this asshole should lighten the fuck up, if you dont want to read the cathcher in the rye, you shouldn't--its really not worth yr time or effort. But tell them its irrelavant(sp) or that it offends you asa class warrior, or that you think that the women depicted are sillhoute symbol or anything but the fact it contains the f word.

Church leaders test themselves for hiv/aids as a way to loosen stigmas that surrounds the issue

Bitter and hard edged, the work of Tom Sach makes twee and cute bare their carnvious teeth. Reclaiming consumer packaging and captalist detruius into bullying threats, including a hello kitty painting with the caption "chill out japan or you will be nuked again"

We want to stop men from treating us like sex objects, as they have always done. We want them to ignore our appearance and to be attentive to our personalities and mind. We want them to take us seriously and treat us as equals and not just chase us around for our bodies and physical looks.

from an article explaining the polical and social implications of the Hijab. Look, i know that this makes me racist, but the HIjab makes me uncomfortable. I do not know enough about muslim culture, and i think hiding bodies is like hiding light under bushels.

but what is the difference b/w a muslim woman wearing a hijab to please her culture and a western woman wearing a bikini to please hers ?

insanely large collection of English Lit created between 1477 and 1799.

online catalog of childrens book illustrations via ucla.

wonderfully odd and in places strangely cruel, from a time where kids were treated with much less delicacy.

Some of Paul Martin's ships leak toxic sludge, and he sent them to be destroyed knowing this.

Andy Scott, New Brunswick MP, is fag bashed by a vocal detractor of gay marriage.

i think this is a good reason to be against it.

The New BMW is so wonderfully beautiful, that it is a shame that according to those in know dont think it is very fuctional.

Images of Ship Breaking in Bangladesh

CBC tells a dozen stories
about iraq that are under reported by american media.

the thing is, the amazing wonderful thing is, how deep these peoples love and ethusanism (sp) lie, they yell and blurt and ramble over hill and dale explaining why their passions are so nuriishing(sp)

like chris on charles ives sympthy no. 4
or ryan on sally mann, whose work before this i had considered cheap and explotive--he puts the full weight of his force arround the word beutiful (sp) and does not deny the obv. subtext, but renders it meaningless.

i also got to play with a digital camera, and took a couple of good shots--plus they think that i am a talented and clever photog.

chris and ryan are here and in the last 48 hours

we have talked about:
venturi
gehry
sally mann
tom berrigan
south park
the lds church
white on white in art
white and white churches
modernism
the meanings and purposes of venacualr
whether Baudilard (sp) would cream over WEM
John Cage
Charles Ives
Gertude Stein
Ezra Pound
The Raunchy Young Lepers
etc

We have done:
driving around edmonton
gone bowling
went to the mall and seen all the absurd big stuff
had a gig that went well except for the nil audience.
got drunk on gimlets

Listened to:
Ned Ragget-Reads the Alamanac
Raunchy Young Lepers Best Of
The Streets-Orignial Pirate Material
Marriane Faithful-Kissing Time
Bob Dylan-Slow Train Coming,
Momus-The Best of The Creation Years
John Cage-Atlas Eclipticalis
Lou Reed-Transformer
Beach Boys-Pet Sounds
FBH-one of the first eps.
and more.

im happy, drunk but happy.

cascade
from oblique

cold
outside
down quick
drip drop drap
midmorningmelts
magpie on snowbound
pineboughs, and sees ice
white snow and slivers of silver ice
green bough, black bird shines against
all this darkness, coldness, i am inside and
i watch the bird, the bough, the ice, the snow
light melting coldness, pointless reflection on how it
all cascades into an almost nonesense meaning in my head
cause the bird is free, you see and i am not, here with out the cold

Flash Version of Oblique Strategies always too self concious a writer to use these, i really should start.

Criticism of the theory that superpowers at war can ever be humanist--i think that what pisses me off most about the iraqi war is how unbalanced the power is (cf isreal with fighter jets/Palestine with Petrol bombs; c/c Vietcong winning their war against the americans)

UK lets post op transsexuals to adopt and marry in the sex that they have assumed.

last two thnx to queer day

Co-ed Dorms are considered, which i think is a good idea, wy to deconstruct binaries, demythologize sex difference, encourage knoweldge of how much genders have in common.

The British Foreign Office in Istanbul is expecting more attacks.

bbc

Yukos hands 30k pages of info to the Russian Gvt, this thing will take years to sort out, and perhaps the first volly in a new kind of war

moscow times

western dependence on petro chemicals cause thousands to suffer/become refugees in Sudan.

the last two thnx to body and soul

Gen. Tommy Frank looks forward to the end of the constution

anti porn hypocrite loves porn.

Joesph Cornell never left his house on long island, collected trash, was eccentric and had an odd realtionship with his mother. He still made it to the galleries almost weekly, and in the mean time made objects of such lonely strangeness, brief journeys into the way his mind worked.

They speak a different language, a language of obession and inelegance, a desperate whispering in a way to be heard.

He He would be 100 next year, Fiegel and Co. in NYC has a retrospective.

mysterium.

Encylopedic site of illustration from 3 centuries.

Tender, and Beautiful, mostly concened with narrative or persuasion, there art sublimated by commerce or need of other authors, in many ways the exact opposite of andre.

Look, I know most people who read this do not really care about Carl Andre, but he moves me deeply, so do me a favour and read this long article on bricks and art, then tell me what you think about these:

good article on the problems with state marriage

mefi

its Frances Kissling, sorry

Josh put up a rather legalistic list of what makes a person a Chrsitian, and I would like to respond with my definition:

A Christian is a person who belives in the contuining mission of Christ.


and on that note, Frances Kesling on women in ministry:

...What it would do is make Catholicism similar to the church that Jesus Christ established -- a church in which men and women were acknowledged as equals. If one really looks at the history of the gospels, one sees that women played the most central ministerial roles in the church's early days. After all, Jesus Christ was born to a woman, Jesus Christ was anointed to his own ministry by a woman. It was the women who stood at the cross with Jesus when he was crucified and to whom Jesus first appeared when he rose from the dead and said 'Go forth and let others know of this.'"

Kesling is the leader of Catholics for Free Choice, a radically inclusive org. that matches most of my politics, found here--coming from an article about priests and nuns in el salvador found here

POP FOCUS TIME !!

Ultrabeat - Pretty Green Eye 3
If Crystal Gale sang it with Autoharp by June Carter Cash the words would be prefect.
As it is, it reminds me of A Night at the Roxbury, which makes it just pathetic.


S Club 8 – Sundown 8
The absolute robotic perfection of this suggests that the English have a secret factory somewhere in the midlands designed to pump out self referential plastic pop stars. This is a good thing.

The Rapture - House of Jealous Lovers 7
Garbage cans percussion that pounds and propulses violent, ugly noise. Reminding the Garage Rock Stars how dangerous Rock and Roll used to be. The scream, the lack of control, the paranoid terror, it’s all here. What is missing is a siren, it needs a siren.


Rachel Stevens - Sweet Dreams My LA Ex 9
Happy on the outside and sad on the inside like most of the really excellent Brill Building song s but built for the 21st century. She has perfected when to be silent and when to speak, her phrasing is exquisite.

Pharrell feat Jay Z – Frontin 9

Really minimalist, in the way that the percussion and electronic effects are used to support a narrative which is surprisingly beautiful. Breaks wide open when Jay Z comes in and it becomes a discussion between “singing” and “rapping”

Nelly P Diddy Murphy Lee - Shake Ya Tailfeather 5

A single so obsessed with making sure that it is a number one that it manages to stuff everything in with out meaning anything, or even being very memorable.

