Gary Indina has done it again , he ossifies lurid tabloid stories into grim diagarams of class,idenity and sexuailty . The latest book deals with thestory of Upper East Side grifters. He writes it like fiction like sociology. CLASSIK

Gary Indina has done it again , he ossifies lurid tabloid stories into grim diagarams of class,idenity and sexuailty . The latest book deals with thestory of Upper East Side grifters. He writes it like fiction like sociology. CLASSIK

and i had real chinese food, boiled rock cod in this sweet shimmery pearl sauce, black mushrooms with bok choy, coconut rice, shrimp won ton noodle soup and a couple of singapore slings.

back home , had a full day of shopping and eating w. buddies for victoria, more music, more books, and a slew of japanese/chinese junk food.

i got my great grandfathers watch today, the one for 20 years of loyal service to the cn . i am the last easton male, its a heirloom i hve no onne to hand down to.

i played cards with my sister and watched the national spelling bee today. i love the bee cause its these awkard intelligent kids getting there 15 minutes on espn, like they are warrior athletes , plus i love language and the width of vocab is shocking. i went out and got a new pair of trousers . i am waiting for dinner ( spinach salad, ham,buns,fig pudding w. hard sauce, roast beef) i am going to mass tonight at midnight rather then 10:30 which happened last year and i am going to the big cathedral , walking .

took the bus to calgary, listening to the sixths and bonnie prince billie . got to calgary about 8 ,tok a cab from the depot. had dinner and a deink and watched one fine day w. george clooney .


observations: Clooney is charm incarnent and it was a good film . i still feel like an adult when drinking . i am tired and happy.

ben folds has a new video from his ong still fighting it , its just him playing with his son. on the beach, eating chicken nuggets, riding the train interspersed between video of him playing piano. its oddly meoloncholy and sweet.

i know you have all been dying to hear my reaction to Lucien Freuds potrait of the queen , but i have only seen a detail so i will reserve judgement. ( although Mr Freud can usually do no wrong)

i have watched moulin rouge 8 times in the last 72 hours and read the best of lists . its split in the middle between love and hate. i adore musicals so of course its my fav movie of the year , i have a LONG bus trip tomorrow so i will elucidate over christmas

flipping thru the channels today i saw cnn. it showed a clip of the argentine president in a helicopter rising effortolsy over the streets of beunos aries . the economy has collpased and the citizens are rioting , and when the government has decided to flee in such a conspicous way it doesnt bode well

The refugees are taking over detaining facilites in austrulia, proving that if you treat people like shit they will rise up .

(i know an over simplifaction )

Canadas new imigration policy says you have to be fluent in either offical langugage and have a masters degree to be welcomed and if you are a refugee you need papers . Well i guess a multi culti only means upper middle class and if you are in a disease and chaos ridden tent city , your first instinct should be to hold onto those papers ,

i bought 6 cds last night and a couple of books , rented a movie, had lunch with a friend .

i am trying to hack thru milton and the more i try the more i hate him

i bought an english import marriane faithfull , which means i know have twice as many of her albums as the rollingstoes . I think she is one of the most important interpertive singers in the last 50 years ,The two Dylan songs she covers here are intensly erotic and meloncholy, more sexual then i assume dylan meant them but as lonely as he did , including the heartbreaker "its all over now baaby blue" , the song in which where even the furniture retreats and the dead stay put . Its cast of skeletons and theives and ghosts and pure isolation , faithful makes it sound world worn and ragged and as i said erotic , while dylan just makes it sound a bit odd .

jimmy the mod writes the most elegant dialouge here , beutiful and aristo and so cloe to the city and pure pleasurre to the tounge and ears. it reminds me of isherwood or o'hara

i strive for this kind of causal grace but cannot seem to find it . i think i over write, over extend, 10 lbs of shit in a 5 lb bag but i keep trying. i got a great e-mail about my d.o.a column last week and geoff says he likes my blog but i guess i dont trust my skills,
i am going to buy trousers and compact discs and have greek food w. my buddy peter . im thrilled.

i have tried to downlad the new robbie williams (rowr) and nicole kidman single about 20 times from morpheous , all twenty times have failed.

christmas cards are out, pressies are out, my d drive is not working and needs to be sent in ,

Today i felt exhausted and directionless after working a twelve hour shift , i ended up at an army recurtign station and watched the video. i felt dirty afterwards .

Lets say you are rich and powerful but still have a rep as a peoples preimer. You have rich and powerful freinds, you drink , but do not get drunk, you get into high spirits . You finsih a v. expensive private dinner at midnight , what do you do ? Stop by a homeless shelter and verbally abuse the destuite , throwing money on the floor and yelling "get a fucking job " . Well thats what our preimer did , the fuck wad .

There is a Borges fable that suggests the afterlife is a giant library consisting of every book that has been written, that will be written, that exsisted in other books , in fact every book ever conceived in any capacity and in any languge . The way the books are catalouged affects the way the world is run , what happesn in this mortal life.


With the way my life is running, someone has put Kafka in Organzational Behaviour .

Canada will have a poet laurete in its history ! I am thriled !!

well my d.o.a is up

it must be christmas cause i just talked to a buddy in toronto

i really like the odds , they kinda registered on my radar a few years back but know i think they are very clever

oh and please Emailthe fuck wad at Bowie State University Maryland for calling the marching band dancing faggots
I waited for 3 hours on hold for shaw to repair my cable and it fixed itself

Martin Creed won the turner prize for an empty room and a light switch. For someone who usually makes the venacular ( paper, baloons,blu tak) both minimal and beutiful i was disappointed at this work. But if he won for this :









then it would be a race well run.

I got the job, not sure i want it but i got it .

I was looking thru momus guestbook and i saw this woman from edmonton. Now here in the hinterland momus fans are rare , so i shot off an email and we got talking via email. The freind who got her into momus ( because momus is amway for hipsters ) was a gentleman named Ashley. Ashley went to high school and was an aquentince w. my best friend Danielle . Danielle is in Toronto right now so its this really odd small world feeling. Anyways he sent me a mail today w. this list of Musical Artists i love and i thought no one listened to in Edmonton . I was excited.

i see on the bus all the time these punks, with carny colored hair and ears pierced like coil bound notebooks. Often they are in pairs or groups. People curse at them , dumb teenagers . well i find them refreshing. they work for political action, feed the homeless, plan gigs and just play at being fuck you . They care and work hard at caring . It seems like the last kicking against the pricks, the birthing pains before adulthood.

I have spent the week tracking down g'vt stats , talking to newbie interns, asking awqkard questions and having people take my information and not return my calls or emails. I have talked to my MLA who said these cuts were a rollback, 1 % across the board and so i called every minster and every minister has no idea what is going on. I know people in Enviroment and Education . I know people who are ill and are affected by the cuts. I know teachers , and nobody knows anything. There are shreds of info in the newspaper. Cutting down housing allowences and kyboshing rent control.

i am writing my d.o.a column and having trouble, ive written pages and its this insane semi ranting weirdness. i talked to my buddy in victoria for an hour and shes coming home for christmas so we get to spend new years w. her, i missed her, havent seen he sense june. i have got two job interviews , part time i think or temp. Zellers and Intial Security. I did security for a year and it was filled w. pyschopaths but they are cattle calling hte interviews so maybe i will get it , fuck i quit jobs so badly with this melodramtic head flianing i have no refrences. fuck it.

i didnt make it out tonight. i have been really blue of late and i just need to do something , i have been ignoring everybody.

Boney M is playing Reds Tomorrow . I think i may go .

I have a project for this months D.O.A column, i want to find exactly where the government thinks they are goign to get 1.7 billion dollars to cut as they promised. They are talking about private clinics but frankly thats illeagal. And they want to elimanate all early child hood education programs but that would only solve a couple of million ...So i am going to play Brenda Starr and make a few phone calls.

i am drunk and have the words queen bitch sharpied on my forehead
i bought art , two prints and a light box with a picture of meditrainion food in it.
i had beyond a good time , gossipping like filthy children, eating hummous and watching a fashion show.

i am going to be half an gour early for the party so instead of looking awkard i am killing time in an internet cafe. i am tired but looking foreward to this. Geoff said he was quitting smoking and i was paitcuarlly nasty instead of supporting him . i feel guily for this and the fact i have not written anything worthwhile in weeks.

i have an art party to go to later today. i will buy art and get drunk on chaep and not very good red wine.

Provincal Nurses got a raise of 24 percent this year

Provincal Doctors got a raise of 16 percent this year

Provincal Lawyers got a raise of 12 percent this year

Memebers of the Provincal Legisature got 21 percent this year

Teachers , payed for by the province , got a 4 pecent raise thgis year . Two percent next year

Teachers Mentor,Coach, Edit Newspapers and Yearbooks and spend the enormity of time gettign the shaft. Well this year they decided to say fuck you.


THEY ARE ON STRIKE and the strike vote was about 70 percent in favour.

i have been listening to 60s pop from california lately. The soft sublet lovely sounds of people who drive arround and look at the sky and never really do anything. The exquiste locheness is comforting .
Everything sounds lush from the overproduced strings to the croooing voices. They think they are creatign a better world and maybe its the lack of heat here but goddammit is sounds they might be right.



And they all have this travelling rootless air.

I am cold and want to go to 7-11 but really cannot be arsed. Laziness or the weather ?

There has been almost a foot of snow in the last week and its getting close to 20 below celsius.
I yearn for Vancouver where no one is helpful and its rainy and the view from the airport surrounds the water like a translucent amorphus web

Where i can walk for hours

Where there are cedars,holly,junipers and ferns. Where the air is so moist the salt clings to your skin.

