Mouse Farts in a Wind Tunnel

December 20, 2002

The Crucifixion of Saint Trent

What iconography.

posted by el goose on 12/20/2002 04:28:42 PM | link

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December 19, 2002

I mock you with my monkey pants!

Registration required. Or "username" "password" -- you decide.

posted by el goose on 12/19/2002 10:32:30 AM | link

Interview with an Anarchist Dominatrix

During a domination session both parties are consenting adults who choose to perform their particular role whether it be the role of the master, the all-powerful oppressor, or that of the weak, oppressed slave and choose their own limits. The session is an escape from reality; a performance where the clients enter the realm of their imagination, and briefly live out fetishes that are scorned in this society.

The roles we play mirror the power-based capitalistic society we live in today, a society of greed, oppression and subversion, a society of force, silence and pain. This is in no way representative of the lifestyle I choose to live in as an anarchist, a society based on equality, respect and self-government. Domination is a game, the adult's version of what children call 'playing'. It's not real and, for me personally, it does not reflect elements of my personality.

posted by el goose on 12/19/2002 02:48:16 PM | link

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December 18, 2002

McDonald's Workers Resistance

Fed up working your ass off for the minimum wage while some lazy git sits in an office getting rich off your back? Had enough of being told how to look, what to think and when to smile? Sick of late nights without overtime, all the crawling to 'superiors' and the company's idiotic propaganda? Ready for a resistance network that's international, combative and capable of standing up to McDonalds?

McDonalds is able to keep screwing us over because they do everything in their power to stop us organising. For decades they've used myriad tactics, both legal and illegal, to try and stop their massive workforce from organising itself and putting an end to the exploitation that keeps the dollars rolling into McDonalds profit bank. They know that if we were organised they wouldn't get away with paying us such crap wages to work in such crap conditions.

posted by el goose on 12/18/2002 01:42:36 PM | link

Robert Heinlein's Bomb Shelter

Robert Crais tracks down the private bomb shelter built by one of his favorite childhood authors. And takes pictures.

posted by el goose on 12/18/2002 02:35:42 PM | link

Missed this birthday yesterday.

This is the type of coincidence that almost makes me believe there is a master plan somewhere. That birthday surfaced on the radar not more than a week since I completed a good deal of research online about Jose Guadalupe Posada. I was interested in learning more about him after reading about his work in the introduction to Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel.

Another influence on my cast of mind has been a Mexican artist named Posada. I first heard about him in 1933, during the worst days of the Depression, when I was a reporter on the World-Telegram. I had gone up to the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel to interview Frida Kahlo, who was the wife of Diego Rivera and a great painter herself, a sort of demonic surrealist. That was when Rivera was doing all those Rockefeller Center murals. Thumb-tacked all along the walls of the hotel suite were some very odd engravings printed on the cheapest kind of newsprint. "Jose Guadalupe Posada," Kahlo said, almost reverentially. "Mexican. 1852-1913." She told me that she had put the pictures up herself so she could glance at them now and then and keep her sanity while living in New York City. Some were broadsides. "They show sensational happenings that took place in Mexico City--in streets and in markets and in churches and in bedrooms," Kahlo said, "and they were sold on the streets by peddlers for pennies." One broadside showed a streetcar that had struck a hearse and had knocked the coffin onto the tracks. A distinguished-looking man lay in the ruins of the coffin, flat on his back, his hands folded. One showed a priest who had hung himself in a cathedral. One showed a man on his deathbed at the moment his soul was separating from his body. But the majority of the engravings were of animated skeletons mimicking living human beings engaged in many kinds of human activities, mimicking them and mocking them: a skeleton man on bended knee singing a love song to a skeleton woman, a skeleton man stepping into a confession box, skeletons at a wedding, skeletons at a funeral, skeletons making speeches, skeleton gentlemen in top hats, skeleton ladies in fashionable bonnets. I was astonished by these pictures, and what I found most astonishing about them was that all of them were humorous, even the most morbid of them, even the busted coffin on the streetcar tracks. That is, they had a strong undercurrent of humor. It was the kind of humor that the old Dutch masters caught in those prints that show a miser locked in his room counting his money and Death is standing outside the door.

Mexican Popular Prints: Jose Guadalupe Posada is an extensive archive of these broadsides. Well worth spending some time with.

posted by el goose on 12/18/2002 03:48:12 PM | link

American Bible Society is a terrific example of how a nonprofit shouldn't operate.