Mark Owen - Four Minute Warning 1
Marc Almond’s urban grime cleaned off before he goes into another studio loft.

Lumidee - Never Leave You (Uh Oh) 9
Fucking gorgeous. They enter my brain and haven’t left for weeks, I sing it in the shower, I sing it on the bus, and I hum it under my breath in class. I wish love were as happy and optimistic as this song.

Jamelia – Superstar 5
Generic dance hit, with scratching, inoffensive.

Girls Aloud - Life Got Cold 5

Deeply lonely, frustrating, and sad. Who knew there was a dark side to texting.

Dido - White Flag 10+10
This has a tenderness that recalls early Joni Mitchell but the sheer self-loathing of these single makes the listener want to love her as best as they can

Daniel Bedingfield - Never Gonna Leave Your Side 2
Sweet and gentle, but nothing special.

Busted - Sleeping With The Light On 0+0
Mawkish and sentimental, emotion by focus group.



Blu Cantrell feat Sean Paul – Breathe 9
it reminds me that dancehall was street music, where the one with the most powerful voice would win.
The sound effects come straight from the Shangri Las.
Blu Cantrell has the pipes to be another Roberta Flack, why does she not have a larger Career.

Black Eyed Peas - Where Is The Love? 10
A definite lovely beat that does not overwhelm, and a refrain that becomes more and more haunting with each repetition.

Ultrabeat - Pretty Green Eyes
So Solid Crew - Broken Silence
S Club 8 - Sundown
Richard X feat Kelis - Finest Dreams
The Rapture - House Of Jealous Lovers
Rachel Stevens - Sweet Dreams My LA Ex
Pharrell feat Jay Z - Frontin
Outkast - Ghettomusick
Nelly P Diddy Murphy Lee - Shake Ya Tailfeather
Mark Owen - Four Minute Warning
Lumidee - Never Leave You (Uh Oh)
Jamelia - Superstar
Girls Aloud - Life Got Cold
Elton John - Are You Ready For Love?
Dido - White Flag
The Darkness - I Believe In A Thing Called Love
Daniel Bedingfield - Never Gonna Leave Your Side
Busted - Sleeping With The Light On
Blu Cantrell feat Sean Paul - Breathe
Black Eyed Peas - Where Is The Love?

automatic/amorphus
bimorphic abstraction
non objective. interior

cant it just be a carp?

Two Pollock Drawings, Two Years Apart

Paul Celan, a poet i have always meant to research, would have been 83 today.

here is one of my favourites:
0 little root of a dream
you hold me here
undermined by blood,
no longer visible to anyone,
property of death.

Curve a face
that there may be speech, of earth,
of ardor, of
things with eyes, even
here, where you read me blind,

even
here,
where you
refute me,
to the letter.

The methods that that almost worked in Paris '68 and Seattle '99 might have worked in Georgia this month.

queer zines, an underground for radical socio-sexual information, just at the cusp of the internet.

deeply vital, and beatuiful at the same time.

Chris from Uffish found this archive.

big book on Alex Ross and the New Book, via vv.

Culture Jammer, Art Warrior and Camp Follower Banksy will make you want to fuck Queen Vic and orchestrate liberation raids for Baloo.

. . . there is now a professional, well-trained elite, supported by large institutions, that is adept and willing to use corrupt practices to accumulate wealth. Despite assurances from game-theorists and anthropologists that the criminal cadre in the species remains a constant percentage over time, I believe today's mainstream, sanitized, and institutionally sanctioned financial crime rackets are being run by a new breed of crook. There have always been scandals and crooks in the history of American money, but our predator class is a distinct creation of the late 20th century.
I believe there is no way the counter-class made up of regulators, watchdogs and do-gooders and hack columnists can match wits with the predator class. Today's piles of money are so huge, great fortunes can be amassed by swiping the tiniest of slices in the wiliest of ways long before picked pocket


from the head of CBS News.Com

6 different ways

Why we need domestic partner rights.

700 russians who are trying out for the Duma are hiding their millions , as an attempt to be more populist.

(its like John Kerry ignoring his Forbes family mother--or Dean forgetting exactly how much he made last year, or Dubya pretending to be the good 'ol (cow)boy

Bryan's Orgination theory holds that traditonal structures of power have their roots so intertwinned that they cannot be removed. When the Death Sqauds drink with the police in columbia, i think he might be right.

Body and Soul

Thursday i told my therapist i wanted to kill myself.
Thursday evening Andrew and Bryan took me to the hospital, the safe ward.
Thursday Night bryan bought me wendys and picked up some things for me.
Thursday later night the doctors gave me pills.

Friday I ate and slept and read, its the worst ive ever been, and the closest. I asked for Bittner cause I thot I would need last rites.

Saturday morning Bittner came and took confession.
Jeff and Michelle brought books
Mom bought newspaper and Reese peanut butter cups.
AJ and Dad Came.
Trevor came, a surprise, with Lindt chocolotes and his new son (Caleb, Blond and Blue eyed, 8 mos. that inquistveness(sp) and joy between them too.)

I left sunday at noon.
I have new drugs, wellbutrin and a cousin to risperdone.
Bryan made me lunch.

He used to meditate between the orientalism of the west and the fetishizing of western progress found in Japan. With the mushroom cloud deaths head bunny he asked Japan if they could make anything cute, with My Lonesome Cowboy , the 12 foot anime wanker with a cum lasso he asked “if I make your obsessions large enough, will you pay attention, with Mr Dobbs , his post colonial Mickey Mouse with teeth, he whispered “you will buy this consumer product, you no longer care about content.”

He then dropped politics, and made lovely pictures and strange spectacles. There was the flower wallpaper paintings in bright colours that did not say anything but this is pretty to look at or the Francis Bacon paintings which made existential fury into a sci-fi wonderland thanks to his army of courtiers

Finally there is the latest style, an abstract pattern of eyes and circles, made to envelop Louis Vuitton Handbags, Cadillac Escalades, portraits of Kate Moss and 10 foot canvases with equal vapidness. He has become a designer and his anger dissipated into money.

Which makes his latest sculptures, featuring a new character named Mr Cloud, so disappointing and so liberating. They have a super specific joy about them, the open candy apple mouth, the stuffed animal wide eyes, the amorphous huggable shape, the hard plastic of hip designed consumables. It is an icon of Nintendo aestheics,a triumph of late era decadent design,

It’s the hello kitty of superflat.
I wrote this 6 weeks ago for brown wedge
Artnet posted this today under the title "the fraudalence of Murakami

A notice from local people who read this blog.

True Spirit North will host Edmonton’s first Trangender Day of Remembrance on Thursday, November 20 at 7:00 p.m. at Garneau United Church, 11148 – 84 Avenue. The event features a candlelight service to remember and honour those who have died. Several speakers will also focus on the challenges trans-identified people face as well as the issues that we must address including the need for solidarity within the queer community. The event is sponsored by True Spirit North (TS/TG Support Group), Lambda Christian Community Church, Garneau United Church, GLCCE (Gay & Lesbian Community Centre of Edmonton), Times .10 Magazine and Bad.

From
here

When I was in relationships, i had them with older men. a freudian would say that i was replacing an absent father, and maybe there was. how did I see myself ? I saw myself as a boy, who looked up at those who chose to love him and marvelled. I was a bottom. Not a physical bottom, but a psychological one.

I remember Edmund who sent white flowers to school on valentines, calla lilies, orchids, tulips (that slender small miracle of tulips in February, and slick greenery. That evening, as I walked off a bus, i was attacked. Blood commingled with snow and flowers, it hurt, but it was cinematic, and he was prone to large gestures. I was then a set piece, one who followed cues well.