Where everything is fecund

If you know where to go you can live all yourself on sushi and lebanese pastries (the ones with figs and hoeny)

Theres a show every week and there is a train that races the ocean if you want to go to seattle or california
where i can go to 12 galleries a week and see good art instead of having the same convos in the same two galleries with the same people . I am bored here , i need to feel the earth move and my body shake with something other then exhaustion. An exhaustion that makes me post the same entry twice and lose the prolouge .





Geoff is in Brisbane and i miss my 2 am icqs though hes mailed everyday and i want to get drunk on gin and pineapple juice and have sex in the middle of jasper avenue . But i will write and keep warm and with my blanket on my shoulders like a cape . In June i get to go east again , all the way to june.

Well i am no longer angry at the NDP . I am disgusted. Tommy Douglas founded this party to make eure the working classes were well taken care of . Alexa McDonugh has given that up. Fuck the working classes there is money to be made and seats to be gained. Yah we know the health care system is in shambles,Welfare is being gutted . We know that Canada is pushing this WTO thing . We know immigrants are being fucked over and the reserves are just as bad as they ever were. We know tution is being upped and EI is being reduced . Food Banks are doing record buisness. The NDP used to do silly shit like pointing this out They used to provide a critical oppisotion . Now, well lets sell out. Lets stuff that heratiage up the dead ass of the sainted Mr Douglas. Why do we need to actually care about the way people are fed ,clothed, made safe if we can get elected. The only working class that Princess Alexa has seen have been cleaning her shitters.

Well i am no longer angry at the NDP . I am disgusted. Tommy Douglas founded this party to make eure the working classes were well taken care of . Alexa McDonugh has given that up. Fuck the working classes there is money to be made and seats to be gained. Yah we know the health care system is in shambles,Welfare is being gutted . We know that Canada is pushing this WTO thing . We know immigrants are being fucked over and the reserves are just as bad as they ever were. We know tution is being upped and EI is being reduced . Food Banks are doing record buisness. The NDP used to do silly shit like pointing this out They used to provide a critical oppisotion . Now, well lets sell out. Lets stuff that heratiage up the dead ass of the sainted Mr Douglas. Why do we need to actually care about the way people are fed ,clothed, made safe if we can get elected. The only working class that Princess Alexa has seen have been cleaning her shitters.

I am sorry if my blog did not make sense . I meant i was heading to the University for a concert. I got in on Claireview with a full train. But there was a hockey game at the Cloiseum and the train was empty for half my trip. The concert itself had 20 people while across town the hockey game had 1000 times that. Sometimes how far you are away from other people is made beyond clear .
The concert Itself was magnifcent. There was a whole new instrument and a midi manipulater and a jazz master playing counterpoint to a tape and a disklavier . It was an maazing hybrid a way to find the warmth and richness of acoustic instruments and the randomness, automation, and mainuplitve powers of technology. As well it featured an instrument i had never heard of.
Its called the Axio and it is roughly cruciform . On the left hand is what looks like a palm pilot attached to a joystick. It moves left,right,up and down. It needs to be used with great delicacy and can control timbre and direction of sound . On the right is a mini synth. with about 16 keys that produces acoustic rather then elctronic sound. Over the Shoulder like a Cello Fret is another keyboard that thru an apple program manipultes the sounds and adds new ones. By direction i mean there are eight speakers set up in a nontognal room so the sound becomes immersive.
The last bit was a 20 minutes jam between a bass clairnet , trumpet , the axio and a midi system . The music was played, anayzed and disscaoted at the same time . Sorry i did not have the oppurtuinty to write this last night. Geoff emailed ne slightly confused

In the last three days i have heard the rumour that Morissey and Michael Stipe is dating. Hot , i tell you .

I just came back from an amazing concert. 20 people decided avant garde electroacoustic music was good. 20 000 decided The Oilers were good. It makes me feel awkard.

stripped pine floors

birch furniture ( esp. the Aalto stuff).

Frank O'Hara Poetry ( esp the line In that orange shirt you look like a/better happier St Sebastion )

John Cage Sonotas (3:15 into the first one for prepared piano) .

The prose of Mavis Gallant.(esp her French Stories)

Midnight in a hay field looking at the stars .

Mother MAybelle Carters Voice.

Plaster Statues of Catholic Saints ( Rain Damaged)

Silver Jewlery imbeded w. Citirne or Peroidit or amethyst.

The Milk Kitchens in Synagouges .

3 am on a train from Edmonton to Vancouver.

Swimming at the Mount Douglas Park ocean beach in Victoria.

The Color of Flesh in Titian .

Agnes Martins Pencil Drawings.

Spensers Sonents. Ophelias Flower Speech in Hamlet.

Fra Angelico painting Buildings.

The Jonas Salk Instutite in Le Jolla Ca.

Clavicles, Wrists and the triangle of hair when one button is undone

Eames Chairs

The Friezes in Angkor Watt

The deer in Persion Minature Paintings

Dan Delillos the body artist

Vargas Girls

George Platt Lynes Boys

Auden

The Seafarer translated by Pound

The Anthology of American Folk Music

Boots Clacking on hard wood floors

Nina Simone yearning

De Koonings Black and White ink drawings

72 views of Mount Fuji by Houksai

The way a hard penis arches like a graceful bridge towards the belly

A Pinot Noir from California

Roe,Tuna,Salmon,Urchin and Eel on a greygreen sushi platter

Graneries at dusk

Mashed Potatoes with Rosemary and Garlic

Grand Central Station

Japanese Tatimi Mattes

White on White Chinese Poetry from the tang dynasty

The Ausertity of Glenn Goulds Goldberg Varitions

Pink Narcsisous

The Last Scene in Umbrellas of Cherbourg with the Snow and Denuve hidden in the Mercedes

Quilts

The Spirit Of G-d Jublaition Protestant Hymns


My Answers to the thread What is Really Beauty

I turned on CNN a few days ago and a White House robot announced that the rebels in Chechnya "were" no longer freedom fighters but "are" now terrorists with "clear" links to Osama bin Laden.

CNN provided no details about whether the transformation occured in a sudden miraculous flash like the transubstantiation of the host in a Catholic mass, or happened slowly and gradually like Darwinian evolution.

In a related bulletin, Russia pledged its support in the War Against Some Terrorists, and will presumably start with those bastards in Chechnya.

Robert Anton Wilson

Dec 1 is international Day W/O Art . Get your plans in now because non creation takes as much planning as creation

Its been a while i know . I am thinking of reading infinite jest .

Found on a John Cage messageboard: "I was searching through napster recently and i was curious to see if anyone had 4'33 as an MP3 on their computer. It turns out that 27 people had it, but not one of the recordings was 4'33 seconds long. Pretty odd but im not sure what it means...."

mine was 4:33 but i deleted it , i thought having it was a waste of memory .

Broken and the link missing at the rib... and the halo lowly cast ...
Scott Walker


I went to a mormon baptism today . James, the person being baptized was Catholic, then after infancy his parents become fervored protestants) There were hymns , then a speech, then two sopranos singing about the holy spirit , then the baptism itself. After the baptisim i snuck off to the empty mother room. I turned on the Public Address System and read the bible while listening to the people talk about "the one true church". Usually at this point I want to Purge its influence

... St Theresas calling her , the church up on the hill is looking lovely but it didn't nterest... the only thing she wants to know is how and where and when to go ... how and where and when and why to follow ...

Belle and Sebastion

This Summer has been pretty bad . I had two friends who killed themself. My grandmother finally succumbed to alzheimers . I quit one dead end job and started another . I found refuge in some things but the Catholicsm that sustained my intellectual and aesthic senses failed to comfort my soul .

I talked before the baptism to a fellow who converted the other way (Catholic to Mormon like James), trying to explain the reasons why i am catholic . They are not of the spirit . They are of the flesh or the mind. He said your church and my church . I guess the Catholic Chuch is monotheist, but i have been trained to doubt . My father taught me about pluriasm and my mother taught be about tolerance.

The Truth is Rarely pure and never simple
Oscar Wilde

This was James's day and he is giving up his family for Tara and The One True Church . This stabilty proves comforting. When you are taught about the multipcity of truth then nothing is real . Everything is questioned and doubted . You learn to read for bias . You recontextualize until the author is dead and the text is irrelavant . This is helpful because it means that nothing is simple , it makes you feel clever .

Maybe its like the streets in any big city. Thousands of people follow the same stretch of concrete everyday and they do not notice the seweres,subways,electrical lines under that stretch. Maybe its a mirage , one of those hopewishfever dreams or those streets in the backlots of Studio City .

Does it matter if the movies are tricks of light and shadow when the memories keep you warm in the theatre that inhabits your brain. Does it matter that only plumbers get to see the acess tunnels . Do you have to be in a fever to see the mirage , does realzing its a mirage give you more comfort

But Love has pitched his mansion in /
The Place of Excerment .

Yeats

Crazy Jane Talks To The Bishop

I was Excommunicated by the Mormon Church. I was a homosexual and i should have been shamed . The Church humailted me . They told me , made me sign a sheet that said i understood the gift of the holy spirit given to me at baptism had been rescinded .
Kafka has been misunderstood. The word Kafakaseque should use the kind of betrayal made cold by beroucrats . They told me i was filthy, they told me i should be worried about heartbreak because i was incapable of love and death because of AIDS . But at the baptism i felt the still small voice . I felt the holy spirit . The logical inconstinceies of systems ? I know James will feel free and happy there . Maybe because he is in love but mostly because he fits in . The Mormon Community is warm and gentle . They remember you with fondness even when you have been forced to/left on yr own.

