full by definition
I wouldn't post the American Gallery of Psychiatric Art site, because everyone would give me a hard time about how it's already on every blog.
But the the Japanese Gallery of Psychiatric Art is a bit of a find. Not that I understand a shit of it, but then that's true of a lot of the American stuff as well. In particular, the Tofranil ad is kind of funny, because it looks like it transforms a happy young woman into a morbid depressive, until you remember, oh yeah, they look at everything right to left. That's why they're a happy culture and we are a sad one.
--
As a postscript and closer to home, here's the Top 200! These are the most prescribed drugs in the United States. I have no idea what most of these do (Warfarin? Digitek? Skelaxin?) , which makes me realize that actually, my life's not bad at all.
The Times is finally angry. "The president and his advisers obviously still believe that the constant repetition of several simplistic points will hypnotize the American people into forgetting the original question." What are they going to do about it? (Appoint David Brooks to the op-ed?)
One excerpt from thesmokinggun's legal document of the year, the Motion to dismiss: Constitutionality of Fuck, Fucker, and Fucking Fag: "Yelling "Fuck!" in a crowded theatre does not create a clear and present danger and thus cannot be outlawed."
This is the tip of a deeper, colder, iceberg, so let me just lay this specific case out plainly.
A movie crosses
-- the American fascination with asian fighting movies,
-- the idea that conforming is surrendering,
-- the fundamental questions of personal responsibility, ego, and identity, and
-- the use of universally black-suited salarymanesque characters (see also, e.g., Misters Pink, Brown and so on) to represent the bad guy, rather than the straight man
and in response, Japanese kids, uh, go to town.
It's true that China's way out in front, and it's true they outnumber us by orders of magnitude, but let's see a hundred flowers bloom if they got no fuckin thumbs to pick em with.
Arguing that today's version of the Qur’an has been mistranscribed from the original text, scholar Christoph Luxenberg says that what are described as “houris” with “swelling breasts” refer to nothing more than “white raisins” and “juicy fruits.”
Luckily, Luxenbuerg is a fatwa-dodging pseudonym. But nonetheless, his radical (even ridiculous) re-interpretation
of the Qur'an (based on Aramaic not Arabic) seems specifically designed to piss off Islamists.
The Pentagon office that proposed spying electronically on Americans to monitor potential terrorists has a new experiment. It is an online futures trading market, disclosed today by critics, in which anonymous speculators would bet on forecasting terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups.
the next entry is #1000. not to put pressure on the next post or anything.
Billyburgers, their hood having officially "tipped", run back to Alphabet City. In a year, they'll probably try to slip back over the river on the L, in the endless cycle of elusive hipsterness. you can almost hear the scurrying real estate cockroaches under the floorboards.
It's a little late for a far-reaching post, but there's a story and it's a story about pictures, and if you told it in names only, these particular ones would be german. It would start with August Sander, and then it would continue with, e.g., Bernd and Hilla Becher, who taught Andreas Gursky and Thomases Ruff and Struth in Dusseldorf. Got that? Can the Tate make it clearer? More cruel? More tender? Does Gerhard Richter's Atlas make order or reveal it? (In my picture atlas...I can only get a handle on the flood of pictures by creating order since there are no individual pictures at all anymore.)
Anyway, the only point to telling that whole story would be to continue it with Exactitudes, which is (like endcommercial), a periodic table of the western world. If August Sander approached it like a butterfly collector of sorts, caught up in amber, silver and ground German optics, then Exactitudes is born of the googleplex, the spider, the bot. Database and ground control.
Ain't nothing new, not in the west, not in the west of the west, and I don't know if it's comfort or terror, I don't know whether you find yourself in everyone else or everyone else inside you, but I like these, that's all. I like that in the future, atlases and exactitudes will be generated by google, not artists. I like the idea of the earth as capable of order and grid, as surely as I know it's got none of either.
Triumphs of the passive voice, in Saturday's Times:
JERUSALEM, July 25 — An Israeli soldier fired a machine gun that killed a 4-year-old Palestinian boy and wounded two young girls today while all three were in a family truck at a military checkpoint....
I think Israel got a bad bunch of guns.
Drug dealers are planting pot farms all over our national parks, and the Park Service is struggling to root them out. "It's like they all go to the same college course—Marijuana 101."
Many years ago, Avital Ronnell claimed cyberspace as "West of the West."