I remember Kevin, who seduced me when he was on a missionary. There was a long slow seduction that I thought was religious, and then sexual and now i realize is both. He was sent back home to California after he begged the stake president and jesus to forgive him. I didn't realize what needed to be shameful, or forgiven. I got church court and excommunication. He has three kids and a house in Clovis, a suburb of Fresno. I was the acolyte, and the priest betrayed me.

I remember Adam. Who I was going to marry in a big pink tent, with John Coltrane as the music to go down the aisle to and the Magnetic Fields as our anthem of retreat. I loved his gentle, casual care. He would leave cinnamon buns on the counter in the morning after our encounters. He would hold my hand at lunch and put my foot on his foot at supper. He was tall, and I was not scared in his shadow. His presence became my refuge, until he left. I was the patsy there, playing house and thinking i was doing my duty as loyal wife.

Men leave. They are not to be trusted. They are silly, over obvious, take the safe root, promise to protect you and then do not. They are brutish, sometimes. But then I am at fault here, with my desire to be protected instead of loved. Two halves of the same whole never seems to happen, and the system of balance tilts to those who want power more. These are the relationships that lasted past the night or were somewhat more advanced then the adolescent fumblings of boarding schools at 13 and hospitals at 14. These were my proof that I was queer, that it was not theory and abstraction but a devoted practice, which had few rewards. Theory is safer. Foccualt is dead, he can never really hurt me.






I am queer. I am Catholic. I love men. I love Jesus. I arrived at these thoughts very early, just as i was becoming isolated from the Latter Day Saints. People do not understand, as a general rule. They wish I wasn't, and some days I agree with them.

I am celibate now, have been for a year and a half. I did so because I wanted to be a priest, and wanted to prove that I could do it. I did it cause i was not sure that I was happy looking for a relationship and I needed a break. I did it because I wanted to make sure I knew what love was before I climbed on board with the whole thing. I did it because I was becoming a cynic, and I thought that not thinking about it would make me happier. I never was truly celibate, desire that was supposed to drop away like leaves of a maple stayed forever. I can never avoid desire, and am no longer sure that I want to deny it or even re-channel it.

I wonder what Christ would say now about the issue. I wish that I did not have to pick through the bible looking for verses that i can use as narrow claims for a liberating agenda. Sometimes I think that the celibacy came because I internalized the homophobia of the church and bought into the idea that I am objectively disordered and that I could not have sex. There is a documentary called Trembling Before G-d about queer orthodox and Hasidic jews, which just won a few GLAAD awards. There was someone who said there "I am gay, that is what God made me, I cannot practice it, though. He did not make that mistake" (I am paraphrasing it) Conservative Christians who like to pretend compassion call it my Cross to bear. I think that Sex is a gift, but gifts need to be used, and I am not sure that by denying his gift I am showing proper thanks.

It is not the sex i mix, even now masturbation seems obligatory, something to do to relive anxiety or boredom or to go to sleep. An ineffective and inexpensive substitute for gin. It is the sense of communion, the resting my head in the clavicle of a lover, hearing his breathing and coming into an awareness that this is among the voices of God. I think also of my queer brothers as priests and queer sisters as nuns. Do they think of these issues or are they closeted to the point of denial ?

There is a cruel binary at work here. There are two options, marriage or priestly orders. We are not allowed to be fully and honestly either. So what do I do, continue in this romanticized ideal sexuality, away from the compilations, beg forgiveness and pretend my agitation means nothing.

I know that the Spirit does not mean the Church, I know that spirituality is different from religion, but at the end of the day who I cast my spiritual lot with was the Mother Church. They have grips on my soul, and they are making it very difficult to move. Even the loopholes feel like hangman's nooses.


What vision of myself ? There are a few of them. There is the one terrified of the wrath of God. There is the one who wants love. There is the one who would be satisfied by touch, and the one who wants just sex. There is the one who wants to be the bridegroom of Christ and the one who never wants to see Christ again. There is the one who wants to be Alexander to the Vaticans Gordian knot. There is the scared and obedient little boy. There is the one who capitulates to authority and the one who engages in punk nihilism for the hell of it.

I can best live out the vision of Gods wrath by being aware of it. God may be love, but it is the love of profound disappointment. To obey the rules but avoid legalism is the best way to do this but that requires knowing what exactly the source of the universe thinks about things. There are two commandments that Christ gives, to love god and love your fellow man. But that deals with the implications of agape not eros.

I can best live out the desire for love by loving myself. Cliched I know and rather an obvious cliche at, but its a difficult task for me, as my life seems to be a series of banal failures.

Within Christianity touch is easy to come by, if i bother showing up to mass, then the passing of the peace does wonders. But sex is another matter altogether. From Paul onward, Christianity has enough problems with simple sex between husband and wife, trying to view queer sex as sacred seems an impossibility. Maybe I could use Daoism or Hinduism but respect can turn into idolatry, which can turn into adultery. Christ requires monogamy.

There were nuns who wore wedding rings, and there were nuns who had orgasms thanks to the Lord's hand. I want both. Maybe I do in other ways, but it's easier to make a man a husband when he doesn't have to worry about the dishes or putting the toilet seat down. Having Christ as a husband is ideal, and ideal is not where the world runs.

Never wanting to see Christ again is bitterness and despair, both of which are mortal sins. Tell this to the priest and its worth a fair penance. Maybe thats enough ?

They would have to let me in to cut the knot, and they are not going to do that anytime soon. I become tired of beaurocracy quickly, and the exhaustion may suggest a break and then another go. I do not know in what forms this break would take.

Being a scared and obedient boy does not happen very often, and really it is a good thing in many ways, keeping me humble and keeping me aware of the awesome power of both God and his servants. Sometimes it changes over quickly, and I become the disobedient boy not being nice and making sure to point out that the pope is naked. This is when the punk nihilism comes in, it is refreshing to say "sod off" sometimes, refreshing and nessecary.
I think that marriage is about property and propriety, what is expected by lovers instead of any of the other options. I think that the possibility of gay marriage is heteronormative, a way to usurp the subversive powers of being a sexual others. I do not want our culture to be destroyed in a clambering attempt to be exactly like man and wife.

If human sexual practice is a buffet, then maybe marriage should be an item in it, something you can take or leave depending on preference or taste. Maybe if you are raising children it is more stable. Germaine Greer said this about love though: "Love, love, love -- all the wretched cant of it, masking egotism, lust, masochism, fantasy under a mythology of sentimental postures, a welter of self-induced miseries and joys, blinding and masking the essential personalities in the frozen gestures of courtship, in the kissing and the dating and the desire, the compliments and the quarrels which vivify its barrenness" and i think it applies to marriage. I think of how trapped Betty Friedan felt, and how my grandmother had to go back to school to avoid killing my grandfather. I realized how my mother tried to escape and never did. I remember generations of women who stayed together for the kids, and what special kind of heartbreak that must of been, the emotional equivalent of a backroom abortion.

This might be bitterness on my part though. My friends leave into a hermetic bubble after they get married and I lose them forever: Thomas and Mindy got married and I have not talked to them in months; the same applies to Tara and James, Erin and Garrett, and others. But thats not a marriage thing. My best friend Glenys fell in love with a wonderful girl, and now i talk to her once a month rather then once a week. I do not want to lose the community that i have pushed forward. But they seem happy and content and wonderfully together. It might last a life time, and that must be something to look forward to.

Maybe instead of theory, there is something else. I think one of the reasons I hate marriage is that I view myself too difficult to be a good catch, that no one would love me in a way that could be forever. The Mormons have a hymn that goes"families can stay together forever, according to Heavenly Fathers plan" and I remember talking to a church youth meeting just before I left the church, and I said the line "Some families cannot be together forever, mine for example"

So I don't know, my ideas about marriage is somewhere between being a hurt child of divorce, a profound series of loneliness, a theoretical understanding of heterosexuality, an isolation from the way the rest of the way the universe works and a cynical bitterness.

