Saturday

 

"DON'T TOUCH ME UNLESS YOU LOVE ME ..."

Vamping off of Mark at k-punk's admissions about actors he likes who are not rated by "more discerning" friends & critics & others ...

I want to stand up here in this Church basement this morning and confess:

Hi, my name is Ian and I'm a Warren Beatty fan ...

I don't care what anyone says (or hearsays), as a figure I find him fascinating (the same way he finds Howard Hughes and Bugsy Siegel fascinating, and possibly for similar reasons) and whatever you say about him, his films tend to be aswarm with women, and different types of women, not (as per most forever-thus Hollywood male stars and power players), one type of "woman" or (as per Scorsese) just one woman per film.
{Did you know that Pretty Woman started out as a fascinatingly murky ambiguously 'moral' hard edged tale scripted by Donald Cammell? Before the SUITS got their hands on it? And turned the Julia Roberts character into every Hollywood uber agent Eszterhas wannabe misogynist's cream dream cliche ...}

E.g., Bugsy (like Bonnie & Clyde) is, properly, a duet; but I think people are so blinded by the "public" Beatty (and this is partly his own fault) that they don't see the craftsman Beatty, or the canny Beatty ... before the credits of Bugsy have even ended, he's seduced someone - but SONICALLY, in sound only, in sound alone, and but he doesn't exaggerrate the sound of the other's pleasure, it's a convincing sound, and it's convincingly spun around/about the Other while still hinting at narcissistic rewards of Power and control being creamed off on the side as it were ...
And in Bugsy there's - I ADMIT IT - the Bad Celt part of me that exults in his psychopathic jealous possessive anger, like, when he beats someone half to death (becos the guy called Virginia a slut) and then, adjusting his hair and clothes, says "You should be glad I didn't drink much today" well, I admit that when I first saw it I whooped and hollered ...

{as for his post Bugsy career, well, Bulworth was 1000 times more risky and fascinating than we have any right to expect A MAINSTREAM Hollywood film to be, but for the rest, uh ...

{Bugsy also has the loveliest Morricone score, ooh my ...}

In Shampoo that wonderful fumbling perplexed "speech" about his promiscuity which ends with: "I may not love them but nobody's going to tell me I dont like them ..."

(Alan Rudolph and MAYBE Paul Thomas Anderson: honourable exceptions.}

But I really can't put it better than these quotes, selected from a great article on Beatty by Stephanie Zacharek at Salon.com

"
[...]
his chief sin in the eyes of the public may have been knowing all too well how to look at a woman - how to look at her and really see her.

[...]
if the only evidence a movie audience has of an actor's heart is what we see on-screen, then Beatty has probably opened his more honestly, and more nakedly, than any actor of his generation. When his eyes light on Faye Dunaway in "Bonnie and Clyde," it's as if the world has suddenly opened up around him - the exact opposite of locking an object of desire up in the shackles of appraisal and assessment.

[...]
Beatty's George is the heart of Shampoo, and you can feel it in the way he practically falls apart, nearly every time, at the sight of the one girlfriend he deeply and truly loves, Christie's Jackie.

[...]
In McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Beatty is an un-likely Casanova - and yet maybe more than in any other performance he represents the essence of trembling, delightful, uncertain yet exceedingly selfless love. He yields; she takes, and it's a heartrending equation.

[...]
Beatty's great subtlety as an actor comes from that openheartedness. In the old days, there was plenty of feminist lit about the tyranny of the male gaze - how dangerous it was for a woman to define herself as men see her. But the whole point of love is that lovers, men and women alike, shouldn't look at each other in just any old way. Beatty's McCabe may be perpetually confused, but he gives Christie's Mrs. Miller the world in a single glance, over and over again. There's a defiant order to his unselfishness, and there's great beauty in it, too.

[...]
In his best moment in McCabe & Mrs. Miller, he stumbles around his room, mumbling in stream-of-consciousness free verse, as he musters the courage to go talk to her, to really make her listen to him for once. "I got poetry in me," he says, and the line jumps right out from its hazy context. It's a declaration of self-love, the kind of self-love that finds its truest home not in the reflection of a mirror, but in another person's eyes. Of course he's got poetry in him: He knows it, and we do too. It was there in the way he looked at her, as generous and compact as a sonnet. It's not the kind of thing you give just any girl.
"

posted by Ian 7/19/2003 12:18:00 PM

 

1 THERMIDOR

{whoo hooo!

A LIBIDINAL HYMN
{all 2 flickeringly brief, but ain't that always the way?

"A Fire in the Forest" by David Sylvian: the most sheerly quietly awesomely beautiful Song I have heard for a long time.
But why is it so brief? Why does it end too soon? Why is it not 9, 10. 11, 13 minutes long?


J.G. x infinity

Did I read this or just dream it: Jean Luc Godard, currently in Sarajevo, filming a version of Juan Goytisolo's State of Siege {with a walk on walk off cameo from Goytisolo himself as the book's spectral now you read him now you don't "J.G."... which, if his cruisey cameo in a BBC2 documentary a while back is anything to go by, he's a screen natural...}

Isn't it the case that with figures like Godard and Philip K Dick and others, the mere fact of their being alive and working and ornery and different and sending out aspirational beams, it's as important as who reads or views them and how much ...?


L IT B

And, for those of you who like this sort of thing: coming in September: a new LESTER BANGS compilation.

Mainlines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste
A Lester Bangs Reader
edtd by John Morthland
[Serpents Tail £9.99 Sept.]

Includes his pieces on Miles, Beefheart, Eno and extracts from a previously unpublished autobiographical novel DRUG PUNK.


on trying to like matmos...

... but but but i have exactly the same relational problem i do w/their current employer bjork .........
......... i SO want to love bjork i really do i approve of her 3000 per cent and i love what she is and what she does and i'm so glad she's out there being a polar example and explorer and X-ample but no matter what she does i always feel left COLD and i have no doubt this is my problem not her's but even so it's enduringly odd .........
......... OK i'll correct this a byte there was ONE track on her universally acclaimed vespertine {wasn't it wire album of the year?} that made me squirm & cry & sigh & sonically come {the one that goes "who would have thought that a girl like me ..." or was it "- a boy like you ...} which i could lie back & listen to on repeat// time after time after SIGH in a little polymorph cocoon of my own, and for once i STOPPED THINKING and my sinews melted and -*
but,
otherwise,
i never make the leap from THINKing as i listen this is so interesting to LOSING my thinking self in its grain & circuitry & breath & likewise w/ matmos i think to myself: gosh this is nifty & knotty & naughty & interesting; but my interest is prophylactic and it never goes any further & it's like a thin layer of something stops my full enjoyment ::: i really wish it wasnt so becoz if theres one thing i think is the future it's finding a way to resuscitate electronica's dry formalism with//in SONG {cf. some of Coil, some recent Sylvian, and who knowssome as yet still 13 yr old genius who will hopefully grow up to be the next JOHN MARTYN except influenced by i dunno gary numan & kid 606 rather than the rev gary davis and pentangle .........