Well whatever. Because hanging out over there, I found the Right of the Right. I mean, you know those guys are out there, but it's not often that you get their mimeographed propaganda in PDF form. Evidently, everyone's gay.
The following user names were culled from subpoenas filed with the US District Court in Washington, DC.
Aab@Kazaa
Aboggs2@Kazaa
allstatetide@Kazaa
Amissann2@Kazaa
AngelaMikesell@Kazaa
anon39023@Kazaa
anthonybotz@Kazaa
aoster1@Kazaa
Ariel167@fileshare
asheejojo@Kazaa
Ashley@Grokster
azn_bahamut@Kazaa
B.B.C@Kazaa
badandy@Kazaa
Benchy987@Kazaa
Bigeasssy24@Kazaa
Bigpimpinitopey187@Kazaa
bigjohnhc@Kazaa
blazel@Kazaa
bluemonkey13@Kazaa
Boilermaker1214@Kazaa
brentandjonna@Kazaa
brich410@Kazaa
budman5000@Kazaa
Bush323@Kazaa
cado@Kazaa
Carolyn@fileshare
Casal@Kazaa
cbegalle@Kazaa
cherriie@Kazaa
CLOVER77@Kazaa
Corky101@Kazaa
Cortez1023@Kazaa
CowgirlMDR@Kazaa
crazyface@Kazaa
d-dubb@Grokster
dallass@Kazaa
daredevil@Kazaa
DEFAINCE357@Kazaa
definitely_ditzy@Kazaa
dimples0530@Kazaa
dmadigan@Kazaa
dotzbadger@Kazaa
dubcha@Kazaa
dulfingurl2@Kazaa
Dyellagurl22@Kazaa
Dziion@Kazaa
eddieh@Kazaa
emmi4@Kazaa
enbbarnes@Kazaa
ERIKA@Kazaa
felicia_alvarado@Kazaa
flowerpower0818@fileshare
fox3j@Kazaa
freckles72587@Kazaa
fritzbuilding@Kazaa
Generalby@Kazaa
Ghettobootybabe8@Kazaa
h2ochamp@kazaa
harris@Kazaa
heather_thee_amazing@Kazaa
hoami316@Kazaa
hooterzzz@Kazaa
hottdude0587@Kazaa
HyDang@Kazaa
ilovemydez@Kazaa
indepunk74@Kazaa
inthisroom@Kazaa
jamonie@Kazaa
JE_WV@Kazaa
Jeff@Kazaa
Jessica@Kazaa
jim@Kazaa
joanjett@Kazaa
joe@Kazaa
jomada@Kazaa
JustineRiot@Kazaa
kelney12@Kazaa
kenne007@Kazaa
KrAyZiE@Kazaa
ktgurl13@Grokster
kunstrukter@Kazaa
ladypimp8669@Kazaa
laurelbean@Kazaa
leahpate@Kazaa
LiLHuNnIe1480@Kazaa
Lisweet@Kazaa
Lyssy348@Kazaa
madkirk@fileshare
Marge4131@Kazaa
Marla262@Kazaa
mgokey@Kazaa
mike@Kazaa
Motivator@Kazaa
munkeyspanker21@Kazaa
nikki@Kazaa
Niltiak@Kazaa
Nodopefor2@Kazaa
paulina@Kazaa
pdia@Kazaa
PDJ1846@Kazaa
Playgirlmama@Kazaa
Prtythug23@Kazaa
qjade512@Kazaa
rebecca_m_122@Kazaa
rips42@Kazaa
rochelle@Kazaa
RockOn182@Kazaa
samlionofzino@Kazaa
shakobe@Kazaa
shonga84@Kazaa
sk8boyben@Kazaa
sneil@Kazaa
soccerdog@Kazaa
StolenSi@Kazaa
sus@Kazaa
Sweet3114@Kazaa
sweetthang1421@Kazaa
TheLastReal7@Kazaa
TMONEYNDHIZOUSE@kazaa
Tyler@Kazaa
Unit984@Kazaa
Westly_NoGood@Kazaa
www.k_lite.tk_Kazaa_Lite@Kazaa
Maher: "...you can see the problem: Gray Davis. And the obvious solution: A Viennese weightlifter. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Finally, a candidate who can explain the Bush administration's positions on civil liberties in the original German."
Want to read the congressional report on 9/11? Download it here.