Dear President Bush,

I'm sure you'll be having a nice little tea party with your fellow war criminal, Tony Blair. Please wash the cucumber sandwiches down with a glass of blood, with my compliments.
Harold Pinter
Playwright

Gaurdain
from bookslut

FearsomePirate: it's not like they're giong to invade the US or something. if they want their socialist utopia, they can have it.
FearsomePirate: and when it fails, i will make fun of it.
PinkMoosePearl: i think that the eu is the future and the nation state is dead or dying, and when america perishes i will chuckle with quaint nostalgia
FearsomePirate: Eh, EU is just nation-state 2.0

ludicrosity splits abortions binary into 9 peices in a remarkably lucid and impartial peice.

a further continutition(sp) of the american conflation b/w sex and death.

Bush uses obscure 19th Century Law to stymie green peaces efforts at stopping illegal logging.

Come on guys, this kind of research costs cash, and smacks of looking for a reason, in the old days you'd kick up the patriot act, call the terrorists, make some half belives statement about free markets equally free lives and then kick off by 5.

Do you really want the library rats to have their asthma agitated by a new way of doing things ?

extensive photo series of british song birds

mefi

background on haliburton

and haliburton responds via the washington post.

still think its conflict of interest, but then im a cynic like that

Black resigns rumours of finical irregulites (sp), insider trading and usual biz practices unearthed as unethical have emerged.

the arrogance of this man, the obsession with feudal sources of power, and his head first barrelling into fake advertising, scandal, free copies on trains and general sliminess make me want this asshole to go down hard.

and some good old fashioned apocolypse

more basil woverington this time focusing on 50s grotesquries (sp) (the jesus shit was 60s--would be interested in how he came to the lord)

France fights anti semitism after a jewish school is fire bombed. Timing is right as usual.

If you could flip a magic switch and turn off every gigabyte of Internet pornography, you would still not stop young men from masturbating every day. I agree with your authors that young adults are having less sex today, and that they have more anxiety about the sex they are having. I only wish you had ditched this porno-addict canard. Pornography is not the culprit behind such loneliness and isolation. There’s no doubt about it: As a group, college-age adults have less—and worse—sex than they did ten or twenty years ago. This generation has been raised on abstinence, body shame, and AIDS-cautionary moralism, in which sex is linked to death, poverty, and dissolution.
Susie Bright
Letter in Response to the Wolf Article on Porn
New York Mag via Daze Reader.

got chris gig, world good.

about the misuse of irony:

thinking about alex ross and mythology/then talking to pat, i expressed this thot.

he isnt being ironic or camp, but he is fully aware of how he feels about his subject, he knows what constructions are behind it but he loves it anyways.

then i thot pomo is accused of having a lack of earnestness, but isnt this honest love/warierness of subject, this tangle of intention and desire as enarnest as anything ?

constant self awareness, and deconstruction is an overdose of earnestness not a lack of it.
(madonna kissing britney, dykspoltation, reenactment of the mother/crone or lesbian vampyres vis a vis christabel ?)

Shitty weekend, to cap off a shitty month. Missing personal news from me im sure, so here is a brief rundown.


Jeff

Hasn’t called me in weeks, off to Calgary with his main squeeze this weekend, need to go down, said he would talk to me if he did. Mildy pissed, no real reason to be

God

Avoided church for weeks, haven’t really been to mass, haven’t been to morning prayers, done the saints thing as needed, churlish and exhausted at her, really.

Black Dog

Back with a vegence. Makes me a chore to be around, blows things out of porption, makes me want to avoid the real world.

Gateway.

Fired me. My Fault. Fucked up a feature’s photos and a news story, not the best communicator, a bit obtuse, not the style they want or need. Always wanted to be part of the family, thot I was, realized I was mostly being mocked. Stil not sure how I feel, and I think they read this, so my worst vitriol will be saved for later. (censoring content to make sure the plebes get it, I can be a gateway writer after all—ok not all of the vitriol has left)

Comp Lit

26 per cent on the mid term, not going to class as often as I should, got cornered into going to ssds so that they can charge me to get the special services, feels like a scam, but then it always does. Wonder if my conflating aspie with moral failing is a scots presybterian thing.

Christian Sex and Marriage

Kieser loved my essay, got it in under the wire, seemed pleased to see me, always a touch of teachers pet around me, should work on that , its marriage week and I’m not sure how much of it is hating breeders and how much of it is feeling discomfort and how much of it is genuine concern about how the instuiton is run, but having the discussion tomorrow will be unpleasant.

Aspie.

Churchill wants me to be more concetious about my condition, to feel less guilt about it. I went to disability services this week and am trying not to think of it as special privileges, but as level playing fields. As out as I am about almost everything else, I am deeply quiet about my aspergers, the article in the journal made me deeply scared & it is interlaced with self loathing. I fear it is laziness and coasting instead of medicine.

Bryan

Bryan and I are having the same arguments about being a solider and the nature of violence/power we did three months ago. He wants to be a soilder, I think he is capituling to a corrupt power struggle. He was cruel today, when I said that I prayed for him, he replied, don’t ask yr god to do me any favours, but then I have been cruel to him, refusing to acknowledge the thot that goes into his philosophy, thinking that it is little more then comic fueled adolscent wish fulfillment. I want the 9 to 5 job. I want to work at Richmond mini. Having him give up stability for some nihilist pipe dream seems fucked up. But then I read celine at 15, and gave it all up at 20.

Suicide.

The only reason I haven’t done anything drastic this month is exhaustion.

Chris

18 phone calls to venues, 16 nos, 2 maybes, need something today. Thinks that I will fuck it up, today is do or die, don’t want sean to be around for meeting him, scared that the house isn’t good enough, the food wont taste decently, that everything will be awkard, etc. general social anxiety but pretty fucking heavy.

Dear Catosprhe Waitress.

Belle and Sebastion’s latest, k-good. Trevor horn sure knows how to make things catchy. Track 4 and Track 10 v. v. good. Good to hear Lord Anthony out side of a bootleg, bit of a mag fields feel. Need to add them to a top ten im doing for stylus re:stealth Christians.

Testimony.

Should come out this week, may be a bit of pr, Andrew will be back from van on tues. will ask him.

$

peprutally short, overspending, fucked up banks, miscommuncation and a need to budget better.

Basil Wolverton, British, did pulp sci fi in the 40s, horror and grostequries in the 50s and then a whole illustrated bible, heavy on the apoclyptic in the 60s (ran in plain truth, which i picked up as a kid on vacations in calgary, long after his work was no longer)

this comes from the 40s.

anyone know anything else ?

'"The intellectual isolation here is enormous," Brecht compained. "Compared to Hollywood, Svendborg was a world center." His ideas, such as "the production, distribution and enjoyment of bread," were not taken seriously by movie moguls. In 1947 Brecht was accused of un-American activities...

id kill to see what brecht (first bread, then ethics) could do with a film about bread

momus

both from the same ilx thread .

It is because they are the product of so many determinations, not so few, that human beings are free" -- Brecht

speaking of kurds, the americans are clashing with them,

I think that the middle east is more complicated then blood for oil (though looking at the connections b/w Rose, Unicol and Haliburton might help), i think it is also about our God versus There God, and what looks good on television and opedial conflict and one nasty motherfucker who likes to kill lots and lots of Kurds.

But UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs, Jan Egeland
has a v. good point when she notes for sheer number of bodies and the ability to make an area unstable, Uganda has iraq beat.

