Bullitt: then and now. comparing scenes from the movie with 2002 san francisco. (via noods)

interview with adam of the Quiet American is up over at erasing clouds.

standard stuff in this age of diminished expectations.

Five Degrees of Osama
FORTUNE
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
By Nicholas Stein

In December, President Bush named Thomas Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, chairman of an independent commission examining the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But FORTUNE has learned that Kean appears to have a bizarre link to the very terror network he's investigating--al Qaeda.

Here's how the dots connect: Kean is a director of petroleum giant Amerada Hess, which in 1998 formed a joint venture--known as Delta Hess--with Delta Oil, a Saudi Arabian company, to develop oil fields in Azerbaijan. One of Delta's backers is Khalid bin Mahfouz, a shadowy Saudi patriarch married to one of Osama bin Laden's sisters. Mahfouz, who is suspected of funding charities linked to al Qaeda, is even named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by families of Sept. 11 victims. True, Hess is hardly the only company to cross paths with Mahfouz: He has shown up in dealings with, among others, ultra-secretive investment firm Carlyle Group and BCCI, the lender toppled by fraud in 1992.

Kean, who was unavailable for comment, may not have been aware of the Mahfouz connection. But Hess spokesman Carl Tursi did reveal another interesting coincidence: Three weeks before Kean's appointment, Hess severed its ties with Delta.

caveezy empteezy.

how to spot arial.

arial or helvetica?

Development timeline for Museum Island in Berlin (via kottke) i'm a sucker for anything berlin related.

"felcher and sons" ad is leading at this site devoted to voting fer yer favorite ad.

we ended up at the neighbors house for the half-time and second half of the stupor bowl, if you can call that humiliation a bowl. at one point some dude stiff-arms a defender. i've always kinda liked the stiff-arm and mentioned that i wish we had the stiff-arm option while at some of the internet jobs i've had in the past.
not 10 minutes later, the best commercial of the bowl came on, the reeboks ad where some football star is supposed to be crushing fools at some generic office when they fuck up in some capacity; playing solitaire, not collating etc. the ad is narrated by the ceo of this company, saying how glad he is that he hired so-and-so to shape things up in the office.
the astonishing part of the ad is the name of the company: Felchers.
heh.
it was mentioned one or two times and was printed in large letters on "office" wall while some drone was getting sacked.
i'm still imagining the director/writer laughing their ass off over a big bong hit and a smoothie as their joke went into 60 kabillion homes world wide.
hats off.

bumper snicker seen today: "Buck Fush"

cliff's "flash" notes to 2001: a space odyseezzy

The last couple of days i went through a jury duty selection process. i got my summons in the mail - was it last year, a month or so ago, and figured, 'what the hell' - this time i'll do my duty.

so here is what happened:
a little after 7:30 on tuesday, monday was a holiday, i arrived at the downtown courthouse. i checked in at room 253 - the jury pool. this room looked like a larger than normal airport gate waiting area, it was full at the beginning of the day, probably about 300 people. as you can imagine there are all kinds of folks in here and a million different ways that they fucked up filling out the form that they were supposed to bring with 'em. so we checked in and waited.
eventually, around 9:30, after a cholita runs down the rules and how the day will werk and how we get paid etc., the annouce a group of people to be sent to a particular courtroom for jury selection - first name? mine.

we go to the courtroom, room 61, and find out that the legal teams are still wrangling so we are sworn in and let go until 1:30.

returning we wait outside the room until about 2. we are lead in and the judge tells us that this case is a medical malpractice suit. a black couple alledges that a young doctor did something wrong during the birth of their baby, she is pregnant again now, and now he will live with brain damage. ugly.
everyone i talked to thought we'd be there for a few days, a week, some dope dealer, a woman in a fender-bender - but not this, the kind of case where no one wins.
so we are given a three page questionaire regarding our experiences with doctors and hospitals and babies and our friends relationships and how we feel about big money lawsuit payoffs etc. we drop these off and are told to report back at ten the next day for the actual jury selection process.

i was the second to last person to leave the hall, i wrote and wrote having a good handful of friends and relations, in additon to myself, who have had not so great to painful experiences with doctors etc.

overnight i thought that 20 - 30 days would be a terribly long time to not be able to look for work! i knew that we'd have a chance to talk to the judge and state any case of hardship.

