Friday, October 28, 2005

bush @ eleven counts and counting

The 2005 International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration of the United States convened on Oct 21st & 22nd. Not sure what will come of it, but Not in Our Name sponsored the commission and members include Sam Hamill, Marcus Raskin, Ann Wright, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael Ratner, Barbara Olshanksy, Howard Zinn, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Gore Vidal, Cornel West, and on and on and on ...

Read the indictments here.

Monday, October 24, 2005

all we are is left behind

We have more in common with Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout than we realize. Add that to the short title list of Mary Buchinger's What Tolstoy and Paleopathologists Have in Common.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

good night, good luck, good man

George Clooney is my new celebrity boyfriend. Just went and saw Good Night, And Good Luck. So refreshing to watch a movie with an earnest, intelligent screenplay that perfectly telegraphs the tone of an era we remember as an hysterical American anomaly when really it bears a remarkable resemblance to our current state of affairs.

Saturday, October 01, 2005

hollow howl holiday

1955. poet before his time.

A Supermarket in California

Allen Ginsberg

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store
detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen
delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in
an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The
trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be
lonely.

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,
what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and
you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat
disappear on the black waters of Lethe?

fat's the new fit

President's Council on Fitness members include:

Coca Cola
Burger King
General Mills
Pepsico

from the Nation 8/29:

Less than a month after Cadbury Schweppes, the candy and soda company, gave a multimillion dollar grant to the American Diabetes Association, the association’s chief medical and scientific officer claimed that sugar has nothing to do with diabetes, or with weight.

Followers