In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you

John 14:2

When i was a child i was told that this would mean a reward of heaven . I think this is not the case , i think this is a case of plurualism . I think God recognized he was unknowabel and humans are petty . They needed a tactial example . They needed to know that there were many rooms and if you found discomfort in the company of one room , it did not matter . This is Gods House and it is large enough for many mansions . Forgive my anger , i have forgotten my mansion and become envious of yours James. I couldn't live there but i am glad you have found a place in The Fathers house.

Today i was hanging w. a buddy in the engineer lounge and i saw a huge sign that listed the corprate sponsors of the Engineers Student Assoc. I have activley protested 5 out of the 9 companies. This is why artists starve.

The International System is used by most and it makes more sense, so quite being stubborn



I am thinking of joining a bowling leauge .

Oprah is a borgie bitch whose book club slections are weepies that even Barbra Stanwyck would run from fear from.

Can i get my National Book Award Now ?

b> Random Thoughts , News, Links, Quotes , art talk, way too personal information

1) I cannot find any web information on Atilla Richard Lukas. I love his work but only have seen 9 paintings and a dozen sketches.

2) I am bringing brownies to a mormon baptism on Saturday . This baptism is really confusing me because i am not sure of the intentions of those involved . Of course it is none of my business what the intentions are but the gentleman getting baptized is risking losing his family over this . No faith is worth that much

3) Google supported Monets birthday by painting the into screen in an impressionist style . It made me realize how much i loved Andy

4) I want to fuck a coffee server at my local cafe. It has become a minor obsession. I am too scared to ask him though .

5) At the Momus Gig last monday people called Momus Nick. He was in a stage persona it seemed wrong .

6) Apparently there is an odd English show called the Moomins . I have heard there names 5 times in the last 12 days , i thought i should mention it because it has become so common in my life

7) I really wanted to get stoned in Vancouver and at least a score of strangers offered me the honour but i really did not trust the source , now that i am back home my craving has gone .
8) This is what Suzy Corrigan said about Tracy Emin :

Transparency is good. I found the early work raw (for me, a word with positive associations) and was touched by it, particularity the building-up of a narrative through the use of mementos, some of which are incredibly painful for me to look at, eg. the crumpled pack of cigarettes removed from the pocket of her uncle at the scene of his death, in a crash. I see the noose/condoms piece and think of sex and death, but I'm part of the generation who had to cope with this thing called AIDS from about the first second I ever considered having a sex life, which I know for a fact is something Tracy has done a lot of thinking about (that's what the tent is about, according to one interpretation she gave at the publishers lunch for our book launch).

I see the cataloguing of things which are 'fleeting' and recontextualised in an exhibit, kept in the permanent collections of museums. The contradiction entices me. I think she is a very powerful female artist in the first ten years of her career; she uses a lot of materials (quilts, felt) that we associate with softness and femininity and makes them hard, or hard to look at. I think she is VERY intelligent and makes some of the more dysfunctional aspects of her nature understandable to the rest of us, and I personally do not ever feel like I am watching a freak show or being wound up through attempts to shock. Much of the time I see also her annoyance with the male gaze and male appraisal, eg. the Margate 'slag' video piece. Then she turns her relentless eye for cataloguing back to herself, and has the different parts of her personality talk to each other and fight over what she should do with her life. What she is showing is all true, which makes her distinct from spin doctors, although she does have many of the same talents for storytelling. I think it is TOO EASY, when an artist uses the visceral, to say that it's all down to shock value. She is one of the least superficial artists I can think of working today.

This is really cool because i have been trying to get Tracys work forever . I thought it was because it was abject, filthy . But i think she is correct , Ms Emins work has caused be discomfort because it is so naked

9) Geoff and I are working on a web project. 100 queer erotic poems . It is meant as a sampler of sexual tastes, identities and practices through out history. There has been in our attempts to gain social justice a leeching of our sex . I wanted to celebrate how and why queers fuck and who they fuck as vital .

10) In the book Gay New York which i am reading shows the diffrence in identity in the first half of the 20th Century . Roughly the passive homosexual was considered a different gender then the Active Inserter or a WOman . Often Working Class men when unable to find a woman would find a fairy

11) As early as 1890 there were live sex acts in the Bowery . Between Men.

12) 1.7 billion dollars are being cut from the Albertan Budget this year !

13) There is an Avedon photo of a nude Joe Delliano (sp) and a nude Candy DArling . They are at the oppisote ends of a gate way folder .

On the right is short but butch. He has tattos curling up his arms , his cock is half hard, his hair is Paris island Short . He has his arms crossed across his chest .

Candys cock is vestigial and her tits look like Jane Mansfield. Her face is caked in Max Factor and she has blood red lips ( its a b&w photo but you can tell)

13a)Joe slept with men but claimed he was not gay
Candy had a penis but claimed she had 365 periods a year

13b) Candy died trying to be a woman and people remember her for that , She was the Madame Pompadour of the Factory

15) I feel Nostalgia for the Mormon Church

16) i got new glasses they are rubber and thin steel wire . they look handsome . However you can now tell i am an artphag w/o the 30 sex. of conversation .

17) My blog, the one you are reading is on google . i feel really bizarre and yes i did a vanity search .
18 ) . my d.o.a column

eggnog,fruitcake,peppermint ice cream in that most lovely pink color,mandrian oranges .

Its november and although i am busy writing and learning and trying to save my job ( never get into a pissing contest with somebody with larger kidneys) i am taking unestimable joy in the food

soon we will get figgy pudding and wasial ( i learnt there are at least 3 diffrent wassaling songs) . I am tired and cannot be arsed to write much more . tomorrow i will post a bunch of personal stuff.

Please keep a minute of silence for soilders and citizens that died in miltary action at 11:11 am today.

Even if you are a pacfist , those who died in battles should not also suffer our disrespect

This is not jingoism , this is mercy

When i am in edmonton i have 5 dollars of change hidden in my backpack for people who need it more then me. Sometimes it lasts the day , most of the time it lasts the week. In Vancouver it didnt last the hour, i was 25 dollars short in two days. When people are hungry and i am spending money on luxiries i feel guilty. But you can only afford so much and i gave up. I looked in there eyes and said sorry.

As a human it feels like a common bond to make sure everyone is fed. I cannot do it alone. Our governments are gutting social programs and providing tax cuts to large corprations . Not for profits and concerned citizens can only do so much for those are desperate.

Christ told his people explicitly a dozen times about the evils of greed . He rallied violently against usury . He made sure the pariahs were healed and the pharises were and what do most churches rally against. Homosexuailty ( using a fairly obscure section of Romans), Abortion ( Christ did not mention it once) and making church cool for young folks. Well in the name of Christ how about following the words of Christ , I cannot provide all the hepl to all the beggars but lets pressure the government to "turn swords into plowshares" , lets tax corprations. Let them pay even 1 % of there gross net profit irrgeardless of shelters. I know it wont be the eye of the needle. Lets seperate church and state, let the rome for the ceasers . Lets share our loaves and fishes *( the miracle there was not creation out of ether but people giving that which they hid ) Remember Matthew 25:35-46.

I know there will be athesits and jains and jews that read this. These laws seem human and i am relating them to christ because i know the bible well enough to make my case. This came to light after hearing about John Howard winning in Australia . He claims he is a Methodist, a man of Christ but destroys refugees, makes the hungry starve, and encourages War. The same with George W. Bush . Maybe Neitsze was right, maybe the last Christan died on the cross.

Today we had airline tickets on Canada 3000 to edmonton . They went belly up and we were stuck in Vancouver for 6 hours until we could find air canada tickets. AAAAAAAAAAAARGH !

anyways i am back from my week away and need sleep so i will blog everything tomorrow , plus my D.O.A column.

On 9/12/01 an honor gaurd came on the qaud of West Point. They played tap on the bugle and amazing grace on the drum. They had a minute of solemn silence and there obligation done they went on with their business.

On 9/12/01 in Berkely the anti war demonstartoes were at the same place, with the same scrawled signs at the same time.

On 9/12/01 Barry Sandler had a No. 1 hit for the first time since the end of the Veitnam War and Bob Dylans With GOd on Our Side was downloaded the most often.

Now our Gold is safe and we are seeking vegance forgetting the Holy Texts say thats Gods Job . People are marchign for peace and People are signing up to die . This American Chasm seems to have occured since the Qaukers and the Purtians arrived.

Speakign of which Four hospitals/Storage Areas shared by The Red CRoss/Red Crescent and Doctors without Borders have been destroyed by Missiles. Doctors without borders helped with triage and are helping the Afghans as well. They need money to make sure people live and are fed .So give them money

Its Ramadan and religous concerns override basic hunger

I went to the optratemist today and i need new glasses, my eyes are getting worse. i got fired yesterday and am exhausted . i spent two hours in a cafe drinking coffee and reading American Gods by Gaiman . Its good , manges to move quickly and still be realtivly deep. It has alot ot say about the immigrant experince. i know i promised a long entry but i have felt blocked lately. I am working on my clumn for D.O.A about vancouver and writing a thing about Catholicism. I am editing some poetry as well.

this will be the last really short post.
i am goign to vanocuver on the weekend and i am a bit harried.

today i walked downtown with a woman dressed as a pyschotic clown , she intoned the word labia a dozen times

i have so much to do and my mother is sick, so i am racing between work and government offices as well as trying to get her well . i have had no time to plan for wednesday and i have slept 12 hours for the last two days .