which is what happened - we all sat down the next morning and the judge related how difficult it can be to find juries and with that, asked for hardship as the trial was expected to last 20 to 30 DAYS! there was probably 40 of us in the selection pool - five or six went before me, some had jobs, some didn't. i don't know why they woman who had the job tried to get out - it seemed like something that should have been taken up with the people who processed the original summons.
anyway, i stated my case in ten words or less: unempolyment has run out - can't look for jobs for a month scares me. i said that a week or two, i could do, but a month plus...

counsel met in chambers with the judge and when he returned i was excused! i imagine that, due to my responses on the questionaire, i wasn't high on the list as a candidate for the defense. so i'm done.

random thoughts:
i was so nervous getting ready and leaving the house, to not be late, that i forgot my summons on the dining room table and had to go back to the house.

i watched construction dudes peeling plastic wrap off the new disney music hall.

the husband plantiff, had a suit on - it still had the tags on the sleeves. i was about to mention it when he saw them himself and removed 'em.

dude sitting next to me in the hall reading l. ron hubbard's "battlefield earth".

a small flock of green parrots, parakeets?, in the trees outside the courthouse.

men's room grafitti: "...out of jale."

the rogue's gallery of lawyers - every size and shape and demeanor.

overheard- man: "is this where i come for a restraining order?"

rubber soled shoes: not professional. same goes for open toe'd ladies shoes.

Bill Gates Sr., bill's dad, is all for estate taxes:

Who Will Pay?

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Friday, January 17, 2003; Page A23

"I thought it was an interoffice joke."

That's how Chuck Collins, co-founder of a group called United for a Fair Economy, reacted when he was first told that William Gates Sr. wanted to talk with him about stopping the repeal of the estate tax.

It was no joke. The father of one of the richest men in history believes, as he put it during a visit here this week, that the inheritance tax "is the most intelligent tax ever devised."

Why? Because it doesn't tax labor or investment. It encourages each generation to build new wealth. And it accepts the idea that the very wealthy owe something back -- not just to society but to government itself.

In their just-published, clearheaded primer on estate taxes, "Wealth and Our Commonwealth: Why Americans Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes," Gates and Collins quote Theodore Roosevelt. "The man of great wealth owes a particular obligation to the State because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government," the Republican Roosevelt declared in 1906. "It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of valuable property can sleep a single night in security."

Without government to enforce contracts, protect life and property, and mitigate social inequities, the very wealthy would live in constant fear of being plundered.

Gates, a happy warrior and a bear of a man, has thrown his formidable resources into making sure that he and people like him pay a decent share of the cost of government. He and Collins are doing urgent work. By pushing to repeal both the estate tax and the dividends tax, the Bush administration is doing all it can to shift the total tax burden away from the very wealthy and toward middle- and lower-income taxpayers.

The administration is disguising its intentions by combining these large tax cuts for the wealthy with more modest breaks for people in the middle class, all the while running up the deficit. It is trying to push off the table the obvious option -- to give a break to the middle class without handing out huge sums to a very small number of very wealthy Americans.

It will and should be repeated over and over that under Bush's program, Vice President Cheney would get a tax cut of $327,000, according to calculations by Bloomberg News based on Cheney's 2001 tax return. In a time of war, is it really urgent to plunge the country ever deeper into debt to give Cheney and comparably placed taxpayers that much relief? The administration is placing the burden of helping the wealthy now on our children and grandchildren. This is not only unjust, it's nuts.

Gates and Collins, whose book focuses on the estate tax, ask the essential question: Isn't the estate tax a better tax than the alternatives? "Estate taxes compared with what?" they write. "Wage taxation? Increased sales taxes? Consumption taxes? A return to nineteenth century tariffs?" Their questions apply just as well to the tax on dividends.

Ah, but wouldn't everyone pay less if government grew smaller? But this administration, with its war plans and other military expenditures, is making government bigger. Without big cuts in spending on items that Americans like -- Medicare and other health programs, Social Security, child care, aid to education and, let's not forget, domestic security -- the choice will be larger deficits or a heavier tax burden on middle-class and poor Americans.

And as state and local governments' revenue dries up while the federal government puts more burdens on them -- for example, homeland security costs and the price of complying with the new education law -- these governments either have to raise taxes, especially regressive sales taxes, or slash spending.

Which of the following would be smarter: for the feds to put lots of money into repealing estate and dividend taxes that affect a handful of Americans; or to use the same sums to help the vast majority of Americans avoid big sales and property tax increases?