*}: ((Words come to mind, but they are fuzzy, signifying nothing, more throbbing than meaning, and their stream goes to our breasts, genitals, and irridescent skin.)) ... shudderings of images awakening ... unreal, imaginary, fragmentary ... [a] dispersion that resonates or vibrates dazzlingly - and in clarity clamors but does not clarify. The breaking forth of light, the shattering reverberation of a language to which no hearing can be given ... a CRISIS of enunciation and of the interdependence of its movements an instinctual drive that descends in waves, tearing apart the symbolic ...

{quotes: blanchot bresson kristeva

PILL BOX SATURDAY MORNING FUN CORNER

Dr John, Claudia Roden, Emerson Lake & Palmer: the missing phrase in common?

{Dour-faced red-head: '... and YOU go away with tonight's prize of one pound, 44 p, and a half drunk can of super cider... while over on Channel Four someone's just got six thousand quid off Richard and Judy for calling a spade a thing you "you poke your garden with it, it rhymes with MADE...lee .........

posted by Ian 7/19/2003 11:49:00 AM

Friday

 

- ---- -
-
- PROBE
-
- 16:23 pm
- COIL LIVE {2002}
- "
- THE WORLD ENDED A LONG TIME AGO!
- FALSE EVIDENCE APPEARING REAL!
- FALSE EVIDENCE APPEARING REAL!
- EVERYTHING'S BACKWARDS!
- EVERYTHING'S BACKWARDS!
- "
-
- 16:24 post mortem
-
- CEEFAX:
- "a body found in Oxfordshire {may be that of}. missing weapons expert Dr David Kelly".............
-
- "Dr Kelly, 59, denied being the main BBC source for a story claiming Number Ten "sexed up" a dossier on Iraq weapons."
-
- "Police have said the body found at a beauty spot near Abingdon matches that of Dr Kelly, who went missing yesterday."
-
- 16:32
- COIL:
- "
- I NEED A KILLER TO TAKE MY PAIN AWAY!
- I NEED A KILLER TO TAKE MY PAIN AWAY!
- "

I don't know; I mean, obviously I don't know, I don't know anything about it yet; and although I do know I sure as hell wouldn't take my life over anything to do with the Blair Scare Bunch {IF indeed that is HOW HE MET HIS END}, I do sense in it an awesome kind of symbolic weight: HONOUR. A curse on the House of Blair.
Sleep tight, Hoon.
Sleep tight, Straw.
Sleep tight, Campbell {in your tank}.

Sleep tight Mr Tony.

posted by Ian 7/18/2003 09:36:00 PM

 

NOT NECESSARILY STONED
BUT BEAUTIFUL: The GHOST of ELECTRICK KARMALAND SPEAKS!

Mr H---e---X added:

"... HELL man I don't know all about their damn politricks and all, but we in the HEXPEERIANCE just think every HUMAN entitled to their own personal thing, their own personal BEING, everybody gotta be allowed to SPEAK OUT for themselves, no matter what the BROTHER might have done along the way. I'd just like to know if everyone in the let's not forget still WHITE House got a completely clean record, ain't done nothing in their past might get them some kinda ticket...

"Even my brother Colin Powell, lookin' all slick and UNI span and Uncle Tom's Reasonable Western Conscience... some of us REVENANTS still alive back in the SIXTIES day man - and what a looong day's journey into WHITE that was, huh - we remember a little thing over in Vietnam called MY LAI - pronounce ME LIE - that Captain Ko Lin Roll of Dishnour had quite a hand in covering up know I'm saying? That was the brother's step up on the ladder, you hear me?

"But shit - I made a poor chile's shitload mistakes myself, those Sixties days n nights, no gettin round that, no man entitled to put his brother down less he's happy to be judged by his PEERS too, not his SUPEERS, no, even my Mama's Good Book say that STRAIGHT so there's no misunderstanding Jesus meaning {and let's not even get into how this Palestinian or Ethiopian dude Jesus come out all Pat Roberston stinky pink ithe historical wash, see't?), and these people come on so Christian when its election time?

"I say put Funny George in the dock about a few things pre 2001 and cut off his high price high style lawyers up from Texas and don't allow him no WHITE MAN recourse and civil rights, see how autocute smarmy and oval offence spick and shit eating SMUG the man be his daddy's contacts not there to pull his big dumb monkey hand out the cookie jar, see how all git up on himself he stay when Mr Toe-knee Blaeurgh run off down the first avenue away from this new BAD STINK rising. Ha!

"Ain't gone be all snake hiss words about LIBERTY then, boys. No SUH!
Go sell LIBERTY to them brothers in Gwan-TENNAE-mo Bay, cos they the ones NEED it most right now, not the House Representatives who I know for GOD DAMN SURE don't represent but 1% MY people, and that ONE percent all prissy bout how his SLAVE NAME be pronounced... CO lin PO-lice how his name sound on this man's midnight radio ...
SHIT..."

- and then MISTER H---e---X HE stepped up like Orpheus reborn as the wise pimp who read the PreSocratics in prison who you'd always wished you had as a smart Uncle when you was 11 and had posters up on your wall of this BEAUTIFUL BLACK MAN you wanted to grow up to BE with his birth of the universe waistcoat and paisley orgasm shirts and hsi LEFT HAND PATH on the ice white guitar and his cosmic giggles and damn but that trickster fool Icarus boy up from the fields played the GOLD out of an old favourite:

If you can just
get your ..........
MIND 2gether
then come on across to me
we'll HOLD HANDS and then
we'll ...........
watch the sunrise
from the bottom of the sea

BUT FIRST!

are you
HEX peer IAN ssss?
have u ever been
HEX peer IAN ssss?

Wellllll ..........
I have...

I know I know
you'll probably scream and cry
that your LITTLE WORLD won't let you go
but who in your MEASLY little world
are you
trying to prove that ........
you're made out of gold and uh
CAN'T BE SOLD?
so UH ...

are you
HEX peer IAN ssss?
have u ever been
HEX peer IAN ssss?
WELL-!
i haaaaa aaaaa ve ......
UH-!
let me
proooooo0ooove it
to u...

Then he waved his spectrail sexstringed wand, let loose a witchy wise but Bataille black burst of unshackled cackled LAUGHTER, and with a parting, cryptic
{then you'll ... never hear ... S Club music again ...!
was gone....

posted by Ian 7/18/2003 12:14:00 PM

 

PILL BOX IF 6 WAS 9 SPECIAL

HENDRIX ON THE WIRE...

Seattle born Jimi Hendrix, eternally 20, today provoked controversy in heaven by dedicating a scorching new song "I DON'T LIVE TODAY" to the inmates of Amerikkka's new super maximum security prison camp {"they call it 'the Wire'..."} in GUANTANAMO BAY:

will i live tomorrow?
well i just can't say
will i live tomorrow?
well i just can't say
but i know for sure
i dont live today
NO SUN COMING THROUGH MY WINDOWS
feel like i'm living at the bottom of a grave
NO SUN COMING THROUGH MY WINDOWS
feel like i'm living at the bottom of a grave
i wish YOUD HURRY UP AND EXECUTE ME
so i can be on my miserable way...
well/hell
i DONT
live today
maybe tomorrow
I JUST CANT SAY
but
it's such a shame to spend the time like this
EXISTING...
well/hell
i DON'T
live today
maybe tomorrow ...
i just can't tell you baby, but
it's such SHAME to spend the time away like this
EXISTING . . .
"

posted by Ian 7/18/2003 11:44:00 AM

 

I like mornings like this; mornings like this are GOOD.