The intelligence process is a bit like virginity," says Ray McGovern, who worked as a CIA analyst for 27 years. "Once you prostitute it, it's never the same. Your credibility never recovers.

"Watching what has happened with Iraq over the past several months has been like watching your daughter being raped."

From this story on how much Bush and the inteliigence community hate each other.

a couple of things: there is rumours about that the yellow cake conterversory was planted by the cia as a way to discredit Bush, who they find problematic and a bit of a hothead.

if you fuck over the cia, yr adminstration is toast. they work independent, and can do real and permanat damage if care is not taken.

silence is being broken in a place where secerts are held dear, this thing is unravelling at the seams.

bunnies

various vintage signs photo'd from 14-42nd St.

Mefi

ok lets say that homosex or transsex is a choice or a construction, even if thats the case, the work on that construction, the effort, struggle. violence to create self (any self, this could apply to breeders), needs to be directed inward. to attempt to cure gender or sexual abnorms is to rob people of their embodied soverignty.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, that thouroghly unworkable force in modern culture has hit Hate the Sin, Not the Sinner in a boys school in florida

the thing is, that even if it is a construction, then people should be allowed to sort&discourse on their own.

daze reader

Certain Pentacostal churches and the Salvation Army are handing out condoms in africa. While there are a number of cultural practices that make handing out the things not nearly enough, they are good to have arround.

Avant Garde Art usually is destroyed by recessions, in hard times it is a select group of modern blue chips, impressionists and old masters.

Is it a sign of economic recovery that obscure contempary artists have done exceptionally well, and that people like John Currian and Murakami have gotten boom reps ?

interactive map of fund raising with the democratic candidates and George W Bush, by state, electoral maps, and telephone code.

mefi

Adam Morrell, 14, was left with more than 280 injuries by the gang who tortured him in November 2002.

interesting thing is the gender make up, with at least one girl involved.

Gaurdian

The Morning News walks the entire length of Manhattan . Again kind of Sentimental, but then im in that kind of mood

gawker

This is most likely a hipper, cooler version of inspirational messages, but i love Taylor Mali's poetry, and how much sheer effort he puts into teaching.