In preparation for the publication of pictures of Saddam's sons' dead bodies, let's remember the first evil emperor whose dead body was paraded in front of the cameras: poor old Maximilian, of Mexico. Never trust Napoleon.
Job Growth ranking by President for the last 75 years
1. Roosevelt (1933-45): +5.3% (Dem)
2. Johnson (1963-69): +3.8% (Dem)
3. Carter (1977-81): +3.1% (Dem)
4. Truman: (1945-53): +2.5% (Dem)
5. Kennedy (1961-63): +2.5% (Dem)
6. Clinton (1993-2001): +2.4% (Dem)
7. Nixon (1969-75): +2.2% (Rep)
8. Reagan (1981-89): +2.1% (Rep)
9. Ford (1975-77): +1.1% (Rep)
10.Eisenhower (1953-61): +0.9% (Rep)
11.Bush (1989-93): +0.6% (Rep)
12.Bush (2001-present): -0.7% (Rep)
13.Hoover (1929-33): -9.0% (Rep)
(from anomalog)
Breaking story. Councilman from my District 35 (and phrisky's). Alleged shooter, Othniel Boaz, was a challenger for his seat and somehow got a gun through security at City Hall.
If you've already found all the GPS caches (and the missing time capsules, while you're in there) and if you've already drawn all the GPS drawings you're going to, then hang out a little bit and wait for the advent of Geeplogs, "public GPS contexts that can be queried about a given area. [They] will be the GPS equivalents to blogs, in which a person could narrate a specific tour with his or her relevant commentary, possibly with photographs or video feeds."
When we were teenagers, if you gave a place history, they called it "tagging." They, whoever they were, were prescient.
"And the war will have devastating effects on future recruiting by the reserves. A widely circulated photo from Iraq shows a sign in the windshield of a military truck that reads, 'One weekend a month, my ass.'" (Krugman NYT Op/Ed)
The budding journal Surveillance and Society has just released a new issue. You can read about "sousveillance" and "surveillant assemblage." You can also read an interview with Bill Brown from the Surveillance Camera Players and see video of Brown giving a surveillance tour.
John Berger, of fuckedworld, has done the fucked world another favor: The New England Journal of Enlarging Your Penis. Is this the most complete archive of penile spam? Perhaps. Don't Be Ashamed Of Your Manhood Ever Again.
quote of the day, from the seditious Creative Loafing: "Cheech and Chong would have made a more credible team of war correspondents than Geraldo Rivera and Ollie North."
Friendster -- like all other virtual phenomena -- is quickly generating an underground economy of, uh, virtual friends.
I'm not talking about the stray ghosts of pop dream and commerce that wander around Friendster, inexplicably connected to real people, though the mind boggles slightly at how those networks grow as they do.
Because in the meantime, other networks grow, somewhere in between real and not, at least as far as friendship is concerned. My relationship with my first-grade crush, for example (now in my network of friends) is more genuine than the entire networks of friends now selling for hard cash on ebay. Yes.
This is a pretty good one, but no longer for sale, though a different ebay seller seems to be offering the very same network for a lower price -- including a LOT of HOT girls, my friend's cat Cubby, and the staff of Waterloo Records, which is consistently rated one of the best record stores in the country, and which is a preferred shopping stop of celebrities like Sandra Bullock and the Dixie Chicks.
Why, that puts you in the same culture-commerce network as fancy movie stars, if you think about it. Or if you think about it even further, the practice of selling connectivity -- in it's most intangible and inconsequential form -- reveals the pure and fractal beauty of Kapital. Or, to repost from the other day, the fractal horror.
Right-wing canary-in-a-cold-mine WorldNetDaily is peddling a new book: Crude Politics: How Bush's Oil Cronies Hijacked the War on Terrorism. The edges are fraying... or am I just being optimistic?
It's my birthday next month (not the same day as dbrown's but close). If anyone's stumped for what to get me, here's something that will fit in the card catalog, but I don't have a label for it yet.
White House E-Mail System Becomes Less User-Friendly.
I guess it was just a matter of time. But the more this administration makes itself inaccessible to the public, the more I think of the Wizard of Oz. I mean, I would just like to see someone actually touch W so I know that he exists and he's not a hologram.
About four months ago I was doing a project with CAA -- I can't go into any specifics, obviously, but it had something to do with about how it is they do and don't use certain kinds of communication. You'll note from that website that they don't project a very wired image.