Lets try those links again :

dadaist poetry

an example of manirettis typography

Geoffs Poem

Geoff Parked recently sent me piece of his web project and asked me to critique it . Much to my shame i looked over it and i sent him a one line email . To my defense i bookmarked it to look over later . I had been reading mostly traditional poetry When i was really young my mind was more supple and made much larger jumps . Now i had trouble picking through the piece he sent me . I was puzzling the meaning and not and not looking through its structures . I went to the library today and sitting down i looked at the poetry it reminded me of . Namely Hugo Ball who used preverbal onamanapeics and Maniretti who used typography to express explicitly political themes. The thing is Geoff's work full in the mouth and gastronomical in its pornography. The metaphor of consumption means the words spread through the page. It erupts, ejaculates . But this betrays the deliberateness of his metaphors It manages to be so well constructed its mercurial nature looks simple. It also riffs between Spanish and english. Geoff was worried about translation and a web presence. I do not think it needs to be translated , Pound didn't translate the more obscure of his references , trusting the intellectualism of his audience .

(OT: I think Pound would have loved the web ; His poems stuffed to the gills with textual references and his paranoia as well. )

Links

Geoffs Poem :

Maniretti Poem :

Hugo Ball :

( a dadaist poetry site )

Today i heard four teenagers giggle and sing "say my name" . it reminded me why i loved pop . then they sang im a slave 4 you and i knew the producer and that kind of made me sad . i cannot remeber the last time i felt so joyus about i song i wanted to sing it along with my buddies . i share music all the time but i have not had a silly loop of joy racing thru my head in ages. i tried paul simon and i tried ween . nothing matched the exuberence .

In 1996 Jack Pierson displayed a sign made from discarded billboards and neon that said fuck you mocking the recent trends in abject and obscene art. Recently the word Fuck has been vital in the bejing art underground, popularized mostly by Ai Wei Wei. It is shocking in beijing not because of what it means but because it is popular and english . full circles .

Today i spent 3 hours installing a show. The artist is quiet and gentle but makes nasty and obscene art full of vital fluids. I own a painting of his with a guy giving auto fellatio and the word genuis underneath him . But the joy of installing is not meeting artists , it is making your hands raw with sand paper and yr clolthes stained with paint. It is constructing, the achemial thrill of making something from nothing . I have to go to work and i am white with plaster but i really dont care.

Today there was 9 anthrax scares in the capital. We live in Bumfuck Alberta guys we aint the whitehouse so settle the fuck down

i spent the day at the dentist, then curled up with a CD and a new book . It was dull and comforting .

from artnet.com news :





CALDER MOBILE FOUND IN WTC DEBRIS

The New York Post reports that part of Alexander Calder's monumental sculpture Bent Propeller (1970), which stood on the plaza at 7 World Trade Center, has been found in the rubble. Alexander Rower, Calder's grandson and head of the Calder Foundation, had asked volunteers at the site to keep an eye out for the work.

you know those two girders fused into a T that people thought were a message of god, the above makes me much more likey to think that God may still be looking after us .

my email has changed to [email protected] , i have netscape so my Messenger name is NPnkMse .

I still use icq most often though , which is 11237968
just in case you think you want to talk to me

i was reading this article in Jane on sex addiction and thinking about the problems with the twelve step program pattern. There seems to be no connection between who goes there. In sex addiction it is meant for anyone who views there sex or romantic or fantasy life as destructive. So everyone from a 21 college virign who jacks off once a day and a middle aged woman in an unhappy marriage who devolps a massive crush on the UPS driver to a pump and dump pyschotic and violent sadists or pedophiles could be at the same meeting. Can we not tell the college kid and the people who revel in fantasy that they are not evil ?

At overeater anonymus if you talk about your addiction it becomes a temption. For example they do not say cheese they say produce product that may be cubed .

At AA they cannot tell the difference between a complusion, a habit and a binge. Addicts are complex and need to be treated differently depending on there addiction and there habits. People act out differently and twelve steps cannot motivate all .
Those who are complusive will change to coffee or cigarettes or even meetings . If you have an addictive personailty , does the compulsion that underpins your personality ever change ?

I am sure the ritual helps , 12 steps to let you move one foot in front of the other and group therapy is a carthatic
it must help.

today i saw seven, fight club and twelve monkeys back to back. i am willing to entertain the notion that brad pitt is more then a pretty face. i am working on something about the mthod and how it fails for me .

here is a link to the moore, its real video, but powerful

Today i went to teh dentist and they asked me if i wanted white or silver. i said silver thinking that murakami called it the only superflat color .

Yesterday at work there was a fire alaram and we all had to huddle in the train station, i took my book out of my pocket, sat crosslegged on the floor and started reading, thinking all the time of moores underground drawings .

Is this passion or pretension and why do i care .

some links an entry to follow this evening
nasty

death and the army , a southern tale

art or trash , at least hirst was a good sport

the anthrax spreaders cannot tell the difference between tabloids and news, neither can i

i think jesus would be into porn and poltics, like the rest of us netizens
with people reading
the air will never be safe

31 anthrax ridden in washignton

Anthrax because it is well known, cheap and dangerous enough to cause symbloic terror rather then real damage ?

Experiments
I make money playing guinea pig, that was one of these days.
today i got stuck in a tank of water. i was naked and the water was warm and salt saturated.
I had this short clicnican talk to me through out it, like a fire plug, when i got out and they mesured the displacement he offered to tell me my score , i feel comfortabel with my body. If i had numbers i would feel less comfortable. He then got the calipers out . Every inche he mesured, talking softly, his touch gentle. Once again he offred to tell me the numbers, once again i refused. He left the room to let me get dressed in an odd act of modesty. He had seen me naked, examined me thourghly. The removing of clothes and the replacing of clothes , the two most intimate acts the clinican never sees.

When i was dressed he was waiting in the lobby, he lead me to a classroom with 20 other people . We had to fill out surveys about height and weight . We had to sign another set of relase forms . We were handed two decks of cards. There were 6 cards in each deck . The cards had ink drawings of people , one deck men , the other woman.
Cards one picture was skeltal, Card Sixes was corpulent
You were supposed to tell what person you were and then what your acceptable man and woman are. well men are sexaul and woman are aesthic but every one is acceptable , no ?

SMALLVILLE
New show on the WB feautring an adolsecent clark kent. it is set in the here and now and it features a naked man on a cross (as a freshman stunt that someone died earlier), Lex and Clarke saving each other lives, Lana Lane as intrepid girl reporter, Clarke finidng his strength by stacking pickups like dominos in the parking lot of the home coming dance

It seems to be reaching all these refrences from those early discovering your idenity subtexts which seems to tie into superman the comics constant early subcurtenous refrences to identity as a jew and an immigirant. As well it seems to connect to the recent finding literal monsters instead of subconcious monsters (cf Buffy and Rosewell). It has the highschool jocks and freaks compenoant of most teen soaps, the wb pop soundtrack as well. A fascanting excerise in postmodernsim . WATCH IT !

election for mayor yesterday let our current fuckwit of a mayor get a third term

I voted for Tess Ellsworhty, an anarchist dyke who has a heady rep as being too left and clever for her own good.

food critics who needs them

We take the Greyhound down on friday heading South to attend my grandmothers funeral. A week ago i saw her silent, mute deaf blind . For ten years her memory betrayed her . She would move to another nursing home until she ended up in the hospital , where she lived for three years. I let other people speak for me at the funeral. The eulogy was awkard. It did not give credit to my Grandmothers work on the farm or in the war as a member of W.A.C. Acts of great heroism were preformed by Prarie farmwives and War Relief Workers. They involved nesscary acts of service kept quioet by complacency. They did not grow the grain or kill the Nazis but an army and a farmer live on their stoamch. They made arms, nursed the wounded, kept hungry under rations, they cooked and cleaned and raised children often under crushing lonliness. They settled accounts and kept bankers at bay. They made sure the animals were tended. they had harvest suppers and made sure the church was filled on Sunday . They kept everything in the hosue as wide and straight as the furrows in the field. An act that is much more difficult then most imagine.

After the funeral we made through the dirt roads to the community hall. The barns were still there and every so often a pumpjack. This was land for hay and cattle , the farther southwest you go in Alberta , the more cows and the less grain. The telephone towers have yet to be replaced w. fibre optic cables; To prevent eroison and wind stands of birch , spruce and pine are planted. Every so often you see a verdant patch among the yellow straw. The hay was baled and covered in polyethelne sheets, every so often you saw horses ( roans, arabians, palminos and most commonly quater morgans) Th
ere was even an ostrich farm . The sky was spiting rain and driving in my aunts van i saw a goshhwak .

I got to the hall and it was packed to the rafters filled with countless unknown family . The slab tables had plates of squares and open faced buns slathered in diced meat or egg. I have been to funerals and wedding teas and anniversarys in Sask., Manitoba and Alta. every time they had the same meal and it provides more comfort then you kn ow. I ended up fetching coffee and tea, bringing plates of sandwhiches from the kitchen. Once again more of a woman here.

In town we stayed at the motel. In Olds there was a high school rodeo and football game and everyone but us were rowdy and drunk . They were in there souped up trucks with peacock shirts. I did not escape from black and grey. Picking up a Coke from the supermarket kitty korner there was a notice about the funeral. It was supposed to only go to the post office and the drug store but it ended up everywhere. The legions flag flew half mast and the tacky little polyfab buliding was full when the funeral happened.

