Chuck's Selection of the Day

Joe Pass. And Ella.

YouTube Testing

Amazing things coming out of YouTube. Especially music cuts like this, with this person I'd never heard of, Allan Holdsworth.



Shoulda heard of him, huh?

Tyger! Tyger! Burning Sao Paulo

This will blow your mind. Really.

And The Tyger that started it all.

Found that at Metafilter.

And from there also: Len Lye, "an experimental film-maker, poet, painter, kinetic sculptor, eccentric and ebullient personality, Len Lye is one of New Zealand's most widely-known modernist artists." He made films without cameras by drawing directly onto the film.

But wait! There's more! Now you can see Jesus in your food from the safety of your own home! It's the Jesus Pan.

Friki

I know absolutely nothing about Da Friki. And happily.

But I do know this:

DEVIL BABY
by MARK KNOPFLER

The freaks'll stay together
They're a tight old crew
You look at them
And they look at you
I love the ballyhoo girl
But she don't care
It's hard to find love anywhere
Hard to find love anywhere

The professor is the talker
He's the talking man
And if he can't clean a midway
Nobody can
He'll get the tip on in
From the midway mud
You gotta have the sawdust in the blood
Gotta have the sawdust in the blood

See the pig-faced man and the monkey girl
Come see the big fat lady
'Gator slim with the alligator skin
Come see the devil baby

Springer is the talker
He's the talking man
He's got the whole studio
Eating out of his hand
You can be on too
With the nuts and the geeks
Call 1-800-ima frek
1-800-ima frek

Be the pig-faced man or the monkey girl
Come be the big fat lady
'Gator slim with the alligator skin
Come be the devil bab.

Watch The Mark do his thing.

Help Nazanin

Do whatever you can.

The girls tried to escape, but the men overtook them, and at this point, Nazanin stabbed one of the other men in the chest, which eventually killed him. According to the newspaper, she broke down in tears when she told the court: "I wanted to defend myself and my niece. I did not want to kill that boy. At the heat of the moment I did not know what to do because no one came to our help." Nevertheless, the court sentenced her to death by hanging.

The link has a list of things you can do to hopefully help this young woman. Go there.

Here's an online petition you can sign. I was number 151,314. And I called the Iran interest office in the Pakistan Embassy:

2209 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20007

Tel: (202) 965-4990
Fax: (202) 965-1073

Speaking of Dogs

The song that is changing the way people bite themselves, My Own Bestfriend (Ruff Ruff, Bow Wow, Bark Bark, Fuck You), can be heard on JADonnelly"s MadPod, show #156. (You can also hear it and even download it by going to one or all of the Vital Links in the top right of the page.)

Check him out—Donnelly's a pro. Subscribe via iTunes or somesuch for hours and hours of The New Radio.

Oh, and check out The Hour of Dave, with Dave and Charles. Really good stuff.

Perhaps I should do regular Presenting a Podcast posts? Yup, think so.

The Archaeology of Korea

I ordered The Archaeology of Korea by Sarah Milledge Nelson for work yesterday:

Sarah Nelson's book surveys Korean prehistory from the earliest paleolithic settlers, perhaps half a million years ago, through the formation of the Three Kingdoms and on to the creation of United Silla in AD 668, when the peninsula was largely united for the first time. The author treats the development of state-level societies and their relationship to polities in Japan and China, and the development of a Korean ethnic identity. Emphasizing the particular features of the region, the author dispels the notion that the culture and traditions of Korea are pale imitations of those of its neighbors, China and Japan.

And I'm reading about the Korean language. As I understand it so far, and that's not saying a lot (holy crap, that's a really good pun) Korean is in the Altaic language family. Meaning that, going back to its far distant roots, it's more closely related to Finnish than to Mandarin Chinese. Which makes sense.

Can I be smarter now?

Oh look, I just found a very cool Web site. Ethnologue. Languages of the World: "An encyclopedic reference work cataloging all of the world’s 6,912 known living languages."

Enough already.