It's not giving away any industry secrets to say that as Hollywood agents they prefer the phone (and the lunch table) over e-mail, but in hours of interviews, the rationale for this was never quite this clear.
a n g e r
l o v e
Nancy Burson used a Gas Discharge Visualization camera on the fingertips of "healers who attained a range of emotional states in order to generate a diversity of auras."
From a NYT article on cabby cell phone usage,
"Some people call their countries, some of them call their friends, some are busy with the chick," explained Sarabjeet Multani, a fast-driving Punjabi who said he decided to move to the United States after seeing "Baywatch" on television.
"She does shallow with surprising depth."
A profile of Elizabeth Spiers.
(She and Jeff Koyen are friends??? OK, so they "got drinks.")
Congratulations, guys! Masturbation prevents prostate cancer!
Ashton Kutcher demands apology from the London Evening Standard, claiming the newspaper "simply made up" a quote in a story about his relationship with Demi Moore.
Oh, the quote?
"She was the hottest actress in Hollywood when I was growing up. I was in love with her when I was 10. Now it's great, I'm f****** her."
What he really said was "Now it's great, I'm fellating her." They didn't put enough asterisks.
• The Dating Experiment Brandon tries to find romance with a woman named Sarah. Season finale.
Today's cat fight in Washington is over Syria-related bullshit, not Iraq. That should be a relief. Except for this Post story about how everything in the state of the union was bullshit.
Ladies and gentlemen, Amherst sophomore and Senate intern Paul Kelly Tripplehorn, Jr. Here's his email address, and here's his email.
Oh, I meant to float this idea earlier:
Can I get a show of hands of people who think it's about time we gussied up the ol' Saturation facade?
I'm back. I love America, and America, well, she didn't exactly detain me in customs. I could tell you all about Germany, the shelves in the toilets, the asbestos in the Palace Der Republik, but in the end little is as interesting as the United States in its cultural senility, slowly (slowly) creeping towards the end of something. Creeping on mouse feet, armed for bear.
The way the spooks (who manufacture the stuff) talk about "intelligence" makes it sound like it's oil. They mine it, refine it, and process it for the likes of Cheney, Condi, Tenet, and Powell, who then bottle it up for Curious George. But it sounds like there's another layer (the neo-cons, hard-liners, what have you) that seems to be putting out its own brew. Curiouser and curiouser...
One of us was fantasizing about a Do Not Junkmail List when the Do Not Call List went into effect. These people are trying to make it happen.
1. speaks for itself: 'Bush defends intelligence as 'darn good' (link)
2. Isn't this just asking for it? 'Iran claims to make giant new oil find' (link)
Turns out to revolve around how to light a cigarette.
There are more dilemmas, too.
"A creation of pure scientific efficiency, the Fremen stillsuit acts as an outer body covering to prevent the slightest loss of water from the body. Using advanced pumping mechanisms, this intriguing suit is able to recycle both vapor moisture from the body, sweat, even the feces have their water recycled...Never trust ""artificial" stillsuits manufactured by merchants or other non-Fremen becaue in all respects, no one has mastered the perfection of the stillsuit like the Fremen. A good stillsuit can mean the difference between life and death."
Favorite Condi Rice quote from her cakewalk (umm, yes, so that's not reallt the right thing to call it) on Sunday: "And the British themselves stand by that statement to this very day."
So while the white house is driving for Tenet's head, Powell's tête may be along for the ride (and hopefully Condi's will be dragged along, since this puts paid to the idea that the Niger-is-fake never came up above the "bowels" of the intelligence apparatus): via The New Republic's &c, "Powell's office received a definitive intelligence assessment about the validity of the Niger-procurement claim from his own department in March 2002--ten months before the State of the Union address. Yet as late as December of that year, the State Department was still publicly treating the Niger-procurement claim as credible..."
U.S. President George W. Bush and first lady Laura react in surprise as a African elephants attempt to mate at the Mokolodi Nature Reserve in Gaborone, Bostwana July 10, 2003. (story)
Baz remembers first seeing an amputee when he was a 4-year old boy in Liverpool. By the time he was 7 he had begun to think, "This is the way I should be." It was not until Baz was in his 50s, however, that he actually had his leg amputated. Baz froze his leg in dry ice until it was irreversibly damaged, then persuaded a surgeon to complete the job. When he awoke from the anesthetic and his left leg was gone, he says, "All my torment had disappeared."