There was no minister , a family freind delivered the aforementioned eulogy. the famil;y had its only little ante chamber. The hymns were not grand but plain and practiced . Everyone who was a conrad seemed to be big, not fat or tall but massive and hulking , Like the Black Angus cattle that settled into the crests of couleees

She was too be cremated and entered beside her husband . Thank god that ghastly mechanism that lowered her to the fire was not used. There was no displaying of her body , no ashes in a magony finial or porcelian urn .

I got home two hours ago and this is constructed from scant notes and memory .

Bushes Press secertary said that the news should not release footage of bin Laden "unedited".

That means its our jobs to find all news that is unedited !

In Between 1890 and 1920 the photographing of men in intimate poses was a convention in American Studio Portraits that is explained quite well in this months Art In America . I do not mean erotic photography but fully clothed men with there arms around each other , or on each others thighs or sitting on one anothers laps. Today they look Sweetly Queer , like a piece of found history. But they are more cryptic then that. Aside from the obvious cowpoke on the frontier troubles with cementing core identity after the fact (no woman , you get it where you can) the fact is that men seemed to be more affectionate physically. It seems before Gay became a sexual identity men touched . No one had any suspicions that they may be sexual implications. Living in a Patriarchy where woman were given servile or different positions Men and Woman often had there separate camps . These photographs are cryptic , they seem to live in a place that used to exist between merely friends and lovers .

The other thing the article said is that these photographs are being horded by rural gays. They are found in attics and flea markets and out of the way spaces . Thye are being collected by people who find one of them by acident andd it becomes an act of belief to find all of them .

today i learnt that the promoter and the venue of the momus gig may not know whats going on

i have put almost 750 on this gig already ! If it falls thru heads will role

Today i felt turned on watching fight club, the brawl between Leto and Norton. Then i felt revulsed and guilty . I am not sure how to process this , i have not felt shame about my sexual fantasies in a long time.

Tomorrow i have a dentists appointment . The fear of the dentistis over rode the toothache i have having.

I may be wrong about evidence

Thoughts on Kabul

*In Bushes speech last night he said we need new defenses . Star Wars failed us on September 11. How will it work now ?

*Osma Bin Ladens group work in decentralized cells. It is like a spider web, break one strand and the others can keep working

*They are apparently dropping bombs and food on Afghanistan . How ?

*I have yet to see any really solid evidence to prove Osma is directly responsible .

*Aside from the Texas Journailist and Bill Maher there has not been alot of direct crushing of dissent. But when Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, CNN, CBC, the assicated press et. al. have the exact same news and i have not heard alot of alternative opinons it seems that dissent has been stifled

*What the fuck does a Homeland Security Advisor do ?

*What are the long term implacations of Bush declaring his agreement with a Palestinan state ?

* This is an idelogical war with no clear aims and no one ever wins those , because we cannot declare a draw . ( cf Vietnam)

*No one has won the Kyber Pass. They pull the swiss defense and no sexy computer guiding missile defense can do boo

* This has been a war since Ishmael was envious of Issac , Reread the Pentatauch

*The FBI is claiming the passengers on board of the airliner that crashed near Camp David " engaged in a fight for there lives " and the US miltary did not shoot anything down

*The phrase Surgical air strikes " . How delicate can you be with tonnes of mass explosives . As well the last time i checked scapels were meant to heal not destroy thosuands of woman and children. The gulf wars strikes were less then 30 % accurate. If a surgeon made 70 mistakes for every operation he would lose his liscence.

*A delightful qoute from Texas Senator Phil Gram, " The Storm Unleashed Sunday will continue until the evil is eradicated. It appeats this is another crusade .

*My partenal grandmother said this weekend that this is what happens when you do not seperate church and state . Shes right .

A couple of other things. I spent three hours listening to Joni Mitchell on the road home. It helped esp. California,

The new pictures of leonard cohen are fab. They are black and white and he no longer seems brooding. He looks transcendant and happy and VERY well dressed

They are bombing kabul because kabul bombed us who needs butter when we have bombs

Yesterday i had dinner at my aunts. it was painfuil enough to make me call the Maybanks who i love and are are the realtives of my great aunt. We went over to there house. My queer uncle (61) and his partner
( 56) were at the kitchen table, with my second cousin once removed ( who is a dancer auditoning at the royal winnipeg) . We bullshitted, caught up, listened to music, gossipped . It become an exchanging of history this weekend !

Today i went to the presbratrion church which seemed overly somber , i wanted to go to Mass and hear the joyful hymns. now i am having Thanksgiving dinner at my Aunts house; as per usual i am curled up in the spare bedroom, listening to Moulin Rouge and typing. They have a farm in the rocky mountain foothills. All the tress seem to be stands of birch caught between the pines. The color is amazing .

The olds presybration church has pasted a notice over two hymns . They say they are not allowed to sing them because the bible did not advocate Female Represantions. Noew if they felt like this why not just avoid singing them ? As well they are not censored in the large print additons.

I am in olds pop. 1200 . My great granmother grew up here. My aunt lives 3 blocks from city hall. Its growing up bit since i saw it last. They have a McDonalds now but aside from that it has not changed.
I can tour downtown in two blocks. They have one cd store, a farm insurance, a liqour store, two macs, a grocery store and 1 1913 lunceonette . LAst year it was the Pig Out Cafe , this year it is AJs. Everyone knows it as the publicl unch counter

We stopped in a roadhouse and had steaks and pie. They overcharged and it gave me gas.

The first thing we did was go to see my grandmother. who cannot recognize us, is blind and deaf and demented . I am typing this from the public library which the librarion has greeted every patron by his or her first name. It has 12 shelves but 8 computers . Progress ?

Bush said the war would be failure Dr Freud please pick up the house phone

The New York Times refuses to allow information about Flordai Elections because it may upset motale. No one knows where Osma Bin Laden is. Does this remind anyone else of the Reichstag fire ?

Its been three days since i have updated this. i am packign to go south for a weekend. Its thanksgiving and it may be the ast time i can see my grandmother. I will hole up in any room that is quiet and either work on the computer or read the tin drum. i really find my extended family nasty, neurotic, and petty. In my house you find a plate , raid the fridge and settle into a corner. There are no places that have rules. I own no coasters ( literally and symboliclly ). The Aunts house i am staying at is a house of order . They have coasters. Every surface of my house has books . We have shelves but they are more often to be found on any availble flat surface. A book that is on there floor gets put away two seconds later.

As well i have a pink mohacian and talk about socialism , they are socreds all the way . There is an imlicit power struggle the minute we walk in the front door . They are the only ones who do not know i am queer.

Today i thought my grandmother had died

she has had alzhiemers and is dying slowly over the last ten years

my aunt left a voice mail and said she had a heart attack , maybe i thought she was release w. mercy.

They defibbed her which seesm to be an act w/o mercy

Thanksgiving is this weekend and we are driving south to eat turkey and avoid any semblanace of emotion .

Geoff

has said some interesting things about comics as well

Some Auxrially information about september 11 :


Trashing another Faith Promoting Legend

Hitchens has a well defined and singular moral sense that is nesscary in these times. Here he takes the piss out of Chomsky

Why have comics become so powerful a form of dissent ?

We have already gotten trouble for overdecorting re: halloween and now paranoid parents wants to elimiante it

War is Peace

Now two happy thoughts :

Beavers are safe in arizona

And i do not drive but if i did it would be a Gay Car

Today i rushed out of the house to catch my ride downtown. Takign the stairs down the subway three or four at a time and not buying a ticket i make the right train. The first thing i see is four very solemn woman in black clothes facing each other. They are sitting down and in their laps cradle well coifed maniquien heads.

a tom tomorrow comic to start your day.

Today at mass the priest used Shellys Ode to the West Wind blindly. Thinkign it was a pretty lyric, he didnt realize the revoultionary subtext. So read it .

In 1991 a poet from californis published this poem in the overseas communist journal.

Lantern Festival

The east wind caresses the face and hastens the peaches and plums.

A sparrow hawk spreads its wings, unfolding a bright future.

The moon reflects in the sea, bringing hot tears.

A traveler ascends a tower, remembering his home.

I shall not fail to live up to lifelong aspirations to serve my country
.
The people who raised me are more valuable than 10,000 pieces of gold.

We must do all we can to catch up and reinvigorate China.

We wait for spring to spread across this sacred land.


Diganolly in the Chinese text from the left corner , the phrase Li Peng Step Down appeared.
Li Peng orchastrated teh Tinnamen Square Fiasco .

Poets are the secert legistors of the world because poets (or at least good ones) are like spy masters transportign dangeorus ideas in banal packages.

FRanks cover this week was interesting

It had THE WAR AGAINST in 72 point times new roman

on a sticky note was terroism

inder that crudely crossed out in red were the worde Communism, dugs, poverty, sexual harrasment, drinking and somking and unleashed dogs

Now Frank is not known for his subtly but it is interesting how it views this war as a war agaisnt dissidence and social control .