Let's be clear: This is not a battle over tax cuts. It's a fight over who will pay for government, today and tomorrow. Almost all Americans could be protected from estate levies simply by exempting the first $8 million of a fortune from the tax -- a lot of money by most reckonings. Inheritance taxes would fall only on the largest estates. That, says Gates, is entirely just. As he puts it, those who were best able "to take advantage of what society has to offer" have a debt to pay. It's a concept no less worthy for being old-fashioned.

arstechnica with a nice intro paragraph re: eldred v. ashcroft:

Caesar beat me to a post on the recent news of the public's great loss in the recent Supreme Court case of Disney v. the Public Domain... er, I mean, Eldred v. Ashcroft. You guys probably can guess what I think of the result without me saying anything, but I will note that I do understand the Court's reasoning in this instance. It's congress's place to set policy on this matter, and it's congress that has really failed us by taking to Big Content's big payouts in exchange for the public interest.

Anyway, I just wanted to take a moment to point you to boingboing.net's extensive coverage of the online community's reaction to the verdict. There are tons of links there to great pieces, and it's well worth reading if you were having a good day and you'd like to have it thoroughly ruined.

"a progressive christian (oxymoron?) who likes to speak his mind." heh heh.
that jerk sean hannity eats up time on KABC here in L.A. on the AM dial - yeah, they are part of the liberal media(scroll down a touch) as well, thats why they have larry elder and al rantel and this hannity clown on the air and are owned by our very liberal friends over at disney (who are probably planning eternal copyright in their dreams). As soon as his contract is up, i'm betting they'll boot the only thing worth a damn on that station anymore, Mr. KABC.

Ari & I
White House Press Briefing with Ari Fleischer

Monday, January 13, 2003 1:15 PM
by Russell Mokhiber


Mokhiber: Ari, two questions.

A group of Republican businessmen took out a full page ad in today's Wall Street Journal. They charge that President Bush had betrayed them by first promising a more humble nation in our dealings with the world, and then turning around and preparing for pre-emptive wars. They say in the ad to President Bush: "You cannot keep proclaiming peace while preparing for war. You are waltzing blindfolded into what may well be a catastrophe. Show the humility and compassion that led us to elect you."

In what sense does this doctrine of pre-emptive war reflect a more humble nation?

Ari Fleischer: In precisely the same way that President Kennedy meant it -- when President Kennedy made preparations for a possible American response to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Pre-emption is actually a time-honored part of America's pool of diplomatic and foreign policy devices that are useful to defuse crises to prevent war from ever taking place. The President approaches it in the same manner. September 11 certainly has brought home to the American people -- if we had known that an attack was going to take place against the United States on September 11, and we could have taken military action to pre-empt, and President Bush had that type of actionable information, I think it is fair to say the American people would have said -- pre-empt this attack. So, I think it is part of America's time-honored tradition for keeping the peace.

Mokhiber: Both the federal government and almost all of the state governments are projecting deficits as far as the eye can see. Given the immediate needs of the American people, why is the President supporting a one-time reported $15 billion appropriation -- that's $5 billion in military aid and $10 billion in loan guarantees for Israel -- that's on top of the regular $3 billion in annual aid to Israel -- at a time when Ariel Sharon is enmeshed in a corruption scandal and is killing innocent Palestinians?

Ari Fleischer: The President has always viewed our aid package for many of the nation's in the Middle East as part of America's diplomacy. There has been a long-standing bipartisan consensus regarding aid for the nation's of the Middle East, especially and including Israel. This is part of America's foreign policy that continues, and the President has vowed to continue it.

prozacspotlight.org

President Dwight D. Eisenhower
January 17, 1961

My fellow Americans:

Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.

My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.

In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

II.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

III.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises to be of indefinite duration.

To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.

IV.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience.

The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientifictechnological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

V.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

VI.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment.

As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

VII.

So -- in this my last good night to you as your President -- I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I -- my fellow citizens -- need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration: We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

here's a nice looking blog, via boingboing. bigdeadplace documents life in antartica from a grunt level.

a little late in mentioning that the latest in blogs is clunk. actually clunk is the uncredited source where i found the link to the pics of LA site.

jay ryan has some new posters, as well as some sales on older items, over at the bird machine.
do you or don't know know that i commissioned a poster from jay for the 'watery, domestic' show in Chicago; it's listed with the 2002 posters 'natch.
his studio is in the same building, and kinda the same room as the office of punk planet. he was very gracious, invited me out to the north side for the afternoon; we went to lunch, ran an errand or two. i gave him a bottle of wine as thanks, but then he turned around and trumped me buy putting together a care package of some of his prints. damn.
good mufuggin' guy.

yahooty! pictures of los angeles.