I used to work here. It goes without saying that this article made me laugh with glee. The people who run the place are even more bone-headed than management usually is.

posted by el goose on 12/18/2002 05:20:59 PM | link

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December 17, 2002

Stalking Alan Rickman

Does it count as stalking if I just spent 15 minutes scrutinizing pictures of Mr. Rickman as Severus Snape because I had to figure out how his hairpiece worked?

posted by el goose on 12/17/2002 01:08:09 PM | link

The Firm: The curiously compelling rock cocks of Cynthia Plaster Caster

"Bigger is not always better," explains Iva. "Cynthia is not a size queen, she's an artist, and when it comes right down to it, it's all about the music. She won't cast anyone if she doesn't love the music. This is her tribute, her expression of love for rock 'n' roll."

posted by el goose on 12/17/2002 10:26:12 PM | link

One of the odd things I can see about this blog already is the way the little bits of information mirror the way my mind holds on to (and lets go of) information. When I'm thinking about something, I'm obsessed. Once I've let go of the thought, it's part of the past immediately, "a while ago." Which is only to say that I was sure I posted that Alan Rickman thing yesterday or the day before. Dissociating through the web is a doubly, or even triply, disjointed experience, a disorienting experience -- because time and information have no relationship to each other as I read and browse. Not only does each of the gang have web sites that interest us, the interest in those web sites is not often shared.

What was I thinking?

For example, even when I wasn't blogging, I kept a list of bookmarks I called, appropriately enough, "Stuff to Blog." I stopped by to look at it tonight, and I was baffled.

A very orange web site about the Dutch royal family. In Dutch. I was led to this site after coming across a story about the Dutch royal family's ties to the Nazi Party.

Haberdashers Team Up for the Tie:The Men's Apparel Alliance declares war on the "business casual" trend that many say is out of control. Who knows why I thought this was interesting. Maybe just the concept of a Men's Apparel Alliance. The collective where superhero costumes are made. Maybe it's because I laugh at the notion of "business casual."

My Hometown: Ridgewood, New Jersey by Harlan Coben A tear jerking essay written after the events of September 11. Harlan Coben is a darn good mystery and suspense novelist.

John Deere Toys This one is a real mystery. I don't care about toy trucks.

So those are some of the "Stuff to Blog" book marks. Wait till I dive into the "Root around in this for goodies" or the "Read SOON!" bookmarks. I can see so well that once I find an idea that interests me, that I come to love at least a little, I never want to let go of it. More to follow...

posted by el goose on 12/17/2002 11:07:24 PM | link

Donald Rumsfeld Fan Site

Donald Rumsfeld Fan Fiction

posted by el goose on 12/17/2002 11:20:45 PM | link

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December 16, 2002

The Lem chronicles: The author of 'Solaris' says he's been misunderstood - again

Interesting essay from the Boston Globe. It not only gets at what Lem was really trying to do with Solaris -- represent what is unrepresentable -- it also details his unfortunate history with SFWA. For a bunch of alleged critical thinkers, science fiction writers can be a bunch of reactionary dunderheads.

Or is it just that most Americans don't have the vocabulary for much real political discourse?

In this unfocused discussion of a radical critique of the genre, the arguments by members of Readerville.com are so off-point as to miss the criticm being made entirely. Seems to be the same thing going on with Soderbergh's reading of Solaris. In all fairness, Readerville's science fiction forum has some of the most literate readers I've found online. They can even discuss Robert Heinlein's writing and politics without erupting into psychotic dispute.

posted by el goose on 12/16/2002 02:18:38 PM | link

Philip K. Dick makes a brief but important appearance in the Lem article. Today is also the anniversary of his birth.

posted by el goose on 12/16/2002 05:56:07 PM | link

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December 15, 2002

101 Great Books from the College Board

Recommended reading for those who are eating raw meat in their competitiveness to get into college. A good list of books, but many that I would have been unable to appreciate -- or even read -- at the age of seventeen. Many there that I haven't read yet.

By the time I finished my senior year, from the list I had read The Red Badge of Courage, The Three Musketeers, The Great Gatsby, The Scarlet Letter, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Catcher in the Rye, Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Candide, and Slaughter-house Five. Except for Ivan Denisovitch and Slaughter-house Five, I read each of these books for a high school assignment or because I had seen the movie. I spent most of high school reading science fiction. And comic books. Harlequin Romances for sedation. And Barbara Cartland novels for laughs. Not much room for Chinua Achebe in the midst of all that hilarity.

posted by el goose on 12/15/2002 07:53:50 PM | link

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