line: Renee Zellweger, in a strapless off-white (creme? ivory?) number, also with a train. I liked Zellweger¹s chignon and her diamond choker. I also liked Scarlett Johansson with her loose marcel waves, emerald green dress and....undeniably scarlett lips. The best of the rest: Jamie Lee Curtis in aqua chiffon, Marcia Gay Harden in royal blue, Best Costume winner Ngila Dickson in a black dress with a manadarin collar and a contrasting white shawl, Patricia Clarkson, in champagne colored sparkles, and Keisha Castle-Hughes, demure in all white with a sheer wrap. BTW, I don¹t think I¹ll ever forget the look on Castle-Hughes face when, during the pre-show, she stepped out of her limo (it was actually a hybrid vehicle) to face the crowd. She was clearly awed by the enormity of the situation. Also, Catherine Zeta Jones was stunning in red, and HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG¹s Shoreh Agdashloo was looking very glam. Backing up to Clarkson, champage was clearly one of the evening¹s dominant colors. Most of those neutral colored gowns were blah, even Theron¹s, although I liked the way her dress criss-crossed in the back.

I wasn¹t crazy about Sandra Bullock¹s white dress, mainly because of its bows, and the normally stylish Uma Thurman was a dud....I¹m at a loss as how to describe the look, exactly, except that brought to mind a debutant slumming as a peasant. Someone help me out here. Not surprisingly, the evening¹s biggest fashion faux-pas belonged to a woman not used to being in the public eye, and that would be Fran Walsh, co-producer of RETURN OF THE KING. Walsh¹s dress seemed not to fit her very well, and her badly teased hair with floral accents brought to mind punkett stand-up Judy Tenuta and/or THE ADDAMS FAMILY¹s Cousin Ophelia. Not pretty. Remember her? (Played on the old tv series by Carolyn Jones, better known for playing the seductive Morticia.) Last week I thought Liv Tyler¹s cat-eye glasses looked wonderfully retro at the Screen Actors¹ Guild Awards, but last night they just looked awkward...she just didn¹t look pulled together. Note to Angelina Jolie: tattoos and evening gowns don't make for a great look...invest in some heavy duty body makeup before you step outside your door.

Anybody who criticizes Diane Keaton¹s fashion taste at this late date is wasting their time. That woman just is who she is, and I love her for it.

For the guys: Depp, of course, but also Tom Cruise (who actually wore a tie: gray), and dashing Ken Watanabe, Cruise¹s THE LAST SAMURAI co-star, and Pierce Brosnan; meanwhile, I would have liked to have seen Peter Jackson make more of an effort to look less...rumpled. A comb would have been nice also. Jackson¹s had a few years to prepare himself, so there¹s really no excuse.

Any comments, feedback, differences of opinion?


thanks for your consideration,
Mp"
Listening to: Charles Wuorinen- "Time's Encomium" (1969)

I anagrammatize:Umbrist Poets = I Sob Trumpets.

" 'Silas, this book was written and printed in the last Kettai Vullfinch Year. That was twenty-three years ago, which incidentally means that Tintinnabulum and his cohorts have it wrong--he thought Aum was writing in the last century. It was printed in Kohnid in Gnurr Kett, part of the imprint Shivering Wisdom. There aren't too many Kettai worls in this library, as you'd expect. And of those there are, the vast bulk are in Base Kettai, and I've looked at them all...' " --China Mieville, The Scar (2002)
Syntax as strategy, not structure.

I am rediscovering Joy but i refuse to name it that, because my health is not where Joy would be spontaneous, so it must be hysteria (mania). But there have to be intermediates. No one was ever born in perfect health. (Mackerel sky.) I cannot dispense with tests. Justice would say: six months happy for six months sad. (Neither one can count.) Let's suppose Joy has nothing to do with Justice (how can it?), except as producing net justice in a transformation that is joyful (to one who is aware of it in real time); and having known joy might make you less prone to punish. As grace exists outside of justice, joy exists in the promise of grace. There are many who say you can live seeking only grace or only justice--joy proves them both wrong (why?).
   Tonight i feel so good i would volunteer to address a congregation of fundamentalists on the subject of communal ownership of property. Or a klatch of bohemians on the artistic necessity of not using drugs.

Not being able to distinguish when i have no intuition from when i don't know if i have it or not, is a call for chess, not a cause to cry.