Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art

At Barbican Art Gallery, London. "Anthropologists from outer space set out on a mission to understand life on Earth. . . . [T]hey begin their mission by examining the curious phenomenon that human beings call ‘contemporary art’." Judging from The Guardian's slideshow, a great show, including 100 artists and accompanied by "Films from Another Planet," naturally including some Cremaster. Through May 18, 2008.

(Photo at right, My Name as Though It Were Written on the Surface of the Moon (1968), Bruce Nauman; Sonnabend Collection, 2008.)

(Thanks, Ben!)

Diebold's Early Release of Next Election Results

Good job; but I'm voting anyway.

"Save the Internet" Bill Is a Sham

If you get an e-mail urging you to support of the “Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008” (HR 5353), please be aware it's a sell-out.

Per ZDNet, the bill "carries no enforcement provision on network neutrality, and even carries the co-sponsorship of a neutrality opponent, Rep. Chip Pickering of Mississippi.

"Pickering has said he plans to leave Congress after this term and is expected to become a lobbyist. Defanging the network neutrality bandwagon will doubtless please his potential corporate employers.

"The bill is a fig leaf, offering vague 'principles' which would be 'guide stars' for future policy.

"Violation of the principles carries no penalty. The FCC would merely study the question and then suggest whether rules are necessary later." More at ZDNet.

Msg to Institutional Dems:

Thanks, babylