Friday, May 12, 2006

Think Progress � Telcos Could Be Liable For Tens of Billions of Dollars For Illegally Turning Over Phone Records

Think Progress � Telcos Could Be Liable For Tens of Billions of Dollars For Illegally Turning Over Phone Records: "In other words, for every 1 million Americans whose records were turned over to NSA, the telcos could be liable for $1 billion in penalties, plus attorneys fees. You do the math."

If you have a land line you should be on the phone to your attorney right now.

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Beckett Blogging

The Chronicle: 5/12/2006: Happy Days (and Possible Endgames) for Beckett Collections:

"Mr. Knowlson would make frequent trips to Beckett's Paris apartment and return with a briefcase full of manuscripts each time. Among them was an item that Mr. Garforth describes as 'one of the Holy Grails of Beckett studies': the Whoroscope notebook, named after an early poem of Beckett's. It holds jottings from the 1930s in English, French, German, Latin, and Greek on everything from the weight of the Eiffel Tower to musical notations from The Marriage of Figaro.

'It's devastating, the amount of material there,' Mr. Garforth says. 'All sorts of weird and wonderful facts and figures. Sometimes it can be decades later before they surface in another work.'

The notebook, which measures about 4 inches by 6 inches and has a burgundy cloth cover, doesn't leave its special case very often. It accompanied Beckett on an extended German trip in 1936-37. 'It's obviously been in his pocket the six months he traveled around Germany,' the archivist says. 'It looks beautiful. It smells beautiful. You could read it forever and find something new each time you look through it.'"

The more I read of and about the man the more I appreciate where he was coming from...

File Under: Ron is right!

REAL ART (and politics and culture): "Everyone who sees how fucked up things are has a patriotic obligation to rant and rave in people's faces until, well, forever. That's what being an American is all about."

but I wonder what we do when ranting and raving aren't enough? what do we do then? do we rest easy knowing we tried to klang the warning bell? Is voting enough? Is marching? How do we even know when we've reached that point?

things you learn when you finally break down and install sitemeter

1. Not only has someone from Dubai seen my blog,
but they found it searching for balloon animal tutorials.
That rocks.

2. That doing a google search for "bush and the lizard people"
is likely to bring you to my blog, as it did one lucky visitor
from Oklahoma!!!

3. People in Wisconsin are seaching for the "Married to the Mob" soundtrack.

4. If I wanted to stick to writing about the most popular items on the blog then "this is not a compliment" would soon be nothing but posts about conspiracy theory and Brian Eno.

I am learning so much.

wang dang sweet poontang shakin - Google Search

I've never been prouder to be #1!!!

wang dang sweet poontang shakin - Google Search

another poem about the devil

I'm worried...

about the devil.

He's been
a little down.

He shows
no joy in
accepted vices,
in his eyes
no hint
of the thrill
new temptations
usually bring.

He hardly
seems himself.

Perhaps a drink,
or a sacrifice...
maybe he needs a hobby?

I know,
I know,
it seems silly,
but still...
I'm worried
about the devil.
He's been
a little down.

Monday, May 08, 2006

Ain't It Cool News: The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news.

A west memphis three movie is in the works.
I think ultimately, bad or good movie, this is a good thing.
Ain't It Cool News: The best in movie, TV, DVD, and comic book news.: "It's a frustrating case, where evidence against these boys were literally along the lines 'He reads Stephen King books and wears black.' The whole thing is twisted and one real life horrific figure stands above everybody else by the time you finish Berlinger and Sinofsky's second film... John Mark Byers, step-father to one of the murdered boys. Even if he had nothing to do with the murders of the kids, this man is scarier than any horror icon of the last half century."

The War on Peons Fucking at Pandagon

The War on Peons Fucking at Pandagon: "So there you have it–anti-choicers are anti-sex all right, but they’re also anti-marriage, anti-child and anti-woman in real life terms, not in airy, abstract religious horseshit terms. They want sex to be a point of tension, not joy, in couples’ lives. They want children to be so numerous they can’t be cared for properly. And they want women to be resigned to a choice between being treated like whores or treated like incubators. The religious nuts in the anti-choice movement are deeply un-Christian, siding with the powerful against the weak, accepting whole-heartedly the idea that happy coupling and sexual pleasure should be privileges granted only to the wealthy."

yes! yes! yes! the anti-choice movement is anti-women and anti-sex. So maybe some of my friends are right that "keep your laws off my body!" isn't the right approach, but when you are in a battle for control over half the human race why pretend it's a battle over something else? The bad guys need to pretend it's about "the culture of life" because if they said it's really about control, they'd lose. We can only profit by pointing out the reality of the debate.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Daily Kos: May 5th, 1886 - Rounding up the Haymarket martyrs

Daily Kos: May 5th, 1886 - Rounding up the Haymarket martyrs: "Parsons believed that the voice of the people was more powerful than the voice of the corrupt establishment. He feared not because he was sure that there would be many more leaders to take his place.

He was wrong.

The execution of the Haymarket martyrs effectively stalled the American labor movement for decades.

Moreover, their memories were erased from the history books. Parsons et al are barely footnotes in American history."


I didn't do any May Day blogging this year,
but this looks like a good series on DailyKos...
so go edumacate yrself already!