Room #20: JARL'S ANTECAVERN AND TROPHY HALL:
This huge cavern's contents make it appear to be a trophy room of some sort. The western part of this immense cavern has a large number of pelts and hides on the walls and the floor. There is also a large table with four chairs in that area. On the end wall, two shields are hanging. Next to the shields are a heavy crossbow, two two-handed swords, and a pair of huge ivory tusks (totally worthless).

On the table are a bundle of scrolls (worthless as well). There are three chairs and two tables in the eastern portion of the cavern. That particular area is carpeted with rugs.

On the south wall are a cave bear pelt, a hide of some strange monkey creature (su-monster), the hide of a reptilian creature whose tail is that of a scorpion (wyvern), a rack of a giant deer or stag, the teeth and claws of another unknown creature (umber hulk), the claws of a giant scorpion, the horn from a rhino, a pair of giant tusks (mastodon), another pair of smaller tusks (mammoth), a wooden bow with a quiver of arrows (24 and all normal), a giant boar head, the skin of an eagle headed mammal with wings (a griffin), 2 metal shields (one is normal, the other is a +2 metal shield), a dwarven skull with an iron crown, 2 crossed spears and a flail, a silken tapestry (1850 g.p.), a case of crossbow bolts (15+3 bolts and 15 normal bolts), the wings of a giant eagle, a great axe, a suit of human plate mail armor, 2 walrus tusks (one is normal, the other is actually an ivory covered Iron Horn of Valhalla), a wooden shield, a suit of dwarven splint mail, a tapestry, the head of a strange human with lion features (shedu), a huge iron mace, a giant lynx pelt, the jaws of some unknown creature (subterranean lizard), a suit of elven platemail ( it is a +2 suit of armor), a small metal shield, a light crossbow, and a tapestry (500 g.p.).
On the eastern end of the cavern, there are some steps 3í in height. The walls in this part of the cavern are covered with tapestries and hides.

my favorite supermodels site pointed me to a blog full of linky goodness, who just so happens to have a few year end lists of other blogs of linky goodnes!
also, fess'ed up and added salty's site to the links on the leezey.
hah, almost forgot. from the second site mentioned above - dig this crazy page of weather icons.

Adaptation

I've only barely started my extra-curicular research, but the nytimes and film threat and LA Weekly loved "Apaptation". I'm sure I'll find a mirror image opinion at mrcranky but what of it? As i read all of these reviews i am reminded more of what this movie has going for it, and more of why I still, this is the afternoon after viewing, feel unsatisfied.
I was prepared, as the "hollywood" third act of the movie unfolded for this to be another movie like "Six Senses" that flip-flopped from a horror film to a sappy love story in the last minute and 1/2, or for a sudden realization that this has all been a dream as the screenwriter's agent closes the last page of a dog-eared typwritten script and declares its author a genius and a rich man.
This never happens, at least not explicitly. Instead I got the screenwriter's imaginary "other" within the film declaring how fucked it was that he got shot.
At that moment i couldn't have agreed more, but as the movie ended i felt that it wasn't very important if i felt one way or another; agreed or disagreed; should or shouldn't have invested in the first two thirds of the picture.

So, Adaptation.
The theme is handily played out by the various characters and their stories relative to the theme of orchids and plants in general as well as their stories relative to the other characters stories, fractal, chaos, quantum, meta, self-referential, yes, yes, we get that, and its done well. All actors and production people should feel encouraged to continue their craft.

Perhaps the character of Larouche is the key, in the sense that a map has a key to explain what the various signs contained on the map mean. In his investment and subsequent abandonment of interests, plant-like, and seemingly able to focus on one thing, a passion, more than the screenwriter and the new yorker writer - are we to experience this? Is this yet another meta theme? THE theme?

Lots of good work occurs, Nicholas Cage playing twins, amazing special effects, writer's block, a self-narrative about a self-narrative and then, as the writer's guru says, people die everyday - hollywood mayhem occurs - shootings, drugs, sex and important lessons in life are bestowed, everything the screenwriter character wanted to avoid happens to him. There are layers and then other layers and then some layers about layers.