Lies

He was shot five times
And once with a crossbow.
He couldn't believe I didn't know
The Vietnamese used
Crossbows. Pinned him
Right to a tree
And the guy walks right up to his face
Out of the bush
And says
"Sorry"
And leaves him
Stuck up there like a poster of John Wayne.
"He's my friend," he says
Leaning his big face to me
Perpendicular
To the bar.
"My only friend
Wanna see the scar?"
I didn't say yes
But he showed me
Near his left armpit "See it?"
"Yes," I said
And the best part of it is
That he didn't seem to mind at all
I had lied



From Hesperides, Volume 3, Fall 1993
Edited by Richard Hartley and Michael Brewer

We Are the Bomb Sniffing World

My baby sister's husband returns this Friday from K-9 Cop training in Texas. He had to leave my sis, pregnant, for 10 weeks to be with the dog he'd been introduced to. In Texas. Who knew? Anyway, this story caught my eye over at Metafilter.


Landmine victims in Angola play soccer. Photo: Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation

From The Human Flower Project in Austin, Texas:

Danish, Canadian and U.S. scientists are closing in on a genetically engineered plant that will send up a floral signal: “DANGER—land mines below."

Weeds and humans to the rescue! Scientists in Denmark have been tinkering with Arabidopsis thaliana (the homely Thale cress) trying to produce a plant whose flowers will change color in the presence of landmines.

While superpowers harangue over nuclear-weapons programs, combatants in poor nations build and bury land mines. After the breakup of Yugoslavia, Bosnia/Herzegovina planted six million landmines and Croatia, three million. According to The Hindu Times, nearly every family in Cambodia has a relative who has died or lost a limb to these weapons. In Angola, between 70,000 and 100,000 people have been victims of land mines.

After the truces are signed, these bombs (easy and cheap to build) go on maiming people, usually children and farmers.

“Within three to six weeks from being sowed over land mine infested areas the small plant...will turn a warning red whenever close to a land mine.” Arabidopsis can be genetically sensitized to the nitrogen-dioxide (NO2) that leaches from buried explosives.

Ai yai yai. How do you let the good in from a story like this? You know it's there, but...

The Sergeant Majors Thoughts On That

Sergeant Major Larry A. Myers (Retired) is a veteran of 27 years in the U.S. Army. He has a blog that I read regularly, and he has a particularly powerful post up today:

As Rome Burns – Or It’s Not Just George That’s Fiddling

Last night, at the end of The News Hour, I watched sixteen young faces materialize and then dematerialize on my screen. They were almost all between 18 and 22 years old. Young, innocent faces much like my youngest daughter who is just 22. As their young faces faded from my screen I thought to myself, ‘thank dear God that none of them were my little girl’. And then I felt horribly guilty.

2,228 KIA – Iraq Coalition Casualty Count
17,869 WIA – Iraq Coalition Casualty Count
39,258 Civilian – www.iraqbodycount.org

How much blood Mr. Bush? How much American and Iraqi blood is enough Mr. Bush? When will your thirst be quenched Mr. Bush? It isn’t your children is it Mr. Bush?

Remember, this is a Sergeant Major, which, according to my research, is an E-9 ranking and the third highest elisted rank in the Army. He lead and fought beside soldiers in combat in Vietnam.

Read his blog.

Lebanon

I could go to Lebanon.

I know just how I'd get there, too.

Just take the boat from Piraeus
to Haifa, head north, act non-chalant.
Stuff pitas full of peppers
and tomatoes and hummus,
always knowing that soon I'd cross the line,
walk across the border
to hell.

I could decide tomorrow, start saving.
I wouldn't need much.
I've learned the trick of cheap living
and the waiting game
of thumbs up travel.
Two months in a dishwasher
I could be in New York,
Amsterdam,
setting up a ride south.

Springtime in Switzerland would be nice.
Visit some friends, maybe
get some work. And south.

I could be there in three months.
Hell, a week.
I could hit the First National and fly
to Beirut,
Lebanon.



From The Original Sky of Guesses, Ashland, 1989

Pesticides May Reduce Penis Size

I'm thinking this issue is about to get a lot more attention.

The London Free Press:

A renowned U.S. scientist who has documented fertility and sex changes -- including decreasing penis size -- due to environmental contamination says he wouldn't apply pesticides on his own lawn.

...

Penis size of the animals from the polluted lake was smaller than animals from the less-polluted lake.

"This is important because it is not just an alligator story. It is not just a lake story. We know there has been a dramatic increase in penile and genital abnormalities in baby boys," Guillette said.