In the POST:
· a cheque {not nearly enough, but you can't have everything I guess
· FIVE new COIL cds
· a CHET BAKER biography
· and, perhaps most heart-warming and smile-making of and LIFE affirming of all, this week's edition of THE WEEK.
Cover line: The sex kitten who loves short men
Inside: "Emmanuelle Seigner is a sex kitten in the best FRENCH tradition. [...] The main man in her life is Roman Polanski, 69.
"The fact that he is OLDER means he has experience, which is good. I learnt a lot from him." And then, she says, there's the fact that she fancies short men. "I like small guys. I always did."

Now, here's a sublimely attractive and wonderfully creative and above averagely intelligent (and above all French) woman with her feet on the ground and patently in touch with eminently sensible "traditions" and "facts" which should be adopted, I feel, on a EUROPE WIDE BASIS.

Does The Pill Box, I idly wonder, have any readers who are:
a) not geeky blokes?
b) not not French?
c) not married to Roman Polanski?
d) not fussy?... "

+ ---- -

Also in the post this morning, the Pill Box electricity bill.
Now, maybe this is the equivalent of people like Gore Vidal suddenly getting stringent swingeing TAX AUDITS inthe 60s when they criticised NIXON; but the bill has suddenly shot up by a whopping 50%.

Ah, maybe this is a clue ...
LONDON ELECTRICITY {as was} has re-named itself "LONDON ENERGY".

And who do you think the COST is being passed on to ...?

- ---- +

N.B.

I just risked trying to extend the Pill Box page back to FIVE days on show, not the rather measly THREE.

And all the "old" NEW problems came straight back at me ... so much for techno-flexibility huh?

posted by Ian 7/18/2003 10:23:00 AM

 

30 MESSIDOR

MANTIC ANTIC PANIC IN N1

I was going to write about ADAM first * ... ridicule is nothing to be scared of ... but I got distracted by another scene out of NAKED FAME ...

Adam and Toyah ... Tony n George ... Ian Duncan Smith and Daniella Westbrook...

... the rules have changed OK ... that 15 minutes we told you about? ... that, indeed, you grabbed with both hands back in the lovely 80s? ... (didn't you even pose with Andy once? Or was that Duran? Frankie? Maggie? Hamnett? Roland? Noel? ... ) ... well, now it's an ETERNAL RETURN ... it's an infinite number of "15 minute" capsules ... it's an eternal boomerang ... and here's the thing but: it can be ANYWHERE ANY TIME ANY HOW ... so you don't just get this 15 minutes of go go go Glory Days - 22 years later you might be absent mindedly eating your breakfast with yolk running down yr unshaven chin and the picture you will see the next morning will be you, yellow chinned, piss stains on your flannel pyjamas, cum in your hair, whatever, in the tabloids:

THEN! he was a hunky sex god ...
NOW! he can't eat his own breakfast without a helping hand

'... once sexy ex-sex god Chauncey Pill Box {"I had two number twos, a number one and 5 number 3s... and Mum says do you want some beans?"} is reduced - as these sad and HEXCLUSIVE photos show - to boiling his own head awake in a sad early morning mixture of last night's kisses, instant karma and cough medecine...

But don't we all look bad first thing in the morning?
Can't ANYTHING look bad if you take it out of context?

{As I was writing these Pill Box notes, in a threadbare old dressing gown - good things in the WASH, not the past... - I realised I was absent mindedly, er, re-arranging my tofu sausage and two vegetarian falafel thru a gap in said gown {anxiety and boredom and absent mindedness and reflection often seem to re-route STRAIGHT to that ring road area for some reason... and it can be very calming to just, uh, pet them ...}
BUT NOW, a clever or "clever" or unscrupulous hack-snapper with the necessarily large lens... you can just see and read it can't you?

ALMOST HENMAN IN TOPLESS BIG BROTHER SLUT NEAR MISS!

Loony lefty Hektor Rottweiler, 43, his only companions now four poor underfed and nervous cats (denied their natural doman of Hello! spreads and advert casting calls), "logs on" to his daily diet of Internet Pawn and Pawlitical innuendo ... Who knows what uses this pinko animal lover will stoop to in his quest to get George Bush to read a book?

This SICKO egghead yesterday published a photo of INNOCENT SHEEP on his sticky "weblog" ... which he dates using NOT our good old british bulldog maggie thatcher posh n becks handicapped baby CALENDAR system, but some satanic Communist and whats worst of all unintelligbly FRENCH system...

But when we doorstepped Mr Rottweiler and asked him to EXPLAIN these photos which QUITE CLEARLY SHOW the ageing roue and self confessed ex junkie {who ADMITS that he still reads up to TWO books a week) manipulating his endowments as he "cruises" the SAME information ALLEYWAYS where YOU our readers very OWN 8 YEAR OLD babies also unsuspectingly skip like little angels, talking to the cyber trees and bees and fuzzy things... little knowing that behind those same trees lurk PERVERTS like Mr Rottweiler here, who, bitter at the fact that he has a merely "completely contented" existence has to get his SICK jollies in this unnatural way, what the cyber "community" calls 'one-handed logging'...
He had nothing to say, this cyber MONSTER, about his LESBIAN neighbours three streets away, frail ELDERLY parents or his description of brave international figurehead George Bush and Friend of Murdoch Inter- ... uh, BRITAIN's PEOPLE as "that fuckwit wanker c*nt" ...
A psychologist yesterday told us: "Mr Rottweiler displays all the symptoms of fullblown notgiveashit-itis ... and he's probably a cross between Bluebeard and Stalin and Clare Short to boot ... and you're sure Rupert can get Elisabeth to get Mathew to get Sky to give me a daytime Tricia like show on SKY...?"

We here at the PANOPTISUN say: HANGING'S TOO GOOD FOR...

{I have to say I was just starting to feel genuinely sorry for Adam thinking 'what kind of a society blah blah blah....' when you got even Adam's B.F. Marco P. shaking his head in exasperation and saying "- and the first thing he did once he'd been sectioned was ring The SUN himself and ..." AND ZZZZZZZt! There goes my sympathy, right out the window.

Talk about setting yourself up for a fall. Getting into bed with the tabloids is one thing: but settling down for LIFE ...?

Sleep with a mad dog and you'll wake up every morning having to spend 15 minutes cleaning the froth and foam and blood off yr sheets and curtains and carpets. And it's no use saying weakly: Look, I said you could sleep here for ONE NIGHT... you've been here 15 years... one minute you lick me, the next you bite my fucking hand off... that MAD DOG will be on your case for ever and 15 minutes now, bub ...

ONCE she was a fresh faced young doll about town who knocked back champers with ageing old hacks and didn't mind showng them a bit of thigh as she bent over to retrieve her PALM pilot OH god I'm sorry how did that get KNOCKED OFF the LIP of our STICKY table...
... NOW she's a haggard 8 am ex-Girl reduced to sleeping with her husband in what after all loony feminists call the legalised prostitution of the marriage bed ['Ere - hang on. 'Ave you chekced this editorial line out with Rupe first? - Sub.] ...