Is it just a question of timing and pacing? the last few minutes of the film cover a few months, at least, suddenly everything is looking ok! hey, great!
why don't i care anymore? Writer's block is overcome, the sun is shining, the girl is kissed and the lesson: you are what you love, not what loves you, has been transmitted. it all sounds very good on paper - and even looking back now, it doesn't seem so bad - the fact that I sitting her writing this means that the film struck me in some way, yet unsatifaction remains.

To flip-flop a line from Barcelona; what is under the meta-text? I'm still thinking that in this case it's a very thin text. I don't particularly care about what "hollywood" thinks movies should be like, and i'm don't belive that this film tries to be outside the money impulse, but, a sweaty bewildered shrug of affected paralysis and stoney musings on me watching you watching me... is not something I am willing to pay $10 to see more than once or encourage as a mode of production.
Escher loops are great for Cal-Tech dorm room walls but this movie is more than formal and i'm asked to take an interest in the world it creates beyond loops and double-backs in logic. Noone talks much about how Escher's alligators or birds looked individually, they are just there to make the effect, but i'm asked to regard the characters in the film, their stories and relationships and cannot shake feeling a bit adrift as they ride off, literally, into the sunset/(on sunset?)
Perhaps satisfaction is exactly what is not to be given. Perhaps connections will, and can only be tentative at best, even/especially in hollywood movies. We are shown this in the fictional world, as well as the experiential world of viewing the movie, by the actor as the screenwriter kaufman and by kaufman himself as the screenwriter.
I suppose its interesting to be Indian Given this relationship with these fictional characters. I remember seeing To Live and Die in LA, and suddenly being kicked in the balls when William Peterson's (was that his name?) character got jacked out from under-neath us.
But this distance seems forced and at arms length. After being invited along for an hour + and then pushed back in my chair, I am reminded of trying to read Lacan in school. I was paranoid because i felt that he was watching me read, knew that every word was in a particular place, all details were exacting as i moved across the page and recieved info exactly according to plan.
A similar feeling colors this film now, except there is very little at the end of the page, and its delivered only because the money has already been spent and we've been waiting.

Agnostic conciliation, which is the decent liberal bending over backward to concede as much as possible to anybody who shouts loud enough, reaches ludicrous lengths in the following common piece of sloppy thinking. It goes roughly like this: You can't prove a negative (so far so good). Science has no way to disprove the existence of a supreme being (this is strictly true). Therefore, belief or disbelief in a supreme being is a matter of pure, individual inclination, and both are therefore equally deserving of respectful attention! When you say it like that, the fallacy is almost self-evident; we hardly need spell out the reductio ad absurdum. As my colleague, the physical chemist Peter Atkins, puts it, we must be equally agnostic about the theory that there is a teapot in orbit around the planet Pluto. We can't disprove it. But that doesn't mean the theory that there is a teapot is on level terms with the theory that there isn't.

Now, if it be retorted that there actually are reasons X, Y, and Z for finding a supreme being more plausible than a teapot, then X, Y, and Z should be spelled out--because, if legitimate, they are proper scientific arguments that should be evaluated. Don't protect them from scrutiny behind a screen of agnostic tolerance. If religious arguments are actually better than Atkins' teapot theory, let us hear the case. Otherwise, let those who call themselves agnostic with respect to religion add that they are equally agnostic about orbiting teapots. At the same time, modern theists might acknowledge that, when it comes to Baal and the golden calf, Thor and Wotan, Poseidon and Apollo, Mithras and Ammon Ra, they are actually atheists. We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

In any case, the belief that religion and science occupy separate magisteria is dishonest. It founders on the undeniable fact that religions still make claims about the world that on analysis turn out to be scientific claims. Moreover, religious apologists try to have it both ways. When talking to intellectuals, they carefully keep off science's turf, safe inside the separate and invulnerable religious magisterium. But when talking to a nonintellectual mass audience, they make wanton use of miracle stories--which are blatant intrusions into scientific territory.

The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection, the raising of Lazarus, even the Old Testament miracles, all are freely used for religious propaganda, and they are very effective with an audience of unsophisticates and children.

god damnit!

checked up on eldred v. ashcroft (the putz), and found a link to an article at the National Review. i knew some conservatives actually conserved.

Right and Wrong
The copy-right infringement.
By John Bloom

Whoever turned "copy right" into one word had to be a lawyer. We don't say "freespeechright" or "gunright" or "assemblyright" or "religionright."