An interesting condition I was unfamiliar with (a cousin of self-mutilation, transsexualism, anorexia, etc), and the subject of a new movie called Whole.The author of this Slate article also insists on an idea which, to me, makes sense, but which I thought was frowned upon by the prevailing culture -- ie, that "all mental disorders, even those with biological roots, have a social component."
The Brick Testament: The Empty Tomb. Foresaken. And, best of all, what God looks like, if you're a Lego Moses (or, maybe, Roger Waters).
thank you r.
Palast goes after Bush's AWOL days. Maybe this time something sticks? Though the evidence, this whistle-blowing letter, leaves some to be desired. Too bad they shredded everything else.
Terry Wallis has been in a coma for 19 years. He just woke up. And started speaking. His second word was "Pepsi." He thinks Ronald Regan is still the president. I don't know if anyone has sat down and tried explain the Internet to him yet.
Did you know...?
That's "damning" as in:
March 8, 1970
Dear Allen:
After speaking to you on the phone about how nice the black-white thing is in mountain villages in Fiji, I walked downstairs to the school courtyard, where a little–known black brother looks at me, takes my hand gently, we do some old–world Lower East Side finger tricks, and he peacefully kisses the back of my hand – I do the same for his hand. I told him about our brief talk, and he says, "I must have felt the vibes."
Michael Weiner
Botany Dept.
University of Hawaii
Honolulu, HI
"Lower East Side finger tricks"? Where's my pron dictionary?
A retired Canadian gynecologist figures out that "the henge" is a big vagina.
Let the Spinal Tap/genital jokefest begin.
Roger Federer's father has revealed he was not at Wimbledon to see his son's first Grand Slam triumph -- because he had to feed the cat.
Quote Caddyshack as truth, get fired.
“This is a hybrid ... of bluegrass, Kentucky bluegrass, featherbed bent and northern California sensemilia,” Spangler said. “The amazing stuff about this, is that you can play 36 holes on it in the afternoon, take it home and just get stoned to the bejeezus-belt that night on the stuff.”
Matrix teenagers 'caught moments before rampage.'
At least they could have picked a better movie.
This in an email I received today:
go to www.google.com
Then type: weapons of mass destruction.
Don't press Search!!
Next click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button.
Read the error message.
The fun, simple and safer way to turn ordinary hot dogs into exciting to cook and super fun to eat... Octodogs!
Does anybody know if Word.com is archived anywhere?
Love, Kio
The unofficial beginning of the Tour de France: Samuel Abt's first long piece in the Times.
"Until now, Lance Armstrong has always had an easy ride to Paris because he's never had adversaries in the mountains," said Simoni, 31, a fine climber.
"Who knows? If we get him in a bind in the mountains, he may panic."
To which Armstrong replied: "They all talk the big talk. It's the same every year, but talk is cheap."
lest there be confusion, I'm aware that my headline is lame.
Wherein a BBC news reporter follows the packet-trail of a random piece of spam and discovers gangs of roving hijackers who prey on the insecurities of unattended computers owned by large companies, and a spam lord.
a recent post from James H. Kunstler, in re: a speaking engagement in Grand Rapids ("On the ground, Grand Rapids is just an appalling mess of brainless desconstruction -- Peter Eisenman and Rem Koolhaas would be sexually exicted by it."):
"I've been doing this road show for ten years. I wonder if there's really any point to it anymore. The American public -- and these Midwesterners are the very soul of that public -- are going to keep on doing their thing until circumstances make it impossible. They're not interested in making good towns and cities. They just want to make money the way they know how. They're going to keep the pavers rolling, and keep the framers knocking up the McHouses, and keep putting in the Meijer hyper-stores, until the big red "TILT" sign lights up the sky. And then they'll become a nation of vengeful crybabies, shooting things here, there, and everywhere. You heard it here first."
A few days ago, the National Do Not Call Registry was officially opened for, er, anti-business. I don't know about all of you, but I might have a tiny pang of wistfulness for the almost poetic monkey-typing ("Re: she is bored with your small butterfly fknlnjjagvcdontyat u"), the quasi-onanistic inbox love, and occasional moments of ironic ridiculousness ("Irwin, Help us Put an END to SPAM!").
That is, if I ever stop getting it.