... FAME will keep repeating like a bad dream ... everyone will be FAMOUS for 15 minutes and it will be coke and cock and limos and lines and langour ... but read the smallprint, kids, from now on, everyone will ALSO be "famous" for 15 years ... 15 mini-you fame-"minutes" {we call them bullet points} ... like a gruellingly protracted unpleasurable handjob behind some bins out back of the place behind the real cheapo hypermarket where the big skips full of yesterdays produce are...
... I MEAN, nobody WANTS to do this, the [prostitute/press photographer/profiler] doesnt WANT to give the hand-job, I mean, its not exactly what you'd tell your children to go do for a living, is it, I mean, it's hard enough telling them what we do it for...

- What is it you do, Daddy? - Well, sweetie, Daddy FOLLOWs people on tiptoe like a Stazi agent and tries to catch them doing BAD things, like, those little human things we all do, sweety pie, so that he can get HAPPY SNAPS of them - Like when I burp-ed Daddy? - Yes, sweetie,just like that - So do you love these people like you love ME Daddy? - Well, NO, hun ... but uh Daddy's like a, uh, a policeman or detective or a jury or ...a hanging judge, SWEETIE, he has to produce 5 rolls of evidence a day just to keep you in fucking Harry Potters, SWEETIE - So they must be weally weally IMPORTANT people, Daddy? - Well... no, they're BAD people, sweetie, bad people, bad people Daddy has to peep over walls like a frustrated 13 year old schoolboy to get blurry pictures of their wine cork nipples, hunnybunny ... - NIP-pulls? Do I have ni...? - NO! hunny, we dont talk about our own nipples, hunnybunny, NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER, and if hunnybun EVER sees some man peering over our fence taking pictures - Like you Daddy? - NO! well YES, but no, like Daddy yes, but, but, but nevermind, just, if this man is taking pictures of, of your.. your... not-boy postage stamps, then tell daddy STRAIGHT AWAY, ok? So Daddy can beat the BAD MAN to within an inch of his goddamn cocksucker pervo life...

... and on the Other end of the lens, nobody ever thought this is how they'd end up getting their gratification and sense of identity, I mean, there's eros, that moment when talk or sex or the Social between two people turns into something dizzyingly intimate and cosmic - and then there's... getting a gruellingly protracted hand-job (for jesus christs sake don't you girls carry lube?} behind the bins of yesterday's produce... and its an allegorical stand-off... who has the most to lose... someone has to blink and say, you know, This really isn't working, this handjob could go on for ever..., and if it does, who knows what kind of grotesque halllucinations might set in ... and who knows how we'll THEN be able to tell what's real from what's set up, what's imporant from what's inane, what's spin from what's ... IN-SANE IN THE MEMBRANE ...

Ian Duncan Smith and Daniella Westbrook TOGETHER in a photo op for a "new" Carry On movie...

I'll say that again.

Ian Duncan Smith and Daniella Westbrook TOGETHER in a photo op for a "new" Carry On movie...

This isn't made up, this isn't me being all Pill Box surrealist and hardy har har. This was on TV last night. Flash flash flash go the orgasmo narcisso fleshbulbs. pop! pop! pop! in one of those NAKED LUNCH moments when everyone suddenly sees what's on the end of their antennae:

Ian Duncan Smith and Daniella Westbrook -

POSED, in a fulsome embrace, her newly goo-plumped tits, his big bald bonce, a perfect compositional pyramid, they didn't catch him out, Daniella wasn't waiting around behind the BINS with her big plastic tits and stevienicks nose, waiting to catch an unwary Conservative leader, who just... I - uh - I just happen to walk home this way every night, between the parking lot and my, my constit.. I like to talk to these down and out celebs, I ... - so that some hungover sub could headline the pic CARRY ON UP THE POLLS or KHYBER or...

Ian Duncan Smith and Daniella Westbrook... handjob ...15 minutes and counting ... "I, uh, I'm - sorry! - but I'm getting a bit of chafing here luv... do you think you could - yeah, that's right, spit into your hand... I mean I'm already having to picture Blair with those prissy little Catholic lips of his wrapped around a big red white and blue Bush flag pole just to keep my log on here ... I mean, come on, what am I paying you for, can't you at least whisper something dirty about my sizeable majority ...? "

{*Adam Ant: The Madness of Prince Charming · Channel 4. 17/7/03]

posted by Ian 7/18/2003 08:58:00 AM

Thursday

 

SCRUB ME TILL I SHINE IN THE DARK,
I'LL BE ALIVE TILL DOOMSDAY...


FRAGMENTS OF A NOTEBOOK written in 1937

by "Laure" (a.k.a Colette Peignot)

Avoid contact with all people in whom there is no possible
resonance with what touches you most deeply and toward whom you
have obligations of "kindness," of politeness. Since these
obligations engage me strongly as soon as I find myself in the
presence of such people and engage me through an ill-fated habit
of patience and good-will, which in fact becomes will for
humiliation (sometimes abject). Imagine a musician in an orchestra
playing off-key because his neighbor is doing so, to be nice.

Flee--literally flee--those with whom you can exchange only
absurd remarks about others who are just like them and whom you
have seen the previous night exchanging the same remarks, or
equally vain gossip, about the very person you are talking to.
There are certain people who end up frequenting and even
calling friends those they denigrate constantly.
I hate "goodness" and "kindness," which have only led me to
humiliation.
Keep silent as before. It's better.
Contempt for those whose conversation boils down to all that I
hate and flee: to a certain spirit of vulgarity and pettiness.
Farce is what they feel comfortable with.
I cringe before certain laughter and smiles drawn forth on
this terrain.
Sometimes a laugh is enough to cause me to have, not aversion
toward, but distrust of a human being.
There is a point at which polite distrust is worse than
aversion because it is more reserved, but I can't confine myself
to this, and everything in me shouts, screams aversion.
Lack of reserve and moral propriety shocks me all the time,
due to certain nervous (physical) reactions I can neither hold
back nor hide.
Those who broaden the horizon, those who narrow it.

How I prefer a true whore.
Do not get stuck where the essential is lost, where everything
turns vulgar, base, and petty. Through my own fault, through a
will for humiliation. A feeling of abjection. "Defeated ahead of
time." So from now on "dust to dust" resembles dust. At those
moments it is physically impossible to be clear and frank. Shame
and false shame.
Easy: to accuse others of being superficial = brilliant =
alive.
Return to simple beings, to childlike reactions, a difficult
return.

posted by Ian 7/17/2003 07:10:00 PM

 

G.B. sez F.U. to more mere POETRY

Comrades:

I will speak on the question of a Popular Front.
However, I do not want to equivocate.
We are not politicians.

We want to express ourselves on the question of a Popular Front. It is necessary for us to define our position in relation to a new set of forces that at the present time dominates the political scene.

We will not try to add new maneuvers to the already complex and often divergent maneuvers of the politicians.