Kimberly Peirce's 1999 film Boy's Don't Cry is a touchstone takes new concepts of gender and sex out of the academy and places it into a mythological context, the filmed depiction of transgendered Brandon Teena is the creation of a new secular saint, and to fully understand the radical implications of this, it might help to compare him to others who transgress gender, especially in a context that is easily both cinematic and theological. Is Brandon Teena a new kind of warrior, and if he is, then where would his genealogy come from? Symbolically, the most obvious precedent is Joan of Arc, and if we treat the films that they were both treated as texts seperate from their biographical legends then the connections between these two boy warriors tells us much about how gender is treated, even in a theological context.
To begin is to define terms, especially important in a field which is so new, seminal texts are still being written and ur-texts are about ten years old1) What is meant by Transgender is simply those who transgress gender. There is an assumption in this culture that gender is sex, and that only two sexes occur, namely man and women. Those who are not readily identifable as either man or women, those who feel isolated by those categories, those who wish to move into the other side of that binary or those who reject either outright could be considered as transgendered. There are cultures2) who allow more then one category, and it could be argued that those who follow a proper exception would not be consdiered trasngendered.
Transexuals are a difficult case in this kind of theorotical reading, as they capitulate to the binary, trying to fix their transgressions clinically or socially. This is accepted as a standard and approite response to ambigous gender, and often sex. There are two problems with this. The first is a process of clinicazation, Transgendered and pedophiles are the are the only sexual other left where a surgerical correction is not only considered an option, but one of the more effective ones. The second problem with passing is a contiuntion of traditional gender norms, and by that method the prison of gender normality is maintained for generations of gender outlaws.
There are problems with this line of thinking, among them certain biological conjectures and a deconstruction of male power that problematizes assuming masculine power. The concept of the modern transsexual was brought into full awareness by an endcironlogist by the name of Henry Benjamin, who still has a makor foundation named after him, this approval has meant that research done around gender transgressors has centered on hormones and their role in sex devolepment. For example in Mary Duvalls mammoth study on Female To Male Transexuals1), she discusses for five pages (60-65) the nature of hormones on transexuals, making claims like "A possible basis for transexualism has been thought in studies of of the histo- compabilty-Y(H-Y) antigen status of transexuals. The HY antigen can be found in the bodies of males but not females..."2) or there has been evidence, however, to suggest that female-to-male transexuals have a higher inicidene of menestural difficulties and polycystic ovarian disease, both of which suggest hormanal abnormaolities" 3)
Like studies on the biological nature of homosexuality, inconclusive evidence, small sample sizes and a medical agenda forces a prescriptive attitude towards these phemonae, that may be away from their experinces. The other arguement is put forward by femminsts like Germiane Greer and Janice Raymond. In The Whole Woman, Greer talks about male to female transexuals, arguing that the nature of being female is one of a birth culture, it cannot truly be learnt, because it is imposed on you. She considers men who become transexuals impossible and ludcrious imposters of real women, their manners and desires patonrizing.1) In The Transexual Empire2), Janice Raymond argues that assuming male personae, and later personhood, is to abondanon women and to cross into male privelge. It is an affront against sisterhood or a common liberation struggles among women. For both Greer and Robinson, even if gender was constructed, then it was constructed against women and not by them.
Viewing this in a theological lens is to enter through a rabbit hole. The basic theory has barely been done, most churches have not produced any statements, and if they did they tend towards the prohibitive, using the essential complimetary theology extroploted from Genisis, a good example of which is found in the Latter Day Saint Proclamation of the Family, whose only line on the transgender does not seem to understand the word and states "Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose" or the Jewish law found in Deut. 22:53), something that prohibits ritual tranvestism but not other forces of Gender amibguity. The discussion of liberation of transgendered indviudals runs towards the same historio-critical view of the scripture that liberated many homosexuals, namely thought thst does not rise above "we are not ancient isrealites."
To allow the idea that we are blank from birth is a radical notion that may upend notions of the body in judeo-christian theology. Even such a radical notion as embodiment theology, which celebrates God's creation as good and holy would feel awkard at a body that was born with out a core idenity. If we moved that type of theological thinking forward and thought that exploring the logical extensions of what it means to be human in God's world might be useful. Think of the body not worth correcting, but embracing how it is corrected.
If we take this view with Brandon Teena we have a different set of consquences concerning what occured. The story is fairly simple, a male to female transexual with little money and fewer prospects moved from home to Lincon Falls Nebraska, where he fell in with a crowd of similar misfits, including Lana Tisdel, who he fell in love with and John Lotter and Tom Nissen who raped and killed him. This story was turned into a conventional love story by grad student and first time director Kimberly Peirce. In the press surrounding Brandon himsel,. he is constantly refered to in press as transgressive, with terms like female bodied1) ,a sexual misfit2) , male impresontor3) and that she had actually been a woman.4) Even in his eulogy, Fthr Wittig, the priest residing claimed that she was "a very confused young lady"5).
But Brandon had taken a mans name and forged a new idenity6), he had wooed women the way heterosexual men were supposed to, and drank with the boys. He never slipped, and photos of him show a person who had adopted masculine signals , the hand over the crotch, the wide open legs, the standing askance, the cowboy shirts and posing with a mobsters tommy gun for halloween. There is even a photo of him, smiling shirtless, post shower. Kimberly Peirce qoutes a conversation second hand, through Lana, where Brandon Teena says "i am not a lesbian, i'm not going to New York or LA. I am going to be a straight man here in Lincon. "1) He was not allowed to approach an embodied theology, because his body was such a dangerous object that it needed to be corrected by rape and murder, the irony of this was the rape occured at Christmas, an act of evil on a day whose intentions were to note the birth of a man who was also a god.
There are two films, one a basic documentary produced in 1994, produced with movie-of-the-week whiplash speed. The other one was a poetic medatation on the nature of desire, metioned earlier as Boys Don't Cry. This film was a political document intended to make Brandon Teena a marytr, just before the film went into preproduction a radical group of transsexuals, founded on the Debard inspired specatcles of groups like Act-Up and Queer Nation marched on Lincon. 40 of them from the United States and Canada went through town sqaure, yelling with rage at the violence that Teena endured. Pierce was part of that group. 2)
There are scenes that act as geographical sigifer, noting the beauty in plain Nebraska, the joys of gas stations, factories, high ways, tract homes, trailer parks, dive bars playing MTV and karoke machines gathering dust in the corner. The sheer pyshicality of Hilary Swanks preformance shows a joy in creation, she lopes through these banalities with a coltish grace and when she falls in love with Lana, the novelty is heartbreaking.
Because there was no suspense in the movie, the story well disessmatied by popular media, the film ascended like a religous melodrama. There is a segment where Brandon's vagina is found out, she talks to the sheriff, as the forced undressing is shown in broad cuts, the way that he is broken resembles a medieval descent from the cross, and the authorities invading this process has obvious Chrisitan metaphors.
In a scene soon after they take her to the factory where he met Lana, they remove her clothes, and take turns . She is presenting and claiming a phallus, they are claiming a penis. They force penetration on her, trying to teach her the meaning of being a woman, putting her in place, reminding her that she posseses's a subservient vagina. The signifer meets signified, and on a dark road where no one can see, theory is shattered into reality. Afterwords though, presentation returns. They take her into the car, get her dressed, call her good buddy, and drive to an apartment where they offer her a beer and a bath. She is once again he, one of the boys. There is a conflation of the outsider, the boy who steals the girl, the boy who has ideas above his station, homophobia, transphobia and all nature of ambigous idenity is presented here. Brandon Teena is as much of a victim of attempting to posesses the wrong kind of woman, as he is a marytry for queer causes. This was Christ, who died for hersey, politics, conveience, and for theological reasons.
Her murder then becomes an anti climax, where her gender does not seem to matter. In making the film a heteronormative narrative, the end shoot out resembles any number of american endings. It is Bonnie and Clyde in the Caddaliac, or John Dillinger at the movies. Brandon stole Tom's girl. Brandon is restored as a boy.
If Brandon Teena is about how to make a boy, then the filmed depictions of Joan of Arc are about how to lose a boy. Joan of Arc was not transgendered until she died. Born and raised as a conventional women, who learnt sewing, weaving and other handicrafts1), when she recived the first visions at a young age they came from two women(Catherine and Margriete) and one man (Michael), by the presence of these two women, she placed herself in a tradition of female mysticism that marked mediveal christianity, when she decided that she was called by God to defend France from England she got tacit premission from the Dauphin and later Charles VI, anyone who gets premission from the king who gave Joan her first set of armour. Transgender requires Transgression, there was none here. Even her death sentence, for witch craft and heresy, was done in a way befitting a woman.
Their are hundreds of films of Joan of Arc, and she was one of the first stories to be filmed with the 1895 Alfred Clarke production being the orignator. and the history of Joan of Arc could be considered a history of how women could be depicted in film, especially erotically. They range from the deeply religous to the deeply secular but if four could be considered represntive, they could be Carl Dreyer's 1926 Passion of Joan of Arc, Victor Flemings 1948 production with Ingrid Bergman, Otto Premingers discovery of Jean Seberg in St Joan and Luc Bresson's action disaster The Messanger. Each one says something about how females are constructed in film, and none of them features the 14 year old in armour, her hair cut in a savere pageboy.
Carl Dreyer uses trial transcripts, but aside from that it is not documentary as much as a radical and expressionist1) treatise on manic faith. The mayrtrydom has cleared parrells to the crucifixon, with the jailing, mocking gaurds, crown of thorns, Joan collpasing under the weight of torture, and calling it a passion itself. The mortifaction of the flesh, and pain itself is viewed as a way to elimanate self and come c loser to God. Compare this to Pierces film, who makes a marytr without any sense of the Divine. Humanity as left Joan, God has left Lincon, Nebraska. The most ambigous scene in Dreyers film is the scene where she is cut for bloodletting, which could be considered a restoriaon of Joan's vagina if she did not look so much like a mater delorsea already. It could also be a draining of the masculine essence and a qoute of the wounds of Christ as reflected in the stigmata. It is thought that the blood depicted on Joan of Arc was really Maria Falconetti's. That small, tight scene talks so much about the destructive tendecies in the nature of saint's, to the atheist Dryer, martyrdom is sucide with a divine agenda.
If Dreyer's is a knotty and confusing european art peice, then Victor Flemming directing Ingrid Bergman is the exact opposite. She is a sex symbol in the midst of an alduterus sex scandal, the armour in the battle scenes is cut to accuentate her breasts and hips, the burning is done in a white dress. This is not a Joan we recognize, she is not boyish, she is not a girl. But this is a director who tried to turn Judy Garland into a naive farm girl1) and supervised the greatest renovation of racial myths in american history2). He did not care about accuracy as much as spectacle.
The source texts of these movies where bascially the same, mostly medival legend, with some transcripts thrown in but Otto Preminger remade Shaw's St Joan, although he substutited Shaw's inventioned death. The films starred Jean Seberg, who was discovered in her home town in Iowa after a national cattle call. Much like Falconetti was made to bleed and Swank walked arround Beverly Hills pretending to be a boy, Seberg suffered serious burns after a malfunction on the set. It was not the most damage that she did though, the film was a disaster and it was mostly blamed on a combonation of Serbeg's sexualized gamine qaulities and a script that lacerated Catholicisms history of complacency. She soon moved to France, founded the new wave by starring in Breathless and became heavily involved in Maoist politics. She was found dead in a vineyard away from Paris facing Orleans. Her struggles internally and externally matched Joan's on fervour and in devotion, her tendecy away from the church seemed generational.
Luc Bresson's The Messengar is the last of the Arc movies, made in the same year as Boys Don't Cry, and continues a '90s trend of crazy women and female action stars. Here Joan is stripped of the holy, made hysteric and deluded, her rituals considered obsessive-compulsive. In Dreyer's film the mortifaction is holy, the mayrtrydom is considered Christ like, in Flemming's the spectacle overwhelms any sense of Divine, in Preminger it is a political and social text and in Flemming it's an action movie led by a star. There are no real hero's in Bresson films, they finish their work with a calcuated effiency. It is the exact opposite of a film like Boy's Don't Cry, even the moody atmospheric touches are meant to excuse womens violecene That both of these films appeared at the same time, perhaps shows a new understanding of the concept of sex, allowing for men to be raped and oppressed as much as women can be grand martial leaders. This may not be progressed, but it does tie the nature of power and idenity, the sheer core of naming into violence. When one yeilds a sword, no matter how crazy, one can name price, privelege, station or idenity, especially if called by God.
What does it mean then, to be Brandon or Joan ? Joan did not transgress gender, even in her filmic dections, the women who played her and how they played her fit into the general milleu of the time. She is eroticized without being exoticised, and much of the work that surrounds her deals with issues aside from religion. Ironically, it is difficult to find a Joan movie that is about Joan, that is historcally accurate, that depicts her as real and does not have any political baggage. She has become a very really sexual type, a holy amazon. Brandon Teena is in the beginnings of mythology. His name has been codifed, his life has been made clear. In Boys Dont Cry, his petty vandalism, his car theft, his peccadillos and his confusions become secondary to his rape and murder which become the beginnings of a new kind of liberation, where nothing needs correcting and biology can be transcended. More importantly, Lana's continued life is not depicted, how she feels about Brandon's gender, and how she feels about the families interference. Brandon is made into a heterosexual cowboy who falls in love like a sensitive new age man.
Gender constructed becomes Gender Confused. To embody it is to recognize with in ourselves is a bit of the formless void that YHWH was supposed to have eliminated in the very first chapters of Gensis. I am not a man. I am not a woman. I see myself like Brandon, even though I have broad shoulders, a wide carriage, a penis and a beard, because I remember being on the razor edge of reading signals. I grew up with factories and chemical plants, teenage boys up to no good on a friday night. I remember coming home and seeing them from the corner of my eye and thinking how much I would like to be them. In high school my desire to make love to men was a desire to aborb their manner and way of being. Brandon did not know how to be a man, even though at this core he was one. I do not know how to be a man, and at my core I am not sure I am one. If Brandon is my secualr saint, remembered in the same mental spaces as the bashings and death threats i got in Sherwood Park, then Joan is my religous one.
The catholic church accepts weirdness at its corners, perhaps it comes from vacuuming pagan rituals where ever they encountered them, but Joan embodies many of those for me. She was loved by the church, she was given refuge and succour. They trusted her to provide statehood and she delivered. She was as much a man as a woman could be there, she was loved and respected for those reasons. But when she failed, when she was killed as a woman. 19 years later she was restored and hundreds of years after that she was cannonized. 1926, the same year as the Dreyer film. How many saints have we burned or silenced, and when will the church regret it ? These two people are about voice and the wilderness, not the wilderness of Moses and Aaron, but the interior wilderness of self.