On Wednesdays Golbe and Mail there was a picture of a glammed up 16 year old Osma enjoying a school trip to switzerland in the mid 70s. Underneath the fold was news of the Swiss Massacre. Sometimes Synchroncity is an editorial Decsion

Today the Globe Tabloid had a picture of bin Laden in a Western Dead or Alive poster w. the word poster scrawled out.
Sometimes happening here , im not sure what

Hank Williams III used to play punk. He played nasty and angry grinding fuck you music. All blitzkreig drums and buzz saw guitars. He had the lust for music instilled in him by his granddaddy but playing that kind of music had problems. Hank Williams was to Country like Keats to Lyric Poetry . The oepdial energy was so strong that his son ended up playing Good Old Boy and sliding thru on Football Anthems. Who knows why but Hank III started to play country but to this day while playing live he wears a Misfit Shirt under his flannels. Maybe he realized that punk was to the cities what Country was to rural areas. Maybe he realized there was a new tradition emerging that refused to sell out to the"flood of Assholes" (Robbie Fulks) , the men in Armani who fly in from LA rather then the men who migrate from the rurals and buy a Nudie as their first suit . It started off as crude electric bar blues with such titles as I Put the Dick in Dixieland . He is angry and eloquent and plays guitar like a hanging noose. He is not as lyrical and lonley as his grandfather but he is nearly as passionaite. Maybe Alt Country will save Nashville. Record Sales are down and Universal is putting their hat on Faith Hill. But people are taking notice of this whole generation of people who take country as a vehicle for some pretty important traditions. Maybe Kasey Chambers and Lucinda Williams will kick Faiths ass . Maybe Robbie Fulks , Hank III and Ryan Adams will take Garth Brooks, Allen Jackson and Tim McGraw back behind the Barn. Because w. a marketing degree from the U of Oklahama cannot be a very effective weapon.

I am tryign to rope two freinds to go to Vancouver to see momus, drink tequila and seduce sailors. They have classes and seem to care about them so i am failing.

Yesterday i saw a new Robert Atilla Lukas work at Douglas Udell. I have seen a substantial amount of his work in Reproductions. I have seen on rare occasions some of pieces in real life. His work is visceral in both an emotional and physical sense . He depicts the objects of queer fetishization ( cops , soldiers, sailors ) in their trained traditional roles of mechanics of often violent social control . He explores the implications of what this means. Power no longer equates with sex, it realties to oppression. Blood is not a freudian metaphor for semen it is the direct physical result of submission. He shows how dangerous sexualizing those trained to subdue or kill can be/ He has always worked as a representive painter but his paintings were stained and smeared pastels, water colours and gouaches . The piece i saw at Udell had little violent or angry contents. In its chirouscoco lighting and the darkness of its colouring it looked mannerist. An oil portrait of a young man stripped , his haunches undepicted. I talked to the front end worker end worker about how odd the piece seemed considering the context.

Apparently there was an article in the Canadian art mag Border Crossing a couple of months ago . Lukas had given up painting, changed his name ( to PonyBoi)and started a webzine.

Udells rep couldn't find the mag , the mag was not at another gallery downtown who has most issues of it. The issue was at the Public Library but the article was not there . I googled the name and the search came up blank.

A dealers rumour and no other information is more often then not means a P.R. stunt but there are a couple of factors that seem to make this case more complex. He does not seem to be seem to be as attached to spectacle as the other artists who seem to be working similar ideas ( cf . The Chapman Brothers) . The work is not mired in sentiment or voyeurism. It is too traditional in medium to be and too ambiguous in its intent for him to be a media star .
Its also worthy to note what the allusions of the name PonyBoi could signify . The character comes from a book written by a woman about a gang of boys who are sent to away from civilization as a consequence for violent acts. The movie featured heartthrobs that had a history of speculation concerning the queerness of their identity or sexual acts ( Swayze, Cruise, Lowe) .

By spelling it Boi instead of boy he claims both gender and sexual transgressive ness. It is a term used by Drag Kings and young queers in a playful and reclaimed way their fluidity . Much like the word queer.

If the PonyBoi persona is accurate and if the allusions are as heavy as it seems to be at first it leads to some interesting speculation. Is it a loosening of his traditional severity . Is it an attempt to be a Warholian superstar ? The fact an artist of his calibre would consider the F(f)lash of web art viable is fascinating stuff . I wish i knew more about it !

Its not much, its mostly symbolic. But it provides people comfort. The Virginia Bear Company is donating 500 bears to rescuer workers and firefighters. They want each one to come with a personal message. so spend 5 minutes and fill out a card

i know its good advertising but sometimes mercy overrides cynicism .

Doctors Without Borders do not advertsie tehir charity (cf red cross ,united way) but do need help.

Most days i forget i am queer. It just seems so much part of my life that it betrays thought. Then a few things pile up and i remember. This week it happened. It started of with a 1968 volume on Homosexuality. It made the argument that we were not sick fucks . We were pathetic and diseased individuals. Then Franks Who's Gay Issue poked up. Frank is the canuck version of to Private Eye. Who's Gay is usually a dishy treat. This time it was petty and small. Then a bus driver called me cream puff. I yelled back at him " I prefer faggot". Two mooks on the train yesterday were talking about fags taking their jobs. Then Bush suspended the restrictions on queers in the army.
I think that we have made progress. Death in Venice is taught in high schools, Our Lady of the Flowers is taught in colleges. Porn is availble in the local news stand. We can talk about sex. The media loves us it gives us sitcoms . We have a dozen glossies that we can pour over. We are mentioned enough ads that there is an archive .
We have our own publishing sections at the big houses. We have three shelves on most bookstores. We can get married in Europe and Canada . We can adopt Children. We have Barry Frank and Svend Robinson. Cable shows explicit queer sex . Every town almost know has a community center . We square dance and do rodeo .
There are still problems. We can point out other countries We can mourn for the 52 people who are about to die for sodomy in Egypt. We can notice the draconian laws in a million places. We can blame homophobia on backwater rednecks. We can say we are safe in the cities. But even if this were true there still are loads of problems. I would argue that were are not safe in cities. I would argue the shows that are given credit for queer lives exoticize it or geld it. I would argue that we are being distracted by the orgnaztions that are supposed to protect us.
We have misplaced our priorities . We have allowed GLAAD to speak for us. One of our tools used to be outrage . WE used to throw shoes and coins at cops . We flirted with homophobes. We held kiss ins and died in the streets. Now we are like a school marm, telling artists not to offend and give money if they do. We make sure people tow the lines. They yelled at Elton and Kevin Smith because hate cannot be funny. Hate has to be funny. We NEED camp. It is the way we process They charge artists money the minute they cross the boundary. They enforce a stalinist orthodoxy with guilt , this is censorus black mail. Remember Blackmail. It was the reason we were not allowed in the CIA, CSIS, The Police Services, The Army. Now we are doing it.
What do they support . Will and Grace . Yeah the drag queen and the eunuch guppie are great role models. played by the actor who refuses to come out of the closet and the actor whose marriage is mentioned in every episode. The only queer actress on that show plays a sociopathic lush . ( She's also the funniest)
The other shows on TV that show queer life tell us we are closet queens (6 feet under), Sluts ( Queer as Folk ) or Perverts ( Law and Order ).
We are also fighting for marriage. The archaic breeder ritual which was a way to confirm the legitimacy of woman as property is viewed as the most important tool of our liberation beside adoption. So know we are safe. We are no longer those nasty fellows who fuck and dress in woman's clothing . We are nurturers for the children no one wanted

Sodomy is illegal in 13 states. Lesbians, bisexuals and Transgendereds have not entered into the public discourse . Queer Bashing and Murder is incredibly common . It is not safe to be a young queer in schools. No one knows anything in grade 10. Lets them not all flock to Houston and New York and Vancouver. Lets make everyone safe and legal in Edmonton and Lubbock and Patterson. The first Pansy Division song i heard made me feel belong. Out made me feel small and working class. Out still makes me feel working class. But we don't talk about class because we are all happy in our queer utopia

Tammy Wynette makes me cry. She has this planative wail that strips you of any sentiment , replacing it with with hers. Something like My Elusive Dreams where she describes moving to almost every state with her husband. She portrays it with almost documentary clarity. The fact she lost a child is as ordinary a tragedy as not to be overemoted . It is an anthem , along with Stand By Your Man that should make any femminist cringe. But her voice with that little twang, the twinge of sadness , its good.

I was going to buy season tickets to the opera but its mozart and verdi. Sickens me. I would not pay 20 dollars to see another back water slaughter of a very very boring opera. Bring on the Rakes Progress or Billy Budd.

I am tired and trying to do 10 000 things at once. Starting in October i am writing a Monthly Canadian Column for Delusions Of Adequacy.
I am preparing a bunch of poetry for publication. As well as my ordinary tasks but today is payday and that means NEW BOOKS . Its Thom Gunn and Bruce Weber for sure today.

More Seriously Bush's declared war on Afghanistan is called Infinite Justice. In the press conference he called it a " Crusade". Just what we all need another Holy War. Because the last one turned out so well. Its hard to be a pacifist but according to Salon people are still not joining the miltary .If they call the draft who can apply for concitous objector status. Will they be called "Yellow Concie" as my quaker buddies fathers were called in World War Two. They have alot of reservists, all of whom are being called up. Will that be up, they are sending in the special forces first ( Marines, Rangers , Green Berets, Seals) What happens next? In the paper yesterday with an immigrant from Kabul . He says alot of the Taliban were not Afghans but "Tourists" from other muslim countrys who belived this is an ideal state.

I AM SCARED

Yesterday i went to the doctor to be put on medication. I am now on Starnoc and Effexor.
I am not sure how i feel about this. I think i am at the point where it may be nesscary, but does medicating deal with the real problems and issues. Dont know, although the dreams are pretty fucking vivid.

Rosh Ho Shonna

Call someone you love today and make ammends .

Americas Most Wanted is playing fear mongering propghanda minister.
the whole we are winning the war, we are catching these people and you can help.
As much as i know about propghanda .

