High Masculine Tones

I had forgotten I needed Extra sugar-free chewing gum.

I had forgotten I needed Lays rippled potato chips.

I had forgotten I needed a health-conscious Body Smack candy bar.

I had forgotten I needed a 2 litre bottle of Coca-Cola Classic, one that goes flat within seconds of breaking the seal.

I hadn't forgotten that I needed coffee, the convulsions remind me of that every morning.

If I'm going to chow down on gum, chips, snack bars, and Coke... I'd better make sure that the milk in the coffee is fat-free. Keeps things balanced. Thanks for the nutritional advice.

And I guess the carton of smokes is down at the bottom of the bag somewhere, along with the lottery tickets and the rolling papers. Life sure is fun when you're On the Run.

[It is] Canada's most sensational -- and most controversial -- terrorism case in recent years.

After they were jailed on the grounds that they could pose a risk to Canada's national security, the case made headlines around the world as the news media quoted a government official's now infamous words: 'I guess the easiest way of putting it is there is a suggestion they might, in fact, perhaps be a sleeper cell for Al-Qaeda.'

Other Immigration officials raised allegations that some of the men may have been in search of diagrams and schematics of the CN Tower and other prominent Toronto landmarks.

However, the case of the terrorists among us began to unravel almost as soon as the detention reviews began, with the RCMP and Citizenship and Immigration Canada distancing themselves from the idea that the men posed a clear threat to security.

The RCMP, which is just beginning to sift through 25 boxes of files and 30 computers seized in the raid that netted the 19 men, said this week there is no evidence that Canada's national security is at risk. Immigration officials underlined that they are investigating only the possibility of such threats.

'I can comfortably say there is no known threat; what is being investigated is a reasonable suspicion,' said Giovanna Gatti, spokesperson with Citizenship and Immigration Canada. 'It's taken the spin that it has taken in the media for whatever reason.'"

Yeah, that damned irresponsible media, doing its usual spin thing... I wonder why they got so excited about nineteen immigration violations? I guess the easiest way explaining it, or of putting it, was the suggestion they might, in fact, perhaps 'be a sleeper cell for Al-Qaeda.'

B.C. ON FIRE screamed the headline from a Vancouver newspaper last week, and the fires burning out the interior of British Columbia keep on growing in size and intensity, as they do across much of the continent.

My sincerest sympathy to all who have had to leave their homes (including some close friends evacuated yesterday from their gorgeous house on the shore of Lake Okanagan), and to those who will lose them. But surveying the rampaging fires from my safe perch over a morning newspaper, my dominant reaction isn't one of concern, it's frustration growing into rage.

It's been a hot, dry summer. Sound familiar? Camping last week on Vancouver Island, supposedly in a rainforest, was like setting up inside a tinderbox. The trees seemed to cry out in agony. And every year, no matter where I am, it's the hottest, driest summer on record. The effects of global warming keep becoming more obvious, not only pushing up temperatures but causing strange and cataclysmic events around the world.

"Ah yes", I hear the skeptic mutter... "but that's just anecdotal evidence, isn't it?" Never mind that unless the study is funded by an energy corporation, the conclusions from the scientific research are clear and unmistakeable.

I find it ironic that the Premier of British Columbia has opposed Canada's ratification of that drop in the bucket called the Kyoto Accord, on supposed economic grounds. How much damage and expense are these fires causing, and can we harbour any reasonable expectation that the coming years won't be worse? No matter where you live, global warming is causing you ill effects, not way off in some undefined Future in which technological innovation saves the day, but now. We lack the courage to admit what is happening all around us, much less to change our behaviour to address it.

It's easy to point a finger at the cabal of corrupt oil men running the world's most powerful nation, and shake a head in disgust at the latest outrage that seems calculated to accelerate humanity's degeneration into pervasive misery. But villains like Gordon Campbell and George Bush are only able to perpetuate their disastrous folly with our support and consent. There's clearly political gain to be had in promoting an environmental policy of global self-immolation, and that's why they pursue it. To do otherwise is to be branded an "extremist" flogging a dreaded "special interest". And even after a week of breathless headlines declaring the collapse of our overburdened power grid nobody seems interested in seriously examining how we consume energy, and conservation measures are an emergency, short-term measure until things go back to "normal".