As a result, 99 percent of the public thinks that a copyright is some kind of formal legal document. They think you have to go get it, or protect it, or defend it, or preserve it, or buy it, or hire a lawyer to make sure you have it.

On the contrary, it's simply a right, like all our other rights, and it goes like this: Whoever creates something that has never been created before has the exclusive right to copy it.

It's not the person who registers it with the Library of Congress. It's the person who does it first. Just the act of creation makes the right kick in.

Unlike other rights, though, this one is transferable. You can sell your copyright, license your copyright, or give your copyright away. What's most often done is that you let a big company — say, a book publisher — use the copyright for a specific period of time, in return for money, and at the end of that period the right reverts back to you.

One other difference: This is a right with a specific term.

The Founding Fathers wanted that term to be 14 years, with an additional 14 years if the author were still alive. After 28 years, they figured you'd had your chance to exploit your creation, and now it belonged to the nation at large. That way we would never end up with a system of hereditary privilege, similar to the printers guilds of Renaissance England, who tied up rights to dead authors and tightly controlled what could or could not be printed and who could or could not use literary material.

In America, land of free ideas as well as free people, this would never happen, they said.

Well, it's happened. It's happened because for years now Congress has allowed it to happen. We now have an exact replica of the medieval Stationers' Company, which controlled the English copyrights, only its names today are Disney, Bertelsmann, and AOL Time Warner. The big media companies, holding the copyrights of dead authors, have said, in effect, that Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton were wrong and that we should go back to the aristocratic system of hereditary ownership, granting copyrights in perpetuity. To effect this result, they've liberally greased the palms of Congressmen in the form of campaign contributions — and it's worked.

In the name of Mickey Mouse and other American icons, we have gradually lengthened that 14-year limit on copyrights. At one time it was as much as 99 years, then scaled back to 75 years, then — in one of the most anti-American acts of the last century — suspended entirely in 1998. The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of that year says simply that there will be no copyright expirations for 20 years, meaning that everything published between 1923 and 1943 will not be released into the public domain. Presumably they'll take up the matter again in 2018 and decide whether any of these books, movies, or songs are ever set free. There are 400,000 of them.

What's especially hypocritical about this law is that many of the works produced in this period, such as The Wizard of Oz, are based on works from previous centuries that are already in the public domain. It's as though Congress is saying that it would be wrong for the heirs of the Brothers Grimm to own a perpetual copyright to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, because it belongs to all people, but Walt Disney's version of it is so sacrosanct it should earn money forever. Besides, if he really is cryogenically preserved, he'll need those royalties when he comes back to visit. (And this was a man who stole from everybody.)

I don't think it's hard to see who was greasing the skids to get a law passed that seems unconstitutional on its face. With 1923 as the cutoff date, all sound movies are protected for another 20 years. All pre-war Broadway musicals are protected. All swing-era music is protected. Even the song "God Bless America" falls into this period, so I hope you people are sending in your residuals.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court has agreed to rule on a case challenging the Bono Act. It was brought by Eric Eldred of Derry, N.H., who started a website for his teenage daughters in which he published online versions of classic literary texts — a site that eventually became a destination for students around the world and received a commendation from the National Endowment for the Humanities. That all changed on Oct. 7, 1998, when the Bono Act was passed.

Congress apparently looked at the whole controversy as a property-rights issue. It's not. It's a free-speech issue.

The Constitution is quite clear on the matter. It says copyrights are to be granted for "limited times." I don't know any definition of "limited" that would mean 75 years plus a 20-year extension plus the chance of getting another extension later. The whole issue was argued three centuries ago, and it was established as a principle of democracy that, when the author is dead, his work becomes the property of all. This was modified slightly to allow the first generation after his death to continue to collect royalties, presumably to protect widows and children. But that's all that was intended. There was no argument ever made for a third- or fourth-generation royalty, much less a perpetual assignment of royalties to a corporation that never dies.

The reason it's important is this: Publishers are in the business of expanding capital. The writers who supply them are in the business of expanding civilization itself.

Tools for expanding capital are available in many forms. Tools for expanding civilization, on the other hand, are a limited commodity. They're resident in the books of Hemingway and Faulkner, the movies of Disney and Capra, and the songs of Kern and Berlin.

Give 'em up. We need 'em. We've got work to do.

It's not just the right thing to do. It's a right.

i'm almost finished with How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life, so i thought i would look online for some information on john fahey. looks like a good place to start is here.

from smoking gun