When we speak to those who want to hear us, we do not essentially address their political finesse. The reactions we hope for from them are not calculations of positions, nor are they new political alliances. What we hope for is of a different nature.

We see that the human masses are at the disposition of blind forces which condemn them to inexplicable hecatombs, and which, while making them wait, give them a morally empty and materially miserable life.

What we have before our eyes is the horror of human impotence.

We want to confront this horror directly. We address ourselves to the direct and violent drives which, in the minds of those who hear us, can contribute to the surge of power that will liberate us from the absurd swindlers who lead them.

We know that such drives have little to do with the phraseology invented to maintain political positions. The will to be done with impotence implies, even in our eyes, scorn for this phrasemongering: the taste for verbal agitation has never passed for a mark of power.

GEORGES BATAILLE
{frm Popular Front In The Street
{May 1936

posted by Ian 7/17/2003 03:06:00 PM

Wednesday

 

Excerpts from a recent RICKIE LEE JONES Interview

Q: You grew up in the desert, and it seems to give you much more of a sense of wonder about life... Do you think coming from a rural area or place with few people makes a person much more aware of one's surroundings, as opposed to coming from the city and being surrounded by people every single minute?

RLJ: People who grow up in the city write as visually as farm kids. It
has to do with what is in your eyes, which way your eyes are turning,
inward or out. We all use what we have available, we are all lonely,
and all find our way out of our labyrinth of loneliness from time to
time. One person likes to hear about the sun on the water, and another
likes to hear about headlights on a motel sign. They all mean the same
thing. They are the way we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Q:Have you ever found - in any form - 'The Western Slopes'?

RLJ: Well now the western slopes was a phrase my friend from Denver
used to use to refer to whacked out people. "She's off on the western
slope,' he might say. So did I ever find the western slopes? I came
back with maps. I left a trail of bread. I made a poster for the tourist board.

Now, I am not sure if I became more happy or centered, but the thematic presentation of the work changed, and the very mass of its sun seemed to diminish.

Whatever it is, it's not life and death. It is, though, still the
difference between hope and disappearing. But living for twenty years
since, I know that life goes on, and that there are just so many of
those things you can do before you fall into the sea, like Klaus Kinski,
and when you rise again, you are gone.

I don't want to be gone, so I suppose that is an indication of a kind
of hope, which might lead to a kind of happiness, so I guess you can
say that I might be a bit happier, (in answer to your question) simply
because what I do is an indication of hope. To make a song is an act of
hope. If you did not believe there would be a tomorrow, or at least a
later on, you could not lift your hand to write. In contemplation, you
know, I am the fiction I create.

{2

Q: Do you think it will ever be possible to have a female Jack Kerouac?

RLJ: Well, I don't think it is necessary for there to be a female Jack.
Jack existed in his time and place, and it was natural that a man blow
that horn. A girl would not have caught anyone's attention. [...]

On the other hand, the children of these men, girls and boys, are going
to grow like wild fire, full of poetry and fury, and really, it won't
matter any longer, the beautiful sorrowful male persona, it won't be
the necessary vessel for our lust and respect [...]

Jack, remember, was marketed. I think it has to do with accepting the
intelligence and power of women as the literary sexual being. We tend
to be less attracted to that idea in women. But that kind of man will
be attracted to that kind of woman, but it just requires telling the
true stories of amazing women, the stories in the physical, not only
emotional. An event either radiates out and effects life or it doesn't.

We live in a time where people allow marketing devises to take the
place of real events, of real spirits. We allow vacant pop stars to
harm the credibility of concepts, to reap the rewards of deeper, more
meaningful artists, simply because some publicist evoked images that we
identify with greatness. I saw this really flourish with Madonna, and
spread like Ebola through the jungle land. I am still stunned, I don't
understand why the pretender is just as meaningful to the consumer now-
and the citizen - as the real thing. Is it because the real thing is so
hard to come by, we want to feel like we're part of a real thing, too?
Finally Madonna's real meaning is the virtue of being the one who
forged the way for all pretenders. I am confused in these times. I am
glad I stand outside looking in. George Bush, Madonna, the whole show
of second best. I was never that interested in [Kerouac's] writing, anyway.
Perhaps because I was part of it.

{3

Q: Are we beginning a Third World War now - or are people way too
brainwashed and paranoid?

RLJ: They just went, wow, keep spending money people. They are busy
setting up oil deals, hiding truths, selling agendas. They USE. That is
their nature, to use opportunities, even like the obliteration of
thousands of their own people, to political advantage. You'll remember,
George Bush Sr. referred to Syria as a 'burgeoning democracy.' George
Bush Jr. forgot to include the Islamic Jihad on his list of terrorist
organisations (hmm, must have slipped his mind.) The politicians, just
a month after the tragedy, are already shaping it to a political tool,
an oil opportunity, abandoning old friends, ruthless, shameless, conspiring.

What is amazing is that I imagine the designers going "Quick, open the
factory"... flag purses, flag doggy bowls, flag jeans and shirts. You
would not believe the ruthless commercialisation of this tragedy. Not
so long ago, the bombing of Pearl Harbour, our parents would have
rioted against stores that used the name of this horror to sell products. Its subtle, capitalism, how it corrupts, how as years go by, it just seems OK to sell anything. How could anyone dream of profiting in any way off of this?

These Americans, some of them just don't see what's wrong with that.

Don't believe that 90% approval rating. Approval of America, perhaps, but not of the idiot king.

In a way we are all like children here. We abide. This unimaginable
horror we normalise, and we go on. It's a funny gift of God. While I
watch this surging patriotism, or pac simili of, I wonder how they will
market the waning patriotism when it comes. Will they say, OK, we won,
and now lets move on to new products. They are showing united airlines
people smiling at the camera, telling how much they love to fly, I
guess, so that out of guilt, you'll go fly with them. Frankly, United
Airlines is the rudest, most horrible airline I have ever been on.
There is a case here of them throwing off a British transsexual, even
though they knew it was him, because - well really because they could -
he looked different on his passport, and his appearance might "unnerve"
other passengers. I objected to the attitude of the ticket agent and
she threatened to call security. I said call them, I have a right to
object to your attitude. Given how much trouble they were, I imagine
they have carte blanche to treat people now pretty badly.

The terrible thing is that the terrorist attack had nothing to do with
the police not having enough rights to interrogate people. But the
republicans have used this opportunity to bring about laws that will
undo the rights we have fought hard to have here in this country.
People will be able to be arrested on suspicion, held for days,
something like in France, I know, and other European countries. Well,
that will be just about anybody, and of course it will translate into
them harassing Americans they don't like. It's much more frightening
what is happening here behind the scenes, really. More frightening than
the towers falling? Well, no. But potentially much more grave. And I
have to mention, just for the record, that some of us believe Cheney,
the fragile vice president, is dead. Where is he? Now the fact that
they have hidden this really does seal the idea that they stole the
election, prevented votes from being counted, played horrible games and
moves in order to put their cronies in. To keep a thing like this from
the American people... my god, it's all 1984. And these white men
sitting around Starbucks driving around Santa Monica with dual flags on
their fifty thousand dollar off-road vehicles, they don't see the irony
in their fat cat attitudes. They think they are fighting for the right
to be rich, I'll bet. Anyway...well I was going to end on a different
topic! I hope the Yankees don't win the world series!

