Welcome to the Language Barrier

17/09/2006

Party party

A couple of photos from
Mr. Lee's birthday party the other day.

First it was work work work then play play play.

That thing is a flying monkey wearing a cape and a mask.

I partially re-opened the Bird Park today as Mr. Lee is nearly done with all his backyard projects. He has just a few more details left on the trailer, reattach tail lights, hook the breaks back up etc. ... and there's one last section of fence that still needs weatherizing but he did the bird park today... first. He's alwasy a very thoughtful fellow. As soon as he finished I hung up two feeders. A couple of little birds dropped in at dusk and they each had one to themselves. Tomorrow I'm putting out treats for the BIG PARTY.

16/09/2006

George W. Bush, torture chief

As any intelligent person you are no doubt aware that right now President Bush is feverishly trying to legalize torture ... to cover his own sorry ass. My son did a National Guard rotation overseas not long age so this fraud's latest craven, grandstand bullshit especially pisses me off.

No matter that he's an idiot, as President of the United States, George W. Bush is ultimately responsible for the gruesome, ongoing torture of POWs in US prison camps wherever they're located. The fact that the Geneva Convention classifies torture as illegal has never stopped him but it's finally beginning to catch up with the bastard. Sane people are demanding Bush be stopped and brought to justice. Naturally Bush expects the Republicans ruling Congress to do what they always do, rubberstamp his actions and retroactively make whatever criminal thing he's doing ... legal.

If Congress goes along with this coward they are worse than he is. You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Passing Bush's pro-torture legislation would simultaneously sanction the torture of American troops. Abu Ghraib would a model rather than a national disgrace. Once again Keith Olbermann stands up to the madness. Thank you. My response is less measured but then hell has no fury like a mother's rage. If Congress does support Bush's scheme, I hope the fuckwits rot with him in the same very special hell he's already created for himself.

bush geneva convention detainee treatment act abu ghraib congress keith olbermann

Saturday at the Roxy - from Orson Wells to Salad finger and beyond

Welcome to the Roxy. Our host today is none other than 20th Century great Orson Wells - actor, writer, director, producer, artist, genius, alcoholic. His performance in the 1938 radio broadcast of H.G. Wells "War of the World's" the day before Halloween is legendary. Millions of people, the greater part of the nation, believing his simulated live news broadcast, panicked thinking Earth had been invaded by mechanized war machines from Mars.

Orson Wells acting out his famous
War of the Worlds radio broadcast
for Mercury Theatre on the Air.
(ARCHIVE PHOTOS, INC.)

Now a word from Orson

01:13

The News

04:11

The latest from Salad Fingers at Fat-Pie...
PULCE: The Good Times

over 5 minutes

And to wrap things up for today here's a new release from
Half Moon Theatre Company:
Wonderful World

roxy orson wells salad fingers pulch news half moon theatre

14/09/2006

Bird park - 2 weeks later

It's cold now and still no bird park. This has gone on too long. The descendants of the dinosaurs are getting pissed.

13/09/2006

The critique

I finally got the critique of the poems I entered in the Nevada Arts Council Artist Fellowship Program last spring. It took long enough. If you are one of the rare regular readers here you perhaps remember I was not awarded the $5000 grant but you may have been on the edge of your keyboard waiting for the judge's commentary to arrive. Well, probably not. I'd forgotten all about it myself. At any rate, in keeping with my dedication to truth and transparency here at the language barrier, I'm posting the panels comments (there were two judges), as is (including typos) just as I did last year. If nothing else, it's another item for the alien's data bank who cleverly gave us this technology knowing we will freely pour our hearts out into the void.

ARTISTS FELLOWSHIP FY07
LITERARY ARTS APPLICATIONS

Application Number 331
Discipline / Category Literary Art - Poetry

Panel Comments

Found these poems intriguing, mysterious. Especially liked "Skin Trade"

Some strong imagistic details: "an old man...gulping like a fish," the synesthesia of "leathery squeak," "dusty clods of petals and wax." These poems are strongest when centered in image; where rhetoric outweighs image, they become slightly less so. The poems are consistent in tone: ominous, detached. The poet should trust in his/her image making to convey this surreal landscape without the need for flatter discursive passages such as the opening lines of "Road's Eye View" and "Skin Trade."

Interesting since (their misuse of word) of mystery remind me of some surrealist French poems. The musically did not work for me. There was not much effort to create a song pattern that work as part of the package.

Stunning images very surreal, but at the heart surreal there is a process of uncovering a deeper reality, a deeper meaning. I'm not quite sure what the poems were cohesively adding up to. The language was inventive and creative thematically but not quite there.

