guerilla troops are winning in
iraq

religous collation for reproductive choice, wants to make sure that womans wombs are womens buisnesses, suppourt them here

ampersand

52 people, including the former ambassodors to syria, kuwait, iraq, iran, suadi arabia, egypt have all signed a letter to Tony Blair basically saying, get the fuck out of iraq and quit mucking about in israel, you have done enough damage to ensure that the thing will fall apart at the seams this thing is falling apart at the seams.

via mefi

(no matter how cute they are, they eat everything and spread disease)

These snails were used by wisconsion school officals to teach bio before they were found to be a massive hazard, which is really too bad, cause they're kind of cute

last three links mefi

john d's favourite translation of Cattulus 16, both filthy and deeply bitter but with an elegance can be found here--inspired by an ilx thread about chris p learning greek (which i heavily encourage)

for pat

islamic rabble rousers in europe, force the issue of multi cultralism vs assimaltion, i dont have any easy or quick answers, but as a general rule ghettos on the edges of cities are not usually a good idea.

William Floyd Norman is now one of my favourite architechts, okie who found his way to houston(sp), did these amazing, low slung, overly minimal, recessed into the landscape modernist wood and concrete cubes...think neutra in la, but w. oil money and elms. (they are tearing them down to replace w. mcmansions, elphantine houses on mouse sized lots...100 yrs its historic, 50 yrs its worthless.

huge link site of pictures near memorial bend, w. lots of examples like these:



notice the butterfly roof ?


or the presenting front wall, larger then the length of the house, so its wrapped like a cocoon ?


or this, its plainess, its elegance, its 4/4 beat ?

J Lenham (who wrote the tour de force Fortress of Solitude) writes about comics, he does it in the LRB , which is good but it is a nostalgic peice about his teenage geek hood, which is bad.

(well written, concerns marvel, like proust in middle america, but shorter and w. less homosexual longing.)

two questions
do you ever think some kid will write a column like this for his fantagraphics years or his drawn and qauterly years
when do you think nyrb, the nytbr, the globe and mail or the lrb will review graphic novels like they review poetry ?

public mri: free and a 6 month wait
private mri: $650 and a one week wait

welcome to two tier health care.

Sometimes the world is too complex, and mournful--so instead of the freedom of verse libre, there is a need to return to sonnets and villanelles and sestinas, and sometimes those formalist, constrained, quiet verses do better talking about sex, love, death, desire then any of the barabaric yawps.

there was bishop, and her one art. there was auden and his angloirish sadness. there was macniece, and larkin and mcdiamand.

they are all dead, but we had gunn, we had gunn to take us through the aids crisis, and gunn to take us through queer liberation and gunn to guide us through all sorts of other compelxities.

hes dead now, my darling thomas, who taught me how to love men.

The Man W. Night Sweats
I wake up cold, I who
Prospered through dreams of heat
Wake to their residue,
Sweat, and a clinging sheet.

My flesh was its own shield:
Where it was gashed, it healed.

I grew as I explored
The body I could trust
Even while I adored
The risk that made robust,

A world of wonders in
Each challenge to the skin.

I cannot but be sorry
The given shield was cracked,
My mind reduced to hurry,
My flesh reduced and wrecked.

I have to change the bed,
But catch myself instead

Stopped upright where I am
Hugging my body to me
As if to shield it from
The pains that will go through me,

As if hands were enough
To hold an avalanche off.

Singer is a generous critic. In discussing Bush's reverence for life, evidenced in his opposition to stem cell research, he constructs the most plausible arguments possible against the sacrifice of unwanted embryos, to demonstrate convincingly how unsustainable they are. But he can hardly help observing that Bush's ''culture of life'' cohabits jarringly with his enthusiasm for capital punishment and readiness to inflict civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. Singer is led, on issue after issue, to a double conclusion: Bush's views are not intellectually defensible, and his behavior shows he doesn't believe in them anyway.

On Peter Singers new book re:Bushes ethics, NYT, last sunday

tyne daly at the reproductive rights march in washington, that happened this weekend.

the thing w. abortion is that it is in danger, the republicans want to ammend it out for one, and as much as i have a problem w. the idea, i think it should be safe and legal... there are other things these women are fighting about, they are fighting so that sex ed can be taught in schools, that power is not concentrated in the hands of men, that rape victims are protected, that condoms are given to prevent hiv and pregnacy, so that girls can be taught as well as boys, that girls can play football and volleyball and all those other things...and when up to 1/4 of women are being raped in the air force academy in col. to use one example...(its not only rape, women make 75 cents to the dollar, there are less execuctives, less professors...feminism has done a lot, but it has not done enough, and this march 1 000 000 people yelling that they will not be sent back, they will not be destroyed, they will not have the progress of their foremothers taken away from them...there is power there.

as much as im an asshole to sean, and i have been, im still worried about him

so instead of the arresting thing, i told him to go to a meeting. he spent the trip on the way to the meeting telling me how and why he hated me, and then pat/i wandered around cromdale, the skeeziest section of edmonton, for an hour, we took sean home, and when i asked him what was wrong w. sean he wouldnt answer...pat then bought me a sandwhich at tim hortons and we talked about how exhausting i was to people.

(sean says that i have a sense of entitlement, that i am a hypocrite, that im lazy, that i use aspies as an excuse)

walking to the meeting, we passed the joesph and the angels bookstore, i said that it was a good idea to have that kind of store in the neighbourhood, and sean said cause being poor is a sin ?

(before that i hung out w. dom, jacko,brad,adriane, alan, shea, austin, orion and other folks at the world water park, great fun there)

i am having sean arrested

(he kept yelling the answers to my trivial pursuit questions too)

bad night at work, and before that, my room mate got into a muderous frenzy, wanted to bash me up, after he got drunk, he bit pat, who has never done anything to anyone, and foamed at the mouth and it took 4 guys to hold him down., and i had all these guests, and we were having low key fun, and he was so loud, and he ruined it, and i got short, and he yelled these things...called me a hypocrite, called me a fag, called me dull, called me a post modernist, called me a theorist, and just general obscenity.

its like when i was 7, and i trashed my room--i remember there being a trigger, but i remember it being out of porption (sp)

(maybe

so all of these people dying in iraq, i am kind of scared at how little symptahty (sp) i have.

as far as i see it, they signed on (for whatever reason), and never thought they would have to do anything...soilders die, and these soilders died not b/c they were drafted but because they thot there was some honour in another jingoistic colonial excercise.

it was a natural consquence of their action.