Interview by Terry McGaughey, Ugly Earth magazine
{edits @ the Pill Box

THREE x THREE x THREE more cheers for RICKIE, I say ...

posted by Ian 7/16/2003 09:26:00 AM

 

In the terminal where dreams
let so many tickets through
when strangers look in faces
and see somebody there they knew
you might meet me tomorrow
as all the lights are blooming green
and you're feeling a little lonely,
a little sad,
a little mean
remember a place
inside of that hotel
where you could do anything you want to do
you couldn't tell

if it's
more trouble than it's worth

{Rickie Lee Jones
"living it up" ·

I lied to my angel so I could
take you downtown
I'd lie to anybody
there was nobody else around
and I know what the people say
about me
but I lied to my angel
and now she can't
find me

{Rickie Lee Jones
"Traces of the Western Slopes" ·

... but after all
there are such things
and these are the things
who'll turn your memories back into dreams
again
Oh, it's all flying and waving
for you to keep trying
you're so close
So close
all the returns
one of these days,
one of these days,
one of these days,
one of these days.

{Rickie Lee Jones
"The Returns" ·

{ all: from PIRATES · 1981 ·}

posted by Ian 7/16/2003 08:02:00 AM

 

Thanks to Mark at k-punk, who e mails me the following gem of Orwell in Blunderland logic ...
From the same administration that brought you Rumsfeld’s distinctly
Blanchot-esque “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,”, the following is from Ari Fleischer – DUHbya’s very UN CJ Craig like press guy:

“I think the American people continue to express their support for ridding the world of Saddam Hussein based on just cause, knowing that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons that were unaccounted for that we’re still confident we’ll find. I think the burden is on those people who think he didn’t have weapons of mass destruction to tell the world where they are.”

No comment.

posted by Ian 7/16/2003 07:40:00 AM

 

THREE CHEERS FOR RICKIE

The following message is an announcement from the
Rickie Lee Jones Web Site.

Rickie Lee Jones will participate in a panel at the
Vista Theater in Hollywood on July 23. The panel will
last about an hour and will follow the premiere of
the film "A Night of Ferocious Joy" - a film of last
year's ArtSpeaks! concert, the first major anti-war
concert in the country. The movie shows at 7 pm,
discussion starts at 8. Ticket information is at
http://www.artistsnetwork.org/movie/index.html.

Background Information:

Almost from the moment the World Trade Center Towers
collapsed, the message to artists and entertainers
from Washington to Fox News has been clear: "Watch
what you say." And the threat hasn't been idle. From
the cancellation of "Politically Incorrect" to the
vicious Clearchannel-led assault on the Dixie Chicks,
artists who speak out against the juggernaut of war
and repression we are living through have faced real,
serious attacks. But artists have also not been idle.
As portrayed in the film A Night of Ferocious Joy and
seen in the streets, singers, poets, actors and writers
have played an important role in the resistance that
reached unprecedented proportions in the months leading
up to the invasion of Iraq.

It's clear the government isn't about to stop their
march across the globe, and neither can we. This panel
will bring together artists who have stepped out and
faced attacks, and will take on the questions of where
do we go from here? Do artists and entertainers have a
"right to speak" on major world events? How do we
defend that right? And what can and must be done in
the months ahead? Please join us.

The panel is called "Art During Wartime: Real Attacks
and Real Responses". It is meant to cover the situation
domestically as well as internationally and panel members
will speak from their own experience. There will be a
moderator who will pose specific question to people on
the panel. A big part of the discussion will focus on
the challenges facing artists in these situations - both
in terms of speaking out publicly and in the creation of
art inspired by and challenging all this.

Other panelists include: comedian David Cross, Richard
Montoya, Moroccan musician Hassan Hakmoun, Rakaa Iriscience
from Dilated Peoples, Wil-Dog from Ozomatli, Ami Motavelli,
filmmakers St. Clair Bourne and David Zeiger.

please visit http://www.rickieleejones.com

+ ---- +

Do we have any Pill Box readers in Hollywood?
Can you go along and report on this for us?
Oh, and tell Rickie I love her.

posted by Ian 7/16/2003 07:25:00 AM

Tuesday

 

VERSION WISE!

' ... and WALTER BENJAMIN DAY continues here at The PillBox ... '

AGESILAUS SANTANDER
Version One

" ...
Yet this name is in no way an enrichment of him who bears it. It takes much away from him, but above all the gift of appearing wholly as he was of old. In the room I last occupied, the latter, before he stepped out of the old name, armored and encased, into the light, put up his picture at my place: New Angel. The kabbalah relates that in every instant God creates an immense number of new angels whose only purpose is, before they dissolve into naught, to sing His praise before His throne for a moment. Mine was interrupted in doing so; his features had nothing about them resembling the human. As for the rest, he made me pay for having disturbed him at his work. For in taking advantage of the circumstance that I came into the world under the sign of Saturn - the planet of slow rotation, the star of hesitation and delay - he sent his feminine form, after the masculine reproduced in the picture, by way of the longest, most fatal detour, even though both were so very much adjacent to each other.
He did not, perhaps, know that thereby he brought to the fore the strength of him whom he accosted. For nothing can overcome my patience.

AGESILAUS SANTANDER
Version Two

"The kabbalah relates that in every instant God creates an immense amount of new angels, all of whom only have the purpose, before they dissolve into naught, of singing the praise of God before His throne for a moment. The new angel passed himself off as one of these before he was prepared to name himself. I only fear that I took him away from his hymn unduly long. As for the rest, he made me pay for that. For in taking advantage of the circumstance that I came into the world under the sign of Saturn - the star of the slowest revolution, the planet of detours and delays - he sent his feminine form after the masculine one reproduced in the picture by way of the longest, most fatal detour, even though both happened to be - only they did not know each other - most intimately adjacent to each other.
He did not, perhaps, know that the strength of him whom he thus wanted to accost could show itself best in this way: namely by waiting.
Where this man chanced upon a woman who captivated him, he was at once resolved to lurk on her path of life and wait until sick, aged, in tattered clothes, she fell into his hands. In short, nothing could enfeeble the patience of the man."

Walter Benjamin

{i · Ibiza, August 12, 1933
{ii · Ibiza, August 13, 1933

posted by Ian 7/15/2003 04:04:00 PM

 

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS!

Today THE PILL BOX asks you to join in and celebrate the birth of one of our founding fathers {our "culture & barbarity" tag is his} and FOR ALL TIME pawboy pin-up+inspiration+conscience+po'boy ...

WALTER BENJAMIN

Born July 15, 1892 in Berlin.

" ... no one else pursues the correspondances with such leisurely care, fastidiously yet nonchalantly - in a woman's scent, for instance, in the fragrance of her hair or her breasts - correspondances which then inspire him with lines like 'the azure of the vast, vaulted sky' or 'a harbor full of flames and masts.'"

Hypocrite reader, - my other, - my sister!

Hypocrite reader, - my double, - my buddy!

Hypocrite viewer, - my angel, - my comrade!