"Discursive passages"? Okay. But "not much effort to create a song pattern that work as part of the package"? Package? As in word product? I'm glad these guys don't get it.

12/09/2006

Nothing to hide, everything to protect

Excerpt from "The Grave"

"Oft in the lone church yard at night I've seen,
By glimpse of moonshine chequering thro' the trees,
The school boy, with his satchel in his hand,
Whistling aloud to bear his courage up,
And lightly tripping o'er the long flat stones,
(With nettles skirted, and with moss o'ergrown,)
That tell in homely phrase who lie below."

by Robert Blair

"I have nothing to hide."

This is the standard answer when someone defends Republicans spying on us without a proper warrant. Otherwise intelligent people totally miss the point thinking it doesn't matter as long as the person spied on is innocent. I marvel at their ignorance. Their passivity stuns me. Either these people are whistling past the graveyard or they are as clueless as animals chew their cuds in the slaughterhouse.

Our Constitutional guarantee of privacy is violated when the government spies on us without a warrant and that, my friend, is a Big Deal. It should be a clue that the conservatives do not want anyone monitoring them when they spy on us. This is because they want secret, full, unrestricted access to all our phone conversations, emails, downloads, credit and banking records. They want to know what we buy, what books we check out at the library, the groups we belong to, and the people with whom we spend personal time. They want to be able to imprison anyone, at any time, for no stated reason, deny the accused access to the evidence held against them and even deny the defendant the right to attend their own trial. Far fetched? You bet it is. It's totalitarianism, baby. Fascism.

Bush & Co are bringing America Fascism on the installment plan. Their illegal actions and our passiveness have created an environment toxic to democracy and freedom. When we stand on the sidelines and let the Republicans disassemble our Constitution we are letting them destroy the very thing that defines and protects us as free people.

"What does it matter? I have nothing to hide." We may have nothing to hide but we sure as hell have something to protect.

fascism Bush republicans NSA warrentless spying constitution

11/09/2006

Countdown 9/11 Special Commentary

Keith Olbermann blasts Bush calling him and his supporters "grasping, opportunistic dilettantes at best and at worst idiots." I say screw the either/or because they're all that.People are so mesmerized by the Republican spin machine but the fact is emperor has no brain and he's driving the bus off the cliff. Check out CrooksandLiars.com for the link. The complete transcript of speech is also available at crooksandliars.

Bush, our pet goat

September 11, 2006

2666: current US death toll in Iraq
20000 - 48100: estimated US wounded in Iraq
41650-46318: Iraqi civilian death toll

9/11: Why did Bush sit reading "My Pet Goat" and ignore the news that the country was under attack? And why did he mire us in this trumped-up war on Iraq instead of going after Osama bin Laden who was the master mind behind 9/11?

Watch our pet goat read as America burns.

bush 9/11 my pet goat osama bin laden

Bird Park blues

The Bird Park is a sad place these days. The trailer is taking much longer than expected. It shouldn't surprise me how long a do-it-yourself project ends up taking but it always does. The bed liner is on. It looks great and now the only thing left is to paint the outside and Mr. Lee is doing the prep for that today.

At this point the bird feeders have been down for over a week but every morning a little band of pigeons continue to gather just after day break on the roof of Dick's house to see if their world has been restored. I guess all pigeons are homing pigeons. When the feeders are up the finches gobble away at them from dawn to dusk and spew seed chips on the ground for everybody else. Mr. Lee assures me that it should only a few more days before the trailer is done and my little artifical environment can return to it's own form of normal. I hope so. Otherwise it's pretty quiet here in suburblandia.

10/09/2006

Tonopah Nevada, one more time

Here are a few photos from my weekend in Tonopah.

Proud home of the Tonopah Muckers

World weary lama
downtown Saturday afternoon "petting zoo"

Main Street, downtown Tonopah

"The Last Picture Show"
Th film was supposed to be about a desperate little town
in Texas but many of the scenes were filmed in Tonopah,
including the street scene used on the official poster for the film,
hanging in Tonopah's Convention Center.

One block off of Main

Thrift shop

Outhouse

Miner's house
located just north of the outhouse, also one block of Main St.

View of Mizpah Hotel on Main St.
as seen from cabin next door.

Polaroid of a guy drinking a beer
found in this shack. Yes, I left the photo there.
It's waiting for you.

Back side of heaven

Wild hot springs a few miles from town.
The water was too hot in the middle of the day
to do anything but soak our feet.

Local newspaper clippings 1907 - 1911
Tonopah museum

An incredibly different style of journalism.