As much as i belive that i am a complex and rational person

As much as i belive no one can win a war

As much as i belive that a convential war in Afghanistan will be as much or more of a blood bath then vietnam

As much as i am cynical about Osma Bin Ladens involvement

As much as when when i read Henry Kissenger i am amazed at his chutzpah (wait i am never surpised at Kissengers Blindness)

it worked i wanted blood

This is not humane , i will work on mercy

I feel burnt out . I am slowly devolping a layer of cynicism , like an oyster and his mucus. I do not expect a pearl.

i saw Eisensthens film October about the bolshevik revolution this afternoon
as much as i know about lenin and his historical failures , his cruelty and his coldness and bloodthirst towards his goals .It worked. I belived in the grand Soviet ideal .

As Peter Sims says :

hat's why we need all the tools in the humanist arsenal. Without memory, we forget too easily. Without intuition, reason will lead us astray. Without common sense, we accept the insane. Without reason, we are led by emotions. Without compassion, we are ruled by bloothirsty men.

Without democracy, it doesn't matter what the fuck we believe, because we don't make the decison anyway. We need both democracy and humanism. And they've been overruled several times this century, to disastrous effect. We're living through the next incarnation of that.

some thoughts on why the liberal- left is so ineffective:
There's a young woman named Colette who began a piece in her zine looks yellow, tastes red with this:

Last year I was taking a woman's studies class. I sat there for several hours a week with the same group of people, presumably reading the same essays and texts, hearing the same lectures and conversations, etc. And I remember one day near the very end of the semester where one girl raised her hand in our discussion section and prefaced what she was saying with a very loud and clear, "Well, I'm not a feminist or anything, but..." (on to prove, to her credit, a well-thought-out, enlightened point). What?

I could proudly say that I don’t tiptoe around the word feminist. I could say that I try to be quick to point out that assuming that "feminist" means "militant, man-hating feminist" is not unlike assuming "Christian" means "militant fundamentalist, abortion-doctor murdering Christian." But I know there is a lot I tiptoe around...

My initial wisecrack response to this was, "Well, militant feminists don't really hate men anyway; they're too busy hating other feminists." But a deeper thought was that feminists, despite all their diversity and all their conflicts with each other, are something of a social category – not that they all come from the same social class or social group, but that they are a social group – "feminist" – in the way that in a high school "preps" is a social group, and "jocks" and "dirtbags" and "skaters." And a woman who's a potential supporter of feminist social and political ideas might nonetheless say, "I'm not a feminist or anything" because emotionally and socially she simply doesn't feel like a feminist or identify with feminists. And she might not want to engage in political activity with feminists if she feels different and isolated around feminists, or frightened by them, or repelled by them. If she believes that she'll have to give up important parts of herself to become a feminist, then she's not going to become one.

Anyway, substitute the word "leftist" for "feminist" and you'll see what I'm driving at: "leftist" is something of a social category, and those not in the category don't want to make common cause with the left. (Yes, and of course I've greatly oversimplified, "left" is a ridiculously vague term for disparate sets of people, etc.) The left can't overcome being a kind of counterculture; it attracts people who want to be leftists, and so the attraction only reaches so far ....

This is Frank Kogans opinon , one i think all leftists should consider .

Today in the Globe and Mail there was an article on the demorcraticazation of news . It seems like everyone has a cellphone and a still camera or a video camera . The first question newsman ask now is who has the best footage, more often then not its not a journo . The interent has been my source. Espically through bullentin boards and instant messages/email . Personal memory, speculation, conventinal news and unanswerable questions are piling pell mell. With the net there is at least some organzational structure .

That said there are gigs in Washington, New York , London

Red Cross accepts Pay Pal payments.

please consider sending something to Doctors Without Borders who are doing triage.

Side note , today the islamic students assocation was handing out buttons today. They said " We are all immigrants "

There are 1100 dead already. We do not know how many dead in the world trade center. I think Geoff Parkes. Questions are ones we all should be asking.
I will try to answer them myself later !

I know this seems petty with all that is happening. I know that 10k people have died. I know that we are living in a state of fear and panic now. I know we will never be safe. But what i keep thinking about is the art . The World Trade Center had a well curarted collection of Modern Classics. Almost 1000 peices of art will never be seen again. This is a tragedy almost as important as the burning of Alexendra.

Thanks Be To God .

Everyone i know on the net has got their act together

They have spread informtion and compassion.

In the evil and pain that this has spawned it is good to know their is a community that calls familes and makes sure everyone they know themselves and through people is safe.

I want to say a million things but my energy is low

Tomorrow

But one thing that is sort of realvent that i want everyone to know


I do telephone surveys two days a week for the eighth largest market research firm in the world. This evening, eight hours after the bombing, we did a survey on the american reaction to the bombing. The survey consisted of twenty questions. 8 of those were dealing with Bushes preformance and the republicans in general. I do not know who commiosned the survey

I may lose this job for posting it but it is odd enough to mention.

New York


I have an essay when i try to figure out how i feel. Tonight i had to conduct a survey about how americans felt concerning how they felt. Eight hours after it happened.

I have to rush off , school and all but here is a paragraph on lit !

Mishimas Patriotism

This 10 page short story expresses everything Mishima is both praised and condemned for. It features intense nostalgia for a martial nationalism that may not have existed. A subservient woman who does what she is expected to do. A thick current of blood and sex. all of this would not be very interesting if Mishima was not an expert prose stylist . These pages are not only an almost perfect ascending climax , suspense that goes so fast to the farthest extension of its logical conclusions . It is also deeply poetic. It is self contained and elegant. Only occasionally do the banalities of everyday life interrupt the tension. They are not the comic relief expected in Western Fiction. They seem to be rocks in a garden. Something to ponder instead of where the lines of sand are going. At first the blood gushing dual hari kari seems to be a shock . But there are clues. The sand lines are confusing but if your eyes are strong enough you can follow them. I have always wondered if this story was a rehearsal. But it is always dangerous to assume Autobiography even if its intentional.

Yesterday we went to the largest corn maze in Alberta. It was two twentysomething men and a score of suburban familes . The kind who Dad thought it might be fun and brought the kiddies. The families took clue sheets that told them to go left or right depending on posts throughout the maze. So every so often there was a bottleneck while everybody tried to figure out the trivia question. However we dealt with it by instinct . This way we completed the maze in a record 39 minutes.

Coming back from the maze i was at some greasy spoon. I was using the washroom and this 6 year old was beside me. He looked over at my head and said "Does it grow like that" I had to disappoint him . He then asked me how i did it . I told him and he said " I am going to tell my mom i want one !" I hope he did .

Coming home on the train , another kid (a bit younger) yelled red and giggled. His mother chastised him for pointing out the obvious . I told the mother i did not mind and i thought he would not have the guilelessness for long. It should be something admired .

What i am listening to today

The Rib- Jeanne C Riley (single)

Live at Folsom Prison -Johnny Cash

Music for Trains- Steven Reich

Stars Forever -Momus

What I am Reading
Moo-Jane Smiley (not as good as A Thousand Acres but not much could be )

The Body Electric- Edited by The American Poetry Review

The Beauty Myth - Naomi Wolf

My Antonia - Willa Cather

Art I Love right now
Agnes Martin

Mondrains Early Crysanthamums

Malevichs Suprematist Paintings ( the ones done between 1916 and 1918)

Jack Piersons Fuck You ( he collects discarded commercial signage and makes new phrases from them )

Last Movie I Saw
6 Kubricks back to back on Movie Central (a cable channel) ( Spartacus, Lolita , Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket, Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut)

Quotes
'Why hate artists who show America like it is, when you can hate America instead?'

Momus

Britney -- like i said that one night, it's like screwing america. and who hasn't wanted to do at least once?

Ned Radgett

Random Thing
George Crumbs Black Angels is one of the first peices of Modern Classical i loved and one that shocked me out of my complacency . I have seen his Ancient Voices Of Children 5 or 6 times this week and am afraid to pick it up because it cannot be as good as Black Angels. Weird Superstiton, i know

I was called by the Globe and Mail this morning. They wanted to know if i had a subscription. I told them i bought it on the news stand. They asked if i wanted a subscription, which would be cheaper and more convienent. I told them i did not doubt that but again, i really did not want to lose my ritual. They hung up confused. Waking up late on a saturday and walking two blocks to get cinnamon roles , coffee and both national papers then spending the rest of the day in bed reading is pure joy.

Today was good 10 books for 15 bucks in a library book sale (including an old medical text and Dianetics) A wonderful and sensuous haircutting experience. ( they lean in so close first with the buzzing razor and then over you in the sink lathering with that wonderfully smelling shampoo smelling stuff) Swimming more then i usually do (10 laps). Court Food Chinese Food loaded to the gills with msg. (Those little button mushrooms fried up, celery, beef and broccoli , shanghai noodles). I read at mass . I bought two new compact discuss ( Steven Reich and Momus ). A good mellow , low key day.

I would like to mention how much pleasure the almost abstract super close up engravings in medical texts. They always remind me of other science illustrations. Nerves like the effusion patterns in deltas or synapses like atomic diagrams.

As well Dianetics is as unreadable as the Book of Mormon . I never thought i could find a book i could said that about.

Radical Simplicity

its a gift to be simple , its a gift to be free

I guess i have to introduce this piece. These are artists i consider outside the usual traditions of the twentieth century and who think radically about the spirit or make comment on the Mystery . I think there is a shadowed tradition of somberness and severity that is missed when people make the modernist cannon . Some of these people are in the cannon but i think they are all iconoclasts.