... and Dr Benjamin, who has overseen us and seen us through, from Erlebnis to Erfahrung ... :

Anti hypocrite, - my role model, - my brooder!

" ... [certain] prognostic requirements ... call for theses defining the tendencies of the development of art under the present conditions of production. The dialectic of these conditions of production is evident in the superstructure, no less than in the economy. Theses defining the developmental tendencies of art can therefore contribute to the political struggle in ways that it would be a mistake to underestimate."

RSVP 2 IANBOXSTRASSE, paaaarty people!

+ ---- +

A lot more to say on W.B. - there always is! - but specifically, certain thoughts arising from my voracious ingestion of the just published Volume 4 of his Selected Writings [Harvard University Press].

BUT, if you only buy one other book this year, my current money is on:

THE BEST DEMOCRACY MONEY CAN BUY
{An Investigative Reporter Exposes the Truth about Globalization, Corporate Cons and High-Finance Fraudsters
by Greg Palast
[Robinson Books]

Much, much, MUCH more on this anon., but let's just hyperbolically say: he makes Michael Moore seem like a 3 a.m. Girl rewriting an S-CLUB sleb-snog Press release.

Staggering, just staggering.
If you found our little quote about the Bush Family electoral theft even slightly interesting or dismaying, then you MUST - please please please please PLEASE - purchase this book {for the full gory - and anti-Gorey - details, amongst a great many other things}. And then buy another copy, and send it to someone you care about who lives in America. Before the next election.

I mean - I thought I was pretty un-shockable when it came to the corporate-bought Bush Family Bizness, Enron style shadiness, electoral diddling and so on {it's as American as golden boy JFK's own Dad-bought Presidency, after all}, but I read this with my jaw permanently on the floor. Just the one chapter alone which deals with how the Bush administration STOPPED all CIA/FBI investigations into the bin Ladens and ALL Arab funded terrorism {until September 13 2001}, well ...

"
After Bush took office [according to a top-level CIA operative], he said, "there was a major policy shift" at the National Security Agency. Investigators were ordered to "back off" from any inquiries into Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks, especially if they touched on Saudi royals and their retainers. That put the bin Ladens, a family worth an estimated $12 billion and a virtual arm of the Saudi royal household, off limits for investigation. Osama was the exception; he remained a wanted man, but agents could not look too closely at how he filled his piggy bank. The key rule of any investigation, "follow the money," was now violated, and investigations - at least before September 11 - began to die."

You will not BELIEVE what Palast turns up; and be aware, this is old style hard tacks investigative journalism, checked and double checked, based on official documents, based on OFFICIAL facts just waiting to be picked up and lnked, All The President's Men type stuff ... and most decidedly NOT the humor-free conspiracy ravings of some weirdo grudge-bearing marooned-lefty loony neurasthenic.

In the end, it's hard to know what is scarier and more shocking - what Palast turns up, or the fact that 99% of it is known but has been declared 'off limits' by the American media, which is (suddenly) too scared/lazy/bought-off - for which read "patriotic" - to do the job itself and unmask the STUPENDOUS irregularities and corruption and deal making and cover-up at the heart of democracy, BUSH style. {Not that Dubya's new shrug buddy, Mr Tony, is spared, here, either. OH no.}

Oh gawd: ... better stop, or I'll be ranting on (sadder, wiser, staggered, shocked, upset, truly upset) all night.

More soon: that's a promise.
But DO buy the book; it's actually very difficult to quote from because you end up wanting or needing to QUOTE IT ALL.

Sleep tight, catizens.

- ---- -

posted by Ian 7/15/2003 04:40:00 AM

 

LUDD ON THE TRACKS?

HIT THE FLAME BURN A HOLE IN MY BRAIN / I CAN'T COMPLAIN!

OK: first things first: Big Blogger's Little Bother. Part n+.

Qualified apologies to Mat and anyone else who e-mailed the PB with helpful upful solutions and suggestions and tech support. My snotty remarks the other day weren't - and I did hope this was obvious - directed at you; I am always looking for Does Not Compute advice, and always grateful when it arrives.
However.
I do think M's comparison with electronica of the glitchy stripe doesn't quite square. That is a formalist art project which EXPLORES the loops & tones & recesses & grain of the machinery; whereas Blogger is - or should be, at base - just a portal through which text manifests itself. It should be peazy: IF THAT IS WHAT & ALL YOU WANT. And it shouldn't {contra Pill Boxes ibid.} be about the mechanism itself: I mean, what could be more techboy boring and solipsistic and who-cares than someone writing all the time about the problems he's having with ... er ... ?

I dig that because Mat has taken the trouble to learn stuff he can post pictures and has himself a far larger palette for PLAY than me, and that's cool & fine, his post is singular and that's what we need more of, not homogeneity, and maybe even at some point down the line I myself may start to explore all the vrs potentialities. But - at base, as I say - I initially welcomed it, and jumped in feet first, because it seemed such a doddle. Because feet first would do it. I could do what I would be doing anyway, ranting away into my computer daily, but this way (with minimum think-twice, tread carefully, tick off list obstacles) share it with the world.
Cool.
Typing in Dylan interviews, favourite Byrds tracks, important new political texts, cat names, grudges, etc, seems a ways removed from Matmos {whose new CD, coincidentally, I just received; more on that anon.} tho', let's face it.

All writing is performative to a greater or lesser extent: the illusion of complete immediacy which blogging fosters is doubtless just that - an illusion. A lot of my posting for The Pill Box - and your's, I would hazard - is as much of a performance as my other modes of writing. I'm playing myself. But I will say that the mask factor is pretty low most of the time; a lot of it IS straight off the top of my head. {Not that that necessarily equates in this boy's POV with Truth, as eternally understood - but that's a different N.B.}

I was just pissed off with nu Blogger because it suddenly became so stop and start and tot it up and word count and SLOG and someone else's time frame and text specification and suddenly it felt like the e z y access thrill was gone. I didn't want it to be some explore the glitch project which consumed acres of my time - for a variety of reasons, none of which, either seperately or taken together also preclude all the grand plans and dreams I have for The Pill Box.

Interestingly, I think I may have used an electronica/muzik/rap trope in the past - how I had been envious of musicians/rappers who could shove out 45s when they felt like it. {The apotheosis of this has to be Jamaica in the 70s.... and, in my head, I wanted The Pill Box to be a bit like that: a Big Youth summer 45, part newspaper, part party political broadcast, part mysticism, part joke, part trickster performance, part gossip, part boast, part vulnerable song, part word dance ... oh, so much ... some of it broad, some of it in code, some of it glancingly personal, but pretty much accessible to an already semi clued-in audience, but always OF THE MOMENT.

If anything, I don't think muzik people have latched onto or utilised this nearly ENOUGH. (I think of COIL's Solstice+Equinox series of semi-improvised 45s as a great future paradigm here now ... (as opposed, e.g., to the wrong move of people clogging up every CD they put out with 60, 70, 80 minutes of will-this-do? stuff.
Economy, peeeeple, ECHONOMY ...

Anyway, I came close to a kind of manifesto-in-progress the other day, all that stuff about the Other Voice and letting it flow, and so on*.
Being personal and improvisatory without being dully or duly 'confessional'.