my sister thinking of leaving on a mission, and that being the final rift b/w me and her, having given up the lds church long ago.
when "this is my body given unto you" is said at mass.
belle and sebastion's mike piazza catcher
the agnes martin painting in the tate in london
watching the sun rise on a wheat field outside of the airport
watching cute boys dancing in my living room, while a bit tipsy
anne sextons an awful rowing towards god
two women in black chadors walking across a wide white field, like crows.
sally timms down from dover
the 15 minutes before i sleep, when i think about how i have fucked up that day
boys dont cry
billy budd or death in venice
batter my heart you three person god by donne
everwood, esp. the coma and the abortion episodea
trisha yearwood, shes in love with the boy
reba mcentire, fancy
martina mcbride, independece day
tammy wynette, a house is not a home
loretta lynn, coal miners daughter
any no. of other embarrassing chart country classics
lady kasa haikus
the graphic work of thomas drooker, esp. flood.
the idea of james merrill and elizabeth bishop in key west, when im in freezer bound edmonton
knowing that you depend more on someone then vice versa
stephin merritt doing country (papa was a rodeo, long vermont roads, grand canyon)
the way that flying from vancouver looks like some grand and wonderful kraken, taking our desires.
bad metaphors
decay
the stations of the cross, the sacred heart of christ
a certain tattoo on a certain man i used to love.
obvious sentiment
romantic comedies, esp. about fathers and sons
boarding school dramas from england and boston

old hag
wanted lists of things that made us sad

problematic kim pierce interview

there is an assumption that the beard marks a spec. set of masculine signifers as well. in fact quite the opposite is ture, it is my mark that the exterior of my body can be safely ignore, let fallow so that other inner things can grow.

increased polio cases in northwest africa, perhaps a new strain.

is it wrong to think that these get less and less attention b/c aids is all glammed up ?

all africa

assholes in jr high set a kid's costume on fire for just general sadism

just to remind us on the left that disposing of Sadaam might not have been such a bad idea, even if they ways that it was done were undemocratic breads and circuses, tapes showing torrture of the feydoen have emerged, and they are as brutal as expected.

a long glossary of naughty latin.

making light

the Pope
wants muslims and christians to stop killing each other in N. Nigeria.

on campus right now are at least 3 huge cranes tearing apart and building, and the way they move in unison or apart are so exquisite, like temporary cathedrals. This site has huge photo cache of cranes, mostly in london.

mefi

A long interview with Derrida about the lingustic implications of terror, esp. how we mythologize and limit 9/11 into an incompelte metonmy (this is sinker, but it works:

crown-->kingdom
body and blood --->transubstanation
9/11--> ?)

and then he elabrotes(sp) the implications of this incompleteness

Drug Raid at school, 14 officers raided a high school, with guns drawn and alastians snarling, finding nothing.

The War Against Drugs is a war against youth, african americans and the poor, and an excuse to trash the 4th and 11th Amendments.

This just proves how bad its gotten.

mefi/making light

In Kenya, there are a large number of v. powerful men who are accepting land that isnt there. Fthr Gabriel Dolan has pointed out the unjustuice was occuring and recieved a beating as a reward.

all africa

Suicide Bombers in Ridyah, which seems unusual at best. Not nearly as deadly as the examples in Palestine and Israel.

African Lesbians have been enduring a horrorfic process called "corrective rape", with the attitude that all these women need is a penis. Now I have heard this attiude among North American men, and would be interested to know if sex assults among lesbians here have similar motavations.

queer day

The Pentagon is claiming that they are not reinstating the draft, but their domestic reserve is so fucking low it hurts, and there was an odd notice on the DoD's defense that asked for Voluenteers for local draft boards, they later rescinded this notice.

ilx

Aside from one of the greatest ledes in history, this story is the mark of some v. grand weirdness in Russia. The 2IC now has isreali citzenship, in the grand and nessc. history of finding attics, the Leader is in jail, for reasons that may or may not be legimate (he is deeply corrupt and got into his place w. corruption, but this is russia, things are done like this), as well the 3IC is in Jail. First Volleys in a new kind of war i think.

fractal storm

To the asshole who took out all of the
Butler
Foccualt
Borenstien
Derrida
and the one Greer i needed FUCK YOU

confidental reports leaked to the observer in London has shown the depths of dissatisfaction that black and asian officers feel for scotland yard.

fugitive bison escape from a abbotoir(Sp) in Montana. Just the headline, and the idea of a dozen of these majestic animals trashing the redneck town that would be their doom delights me

Die Puny Humans

Gene Robinson is an arrogant prick, flying every where he can, holding his annointing in a hockey stadium like some kind of crowning, talking via teleconfernce to liverpool, not tending his flock. Most importantly, he went thru with the whole disaster while ignoring his fellow primates and Rowan WIlliams.

I belive in an openly queer clergy, but most imptly, i belive in a clergy that attends with humble devotion and service to those they have been giving. Robinson has not done so.

HUbbel and Hubbel, who are know for their humbly beautiful, venacular, eco friendly houses that resemble all the world of hobbit holes, have had their offices and primary residence destroyed by the California wildfires James T Hubbell, founding partner, is 76.

mefi

We save million-dollar homes for a dollar an hour," said Ricky Frank, 33, doing a 10-year stretch for theft

Odd casting of prisoners as heros, using irony and redemption in equal measure. The qoute about 1 dollar a day is accurate and kind of frightening.

Body and Soul

Sol LeWitt
Wall Painting
Mid 90s
Germany

me

Upstairs in Hub is the mall, the residences, and connections to Business, Tory, the Humanities Center and the Fine Arts Building. Thousands of people use the building on a daily basis, as a continuation of their home and learning communities; they have become intimately familiar with the space. However underneath Hub is a series of artist’s studios in, which are created some of the more viable and intriguing work done on this campus. This literal underground provides a ready metaphor for the figurative underground that Edmonton forces its artists into.