Cezanne

In the last years of his life he retreated to the south of france. He gave up his naked woman and sensuous fruit. He painted for close to 20 years endless ( okay maybe 100) variations of Mont Sainte-Victoire .
It is what he saw from his cell like room . These seemed to move from explicit realism to radical cubism. The still lives with pairs fucked up perspective enough to leave clues. But the later landscapes seemed so broken, they still challenge . It is not the erotomania inherent in Picassos minators or Warhols almost autistic playing with icons. It is a slow and ardours progression towards a illogical conclusion.

Malevich

Malevich once replaced an ikon found above the doorframe of Russian Schools with a black square. Later propaganda claimed this was an atheist move. It wasn't. Malevich was a spirtulast who believed that spirit could have no form . His early work , his single squares of non colour indicated a belief in rejecting image. Furthering the revolution, similar to early Christians and Muslims. He mellowed out as the October Revolt solidified. His work just after the Revolution was almost crowded and extravagantly coloured but with the same geometric rigidness. It is a disappointment near his death he reverted to fairly banal genre painting . The iconoclast lost .

Mondrian

Mondrian started painting trees and flowers. Lovely and delicate and almost as light as the snow ; they betray and almost best his japanese icons. He worked as well on trees and a pier and ocean series. All of these he would later reject them as inward or indulgent . His mature work involved the three primary colours and right angles. The lack of Mans interference and right angles equalling right morals seems important. He was in Holland when the Nazis invaded and he made his way by subterfuge to New York. The paintings he painted here are his most energetic. His least monastic and obsessive. Not with the colour (that remained primary) but the form. The thick lines moved closer together and the colours piled on top of each other boldly. Much less less radical then Maleviches change it can be viewed as similar .

Martin

Agnes Martin was born in Saskatchewan . She moved to New York after college and felt stifled and scared. She fled to Venice and then New Mexico where she has been painting for 30 years. There is a similarity to Saskatchewan , Venice and New Mexico that shows in her work. Her work is simple and luminous. It is often lines in grey shades on variously hued paper and canvas. The similarity that i see in these three places and her work is a holy light. A beauty that slips quickly from your fingers. It is the dawn on sand or ocean or grass fields. A hymn to somber reflection .

Rothko

There are three telling anecdotes concerning Rothko . The first is he is one of the few artists to have a chapel in his name filled with his work. The Second is that he demanded the lighting to be dim and the spacing to be wide when you viewed his work. He considered all of his paintings intimitly connected.
The third was that you took off your shoes when you visited his studio. Often in his paintings there are two colours in the same ranges bleeding, melting , melding into each other and a third colour providing a contrast . It seemed to be a metaphor for finding a way outside of the world. A distancing.

Serra

Serra bisects spaces. He makes the land his own. His early work consisted of almost toppling towers or pell mell piles of Cor Ten. His most famous work was removed because it was inconvienent to office workers. They had to move around a swerving 15 foot tall piece of steel. Serra guides you to awareness. We are blind, we walk with one foot in front of the other to our usual places. Being made to move by 20 tonnes of steel is a fairly obvious shake out of complacency. It does not seem simple but the grace in which he presents it is surprising.

Marfa
flavin and judd

Donald Judd bought an abandoned army base in Marfa. It had mysterious lights that came from the heavens on lucky nights , as well as sun baked prairies amid huge hangers that were beautiful in their concrete and glass utility . He filled it with art that undercut and commented on where they were. Flavin made serial boxes ( often stacked one on top of the other ) painted garish colours or made of galvinzed steel or glass. Flavin makes work out of neon and fluorescent light. He lives in his space and finds ways to distort and shine through it . The colours he uses provide odd shadows which are as much a part of the work as the objects themself. . Judd and Flavin were best friends but had a fight and had not talked in 15 years. When Judd died , Flavin was asked to do a major project at Marfa. He chose to light hallways , entrances and stairwells. The dark dank places where people go for utility now have human created recreations of those Unearthly Lights.

outside my window i am seeing two teenagers in lust. it is sweet. They are dancing in the grass, falling over , giggling. They have been doing this for maybe two hours. I do not think they noticed how long they have been doing this. i have had a really aggravating day. I want something that would make time stop like that. Maybe foregoing cheap nostalgia. Back to eating rice i guess.

Yesterday Saint Isadoire of Seville was made the patron saint of the internet. This is useful but considering I just lost an essay i spent 4 hours on today, why can there not be a Patron Saint of regaining lost work. It is one even non Catholics could find reason to pray to .

Today i am being publsihes. Its a pissant little zine but its good to know my poetry is going out into the world. I have to get to school but i might post something later today.

Henry

The above link is a record of every important day in a 4 year olds life. complete with pictures. sometimes it is what everyone would consider an important day. Like a birthday or a vacation or halloween. sometimes it is moments of everyday pleasure like baking or watching movies or taking a bath. It could have been cute and overly precious. It isn't, it is seet ansd so moving i am almost in tears. Henry is my new hero . I want to eat pancakes and cuddle up to watch Pee Wee and the Powerpuff girls.

www.10newsongs.com">see if this works

I worked on this for an hour. It has been on the web in a message board i frequent but i liked it enough to blog it

Cohen and his new album , sort of , since i have only read the lyrics


I find power in how he views G-d as both mysterious and obvious. His religion and his sex are both immediate and eternal. They come with the waves off Hydra or in the curve of a woman's breast. That it seems all of his debauchery ends up in the white room with the hard wooden bed. How he swings wide between being depraved and being aestiec (sp) . How he expressed the archetypes underneath Judaism , Buddhism , Catholicism and Capitalism.

He does not abandon a belief system when he embraces another one. There is this marvelous story about these Rabonovich Jews coming to rescue Cohen from his sanctuary at Mount Baldy. He brings them to his room. He finds Whisky and Crackers. They drink and talk long into the night. At the end they become frequent visitors to Baldy.
As well i am reminded of his novel Beautiful losers with that great Cree saint Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha. She is at a formal dinner the white factors are holding . She spills a glass of wine . Everyone talks to her, tries to comfort her like you would comfort a child. But the wine does not sop up. She weeps and the wine permeates the linens. No one sees the symbol.

That seems to be the essence of Cohen , the politics and tragedy of simple pleasures. The way a "very sweet companion, an angel of compassion , can rub half the world against her thigh. " or that martial introduction to Democracy.

As well there is that voice. The resigned sigh, the lone wolf howl, the wilderness keening. He talked recently about the holiness of domestic chores. I expected the lyrics to this album to reflect that . To be severe . But it does not seem to be that way at all. . I thought it would be an album where he put the whiskey on the shelf and said he was an old man , with out much use for woman. But seeing the lyrics, it seems the opposite. The holy man is down from the mountain, He is going from Israel to Babylon to experenice the pleasures of the flesh before he dies.

Its like these ancients are returning to their sources and making the most powerful work of their career. Bob Dylan is telling us how much he fears impotence and death. How being virile is so important to him. Merle Haggard is telling the young folk not to be stupid. Imparting his wisdom with bitter chastisement. Johnny Cash sounds lonely . Desperate to break something apart and run.

But Cohens album seems to hip and modern and as sexy as ever. Look at that digital cover. ( side note he designs all elements to his CDs and Books , often taking the photographs , as he did in this occasion) They smile slyly and close their eyes blissfully.

The Lyrics suggest a resigning but it seems like that has always occurred in his work. His best songs are in the past tense ( I remember you well in the Chelsea hotel or So Long Marianne). These ones deal with true love slipping past the "sentries of the heart" ( Alexandra Leaving ) or finding soberness in a daze of alcohol . Koanic as always.
I have only read the lyrics but it seems like he has done it again.

A couple of side notes

I chose Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha as my patron after Beautiful Losers

The website for the lyrics is www.10newsongs.com

Two short peices about writers :

Salman Rushdie

So this weekends National Post had an evisceration of Rushdies new novel. I love Rushdie , he is one of my favourite writers. One of the very few who writes with grace and intelligence about Diaspora. His writings seem to travel through time, space and location w. acrobatic ease. He has written both about the lonely consequences of abandoning your homeland ( Midnights Children) and robust satires about being too attached to your homeland ( Satanic Verses ). The latest one, as far as i can gather, is about murder, sex, class war and New York and (more importantly )Ellis Island as a trope. It has a Lolita doll that has made a great intellectual more money then God and the suppression of abuse that made the doll needed . Now the ideas sound exactly like something Rushdie would write about brilliantly . I have not read it but the last one that was savaged (Ground Beneath her feet) is my favourite , so i am excited .

The other interesting thing was that this thread of envy about Rushdie that seemed to permeate the piece. The First column described his troubles and how American Writers have written American Epics . It also mentioned his friendships with Martin Amis, Tina Brown , Christopher Hitchens and Susan Sontag. Nothing that has anything to do with the book reviewed. The photograph that illustrated this reviews was Rushdie in a tux at some fab event with his new nubile girlfriend . This probably has something to do with the slaughter of the book.

Ginsberg

I am rereading the collected poems of Allen Ginsberg as well as his essay collection. His later poems seem boring, drug addled and self congratulatory . I am desperate for one line that matches the Yawp found in his 5 famous ones from the 50s ( America, Kaddish, Sunflower Sutra , Howl and A Supermarket in California.) None does, as it gets closer to the end, it reverts to this embarrassing sing song dirges. Is this a case of putting away childhood things.

That said his essays his witty, bitter, funny and conversational. He convinces you in a very clever and forward way. Maybe he will be remembered like Gertrude Stein, not as a writer but curator and scenester . Not a bad reputation to die with .