A-n-y-way, I think I may have found a way to ease the Nu Blogger probs; but I wanna wait a bit before I proclaim it a complete success; it just means you only get three days per PILL BOX, not a week's worth per "page". I should have thought of this sooner, admittedly ... but it still doesn't (as I keep saying) explain why clunky creaky "old" style blogger could deal with my textual OVERLOAD, and flashy user-friendly fast draw "nu" blogger seemingly can't.

Let's just see.

{I luv doing this shit, I really do. And I luv the EXCHANGE factor of getting post from people, getting response, getting feedback, getting help, getting READ, getting around ...

{*on which note, I'm a bit of a latecomer to HERONBONE but I like, I like: this is just the sort of thing I had in mind. Nice one.}

HIT THE POST BURN A ROM OFF MY HOST / I'VE BURNT MY TOAST!

But I can't complain.

+ ---- +

Currently playing:

Sebadoh: Flame
Prince: Sign of The Times
The Stooges: 1969
Steely Dan: Showbizness Kids

... I WANT MY SUMMER ANTHEM!

? ---- !

posted by Ian 7/15/2003 03:33:00 AM

Sunday

 

BUT FOREIGN (MINISTERS) NAMES ARE FUNNY! {2}

Review of Freund's Photographie en France au dix-neuvieme siecle
by Walter Benjamin {see Pill Box ibid; Benjy's Footnote Funnies: a Series.}

3. Alphonse Prat de Lamartine (1790-1869) was a popular poet and orator who helped shape the Romantic movement in France and was foreign minister in the Provisional Government of 1848.

posted by Ian 7/13/2003 12:43:00 PM

 

A SERIOUS AVERSION

I think it's just the right time to be reminded of the following; taken from Introduction {PRELUDE: UN COUP D'ETAT TOUJOURS ABOLIRA LE HASARD} of ELIOT WEINBERGER'S 9/12, just out from PRICKLY PARADIGM PRESS.

" [...]
Al Gore received some 540,000 more votes than George W. Bush.
Presidential elections, however, are determined by the archaic system of an Electoral College, to which each state sends representatives who vote according to the will of that state's voters, nearly always on a winner-takes-all basis. An eighteenth-century invention, the College was a last-minute political concession to Southern slave owners when the Constitution was written.*
[...]
Last Novemeber, as everyone now knows too well, the race was so close that the contest for the Electoral College depended on the votes in the state of Florida. The state is governed by George Bush's brother; its legislature is overwhelmingly Republican; and its Secretary of State, in charge of overseeing the election, was the co-chair of Florida's Bush for President campaign.

The state has long been notorious for payoffs under the palms [...]
Predictably, the state's technicalities of voting varied widely. Wealthy white communities, more likely to vote for Bush, had modern voting machines. Black communities - and Bush nationally received even less black votes than Reagan - had antiquated machines which failed to count tens of thousands of votes. In a bizarre incident, thousands of elderly retired Jews, some of them Holocaust survivors, discovered that, because of a poorly designed ballot, they had mistakenly voted for Pat Buchanan, a minority party candidate who had expressed admiration for Hitler.

When the ballots were counted by the machines, Bush had won by 547 votes out of six million cast. In most American elections, such a small percentage automatically leads to a recount. Because the older machines are so inaccurate - even their inventor stated they fail to count 3-5% of the ballots - these recounts are usually done by hand.

The Republican Secretary of State refused to allow a recount and the Republican Florida legislature decalred the election over.

After weeks of maneuvers and reversals, the Gore campaign finally reached the Florida Supreme Court, which ordered a recount to begin. Republicans, in the hysterical surrealism of 24-hour news channels, relentlessly charged that the Democrats were trying to "steal" the election, and that humans could not count votes as "objectively" as machines - though hand counts are the practice in most states, including Bush's own Texas. More sinister [...] the Republicans brought in paid demonstrators to disrupt the recount. Their demonstrations were so violent that the major potential source of Gore votes, the Miami-Dade County election office, was forced to shut down.

It was apparent to all that Gore would win the recount - according to the Miami Herald, a conservative newspaper, by at least 20,000 votes. So the Republicans went to the US Supreme Court [...] who stopped everything while it considered the case, on the bewildering grounds that a recount would cause "irreparable harm" to Bush by casting doubt on his victory. (The irreparable harm to Gore was not a consideration.) The vote was 5 to 4.

Supreme Court justices are appointed for life; seven of the nine had been appointed by Republican presidents. [Just one e.g.: The son of justice Antonin Scalia was a partner in the law firm representing Bush before the Court.*]

At 10 p.m. on December 12, the Court, in another 5-4 decision, ruled against a recount for three reasons: there were only two hours left until the deadline - thanks to them! - therefore it was too late; the Florida Supreme Court had no jurisdiction over an election in Florida; and the recount was unconstitutional on the grounds that the various kinds of ballots and ways to count them violated the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees "equal protection" for all citizens.

[...] This decision presented a practical dilemna. Every community in the US votes in a different way, with different ballots and different machines. Claiming that this difference was unconstitutional would clearly open the way to challenges to every future local and national election in the country. So the Court, even more astonishingly, also ruled that this constitutional violation only applied to this one election this one time in Florida.

Although the political bias and mendacity of thee grounds were blatant, Bush was now legally and irrevocably the President.

- ---- -

* to find out the full scandalous smallprint detils, I URGE you to track this tiny little jewel of a pamphlet down.

{www.prickly-paradign.com
{nta@press.uchicago.edu

posted by Ian 7/13/2003 12:08:00 PM

 

25 MESSIDOR

OL' DIRTY BLOGGER ...

... OK, so he wasn't the sharpest tack in the box, maybe, and he did have this tendency to go, like blank suddenly and for no reason and for long periods, but he got us to where we wanted to be and me personally I miss 'im ...

FREE OL' DIRTY BLOGGER!
FREE OL' DIRTY BLOGGER!
FREE OL' DIRTY BLOGGER!

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Currently playing behind the PILL BOX counter:

OUT OF MANY, ONE
Jamaican Music (Part Two)
Various
[Trojan]

prompting the following reactions:

a) is there a better way to start a sunny (or, for that matter, grey) day than Big Youth singsonging ... the daughters like it HOT tiddley boom!
b) Ken Booth* singing "Who Gets Your Love". Whoah! What a voice! On this track, uncannily like the magnificent Leroy Sibbles. {Atho I do speak as a po' boy who has been reduced/raised to tears by "Everything I Own", a record otherworldly in its perfection.}

[*sic? I thought it was Ken Boothe?]

c) an embarrassing jumparound singalong w/ Dennis Alcapone:

Better must come! It must come it must come! I beg ya run come come, before the night is dun. For the time is young and better must come! With a shock* attack I tellya Jack! When I take a snack I lick it back! Say the night is young and better mus' come! Scrub it yea! YEA! Scrub it baby! UH HUH!

{*shack? shock? shark?

d) why has no one ever dun a cartoon BIG YOUTH character?
King of The Jamdung ... Big Youth vs The Barber! Big Youth 'Im Jus' BUS' Up Babylon! And so forth.

posted by Ian 7/13/2003 11:10:00 AM