Three thousand die in a horrific event in New York and we turn the world upside down, recklessly dropping bombs in the name of vague ideals such as security and justice. Ten thousand French die in the latest heatwave and we write sickening, smug editorials and turn up the air conditioning.

Let's stop pretending that everything is fine. Because it isn't. Let's stop assuming that this story has a happy ending. It doesn't.

I remember reading about the novelist Paul Bowles (The Sheltering Sky, Let It All Come Down), something like "the worse things got, the happier he became." Too bad he isn't still alive.

‘Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions...’

-- Primo Levi, If This Is a Man & the Truce

The first Big Lebowskifest took place at a Baptist-run bowling alley which allowed neither drinking nor cussing (something of an irony given that apparently the F-word and its variants apparently pop up in the movie no less than 267 times). With an advertising budget of just $42 the pair's hopes were modest, figuring that if 35 people turned up then at least they might break even. On the night 150 attended. This year, thanks in large part to a namecheck in Spin magazine, over three times that amount had to be refused tickets.

"We had a lot of heartbreaking stories," explains a genuinely sad-looking Russell. "But it's obviously a film that strikes a chord with people. It's such an independent-minded movie. It has this whole squares versus the bums thing going on. And the Dude is such a genuine person."

He's also based on a genuine person, the Coens' longtime friend and white Russian devotee Jeff "the Dude" Dowd. A 1960s radical turned independent film producer, he is also this year's guest of honour. I first encounter Dowd earlier in the day at a nearby Holiday Inn where he is gamely being photographed with an apparently endless succession of Big Lebowski-ites. And, it has to be said, drunkenly sticking his tongue into the ear of any woman who comes within range.

... "The movie's odd because it takes only a portion of my life, when we were hanging out in the 1970s," says Dowd, who is currently working on his autobiography, Classic Tales And Rebel Rants From The Dude. "But they captured a certain spirit of Dudeness if you will. Of friendship and not accepting the corporate conglomerate reality. And I think the people here have a certain satirical outlook. They aren't Trekkies. They are people who don't accept the norm. But I don't want to make too much of it. I mean, maybe they're just a bunch of drunks drinking white Russians ... "

Certainly, looking around, there is no shortage of imbibing, if no obvious Dude-style dope smoking.

"Only one group of people here so far have said why don't you ... come back to our room," says Dowd. "Actually, what they said was, we have all this pot - do you have any rolling papers? But there will be times when I'll be in Austin or Cannes or some other film festival and people will say, do you want to smoke a joint, dude? So that's a nice, uh, fringe benefit. I never have to worry about flying with it because I always know it's there. It's always awaiting the Dude."

Via The Excitement Machine

The archives need to be rebuilt, but there's a few new pics up on Harry's page.

This unreleased track (1.9 MB) by the Flaming Lips has been bouncing around the net for a while, and getting a bit of play on WFMU. It's something of a live mash-up, a cover of the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army", with the lyrics of the Butthole Surfer's "Moving to Florida" sung overtop. At least for a while... the last verse digresses to the Bush administration. I don't make it all out exactly -- it's being screamed through a megaphone -- but I hear "John Ashcroft is a stinky man."

Which no doubt he is.

::Image taken from Mediaeater, with many great pics of The Lips and others... a tremendous page.

At least I think that's what Bauman is arguing. My chops for reading literary criticism have distinctly atrophied, it's late at night and I'm in a mild state of self-induced delirium. And I might be projecting... because that was more or less my opinion of those books.

After some consideration, I've decided against having a full-blown nervous breakdown, and instead have signed up for a fairly significant server upgrade for my personal web pages. It should be just as much fun. In any event, I'm advised that my site may disappear briefly sometime in the next couple of days, as I will be required to publish to a new box. (Or something.)

I'll take this opportunity to perform a fairly major overhaul of the site itself: switching weblogging systems to Movable Type, and if I'm going to do that I might as well change the page design, and while I'm at it give the weblog a new name. I don't feel like a "Scribbler", and I hope I can come up with something better.

Of course, all of these changes will move ahead during my free personal time -- of which I am presently averaging about three minutes per day. The rate of advance will be glacial.