The lack of visibility can be explained by a number of factors, the government has cut university funding for the arts, the University under prioritizes art in relation to science and technology, the minute size of the faculty and even the common view that the only art being created in Edmonton are like the steel sculpture that is housed between FAB and the law building or the goopy, overly gestural and reactionary abstract expressionism done by people like Graham Peacock.

Even if these studios did not exist in HUB, they would be hard to get to, the studio space is a private one and admittance is limited often to curators, fellow artists and sometimes critics or dealers. The work on the walls is mostly incomplete, research material is scattered about and the couches are third generation cast-off. But if we show these artists in the spaces that they inhabit, then perhaps there would be a greater understanding of the role that the arts have in this place.

To achieve the goals of visibility and representation this feature is intended to show the work of five artists, shown to be working in and outside the traditions of Edmonton. The five depicted here are not the only artists working there, but are a representative and diverse sample.


Colin Barney.

After living all over eastern Canada, including Montreal and Nova Scotia, Colin Barney decided to settle down and work in Edmonton. His work is filled with that sort of restless energy, managing to combine images of cows, ostriches, hand washing, and plastic surgery into an ambiguous central narrative surrounding ideas of redemption and rebirth. In his words, " I work on ideas that are common to all religions; a ritual cleansing, into a different person, a different soul." Outside of a series of center concepts, the works maintain a common aesethic, they are hard worked with many layers of encaustic making a canvas whose surfaces are pockmarked and gnarled, they look like they have been struggled with
He describes the appearance of his work and all of art making as a struggle, claiming "art is always struggling, the lightening strike of inspiration is pretty rare."
That hard work and struggle makes the pieces difficult to look at, their familiar representations no longer comfort but isolate. He might paint a cow but it’s an esstentalist cow, and not in that peaceful Hindu way, and he has painted an Ostrich, but its an ostrich that carries history on its back. But that doesn’t mean that he thinks that the work cannot be understood, there is a striving to "be relevant to public concerns, speaking to people in some way, you have to give people an entry point." That mediating between private practice and public consciousness seems new here; even caring about putting an entry point into the work has not been a well-known art practice in Edmonton.

Carolyn Campbell

Carolyn Campbell has lived here all her life, doing her undegrad work here, working for the Business administration, getting married and having a kid here. Her desire to go back to school was a desire to reengage with Edmonton as a place to make art, but that desire was not fully formed until she had a set of identical twins. Describing that experience, she combines it with her desire to make art that " keeps relating to each other, in a sense of symmetry, balance, equal attention and evenness, I started creating this work as a body that was a balanced member."
This balance also connects to her use of art historical themes, caging drawing technique from such masters as Holbien and Manet, then conflating that with self portraits or colour field painting from the 1960s. She describes this practice as a "desire to see different eras in art history that work in tandem", but also the way she paints continues this twinning. She paints, and the draws or takes photographs and then draws them, no one medium work without the inclusion of the other. She describes this intention as "there is a sensitivity to painting in the way I draw, it is really a way for them to work together."
Her giving birth to twins, and then working on art that doubles in on itself, in its history and medium, and a concentration on the body as site of historical depiction, all have a subtle tint of feminism. The autobiographical nature of her work upends the feminist maxim that the personal is political, in Campbell’s work the personal is beautiful.


Julian Forrest

Julian Forrest came very recently to Edmonton from Sackville, a city ten times smaller and has moved away from the landscapes that made him prominent down east. It seems a little ironic, since Alberta would have rewarded the landscapes that he does so well and might be made nervous of his new work. He describes this move as more then geographical though "I wanted to sink into another zone, I wanted to switch gears, not only where I was but what I was painting. I wanted to shake things up, and after you have been working in the in the same place, you get a kind of muscle memory in which you are derivative of yourself."
He is now painting 10 foot by 6 foot canvases deriving from the imagery of advertising, but including things that those images only hint at. He has put a naked man in the midst of one of them, a women laying prostate in another. He repaints a Versace ad so it’s 6 times the size of it, making a women’s exterior genitalia unavoidable, and disguising the breasts in a piece of clothing that resemble a nuns habit.
These paintings would not be shocking in other places; outsize nudes in overtly sexual poses would be a played out act of machismo in other places. But the sheer love that this man has for paint, and the subtle blocking and sensuousness of the colours have been retained from those landscapes and avoid the cliches that could have occurred.

Kateria ________

If Forrest is moving to using advertising images in art, Kateria Vedda has gone in the opposite direction, saying "I am moving away from using advertising images in art, because it has a lot of social and political baggage", and her work has become more personal, discussing non verbal language and the role of the body in presenting identity. Her charcoal drawings are human scaled, not too small and not too large and are imposing because of their stark black and white. She expains her use of colour, saying "if I do use colour I try to stick to the primaries, in a way I feel it gives me a greater sense of objectivity, colour is emotion, so colour can get in the way of reading the piece"
The sources of these drawings are a series of preparatory photographs, which can be seen in the sheer intensity of the work, telling us that "I work from photos, I find taking a photo and manipulating it through drawing can have a greater impact," While the photographs may seem like the origins, and not works in themselves, one cannot exist without the other. She expands on this use, saying "both the photos I take and the images I find, I can crop until I can find a good angle—I like dealing with images that are suspenseful or uncertain especial in retain to the relationships."
That cropping also occurs in the photographs, and it results in images with out heads or with odd emphasis on stomachs, or arms. Emigrating from Poland at the age of 7, she had to learn how bodies communicate before she learnt the language. Her concentration on flesh away from the face is a concentration on the ambiguities of language. , She explains this: "that comes from when I was a little girl and came from Poland, I didn’t have the words to work with and I had to pay attention to their bodies, so that started me off in the focusing on what their bodies say, on how people moved, on their tone of voice as opposed to the words they used." The silence of these pictures allows an audience to interpret the work as a series of ambiguous symbols, and avoids the didacticism that mars much realism. Edmonton used to avoid feeling, the abstract work that was committed to canvas was all about feeling in place of and not through the artist. Here is work that cannot come from anyone but Kateria Vedda and through that manages a universalism.

Duncan Johnson

Duncan Johnson makes the kind of art most people hate and would prefer that critics did not use the same 6 words to describe his paintings and installations, in fact it’s almost impossible to get any words at all out of him. He even denies that the audience is relevant, and wants "this work to post questions about architecture, space and colour" as opposed to making any statements. He begins the interview hemming and hawing over the usual questions, and getting useful answers is like pulling teeth. He wants the work to speak for itself, and eventually after asking if he can be candid, he talks to me about the work we are looking at, a series of 12 plywood boards liberally slthred with black paint. "I get a real kick out of the paint dripping off these 2 x 4s, there is something really beautiful in that for me. That is the chief thing one gets from Johnson’s work, is beauty. He cares deeply about the right shade of yellow to paint a pegboard, or ahow to make one half of a particle board sqaure matte black and the other half glossy. Sometimes this is infused with a sense of whimsy, like when he leans a board against a wall, the top half of the board painted in the exact colours as a rectangle on the wall. The work is deeply modern, a continuation of the traditions of modernism that Edmonton is historically enraptured with, but it moves past all those old people and into something new, a new kind of earnestness.

These five are wholly different, their works concerned with theory and practice in different ways—if they lived in Vancouver or Toronto there would be a series of student associations, artists run centers, collectives, found spaces and galleries to show their work. Here there is a limited amount of resources, a lack of interest or care in contemporary art practice. This is a town who has had two new large engineering buildings in the space of five years, and who also have only two full time instructors teaching painting. The small community that exists here to support art, are those who make art themselves or care about art or write art or conceptualize it. There is so little outside interest in the work that is created, and more importantly there seems to be an opedial struggle between those who used to make art and those who now make art.

I hope that this work tells new stories about young people who practice in contemporary art practice and make their efforts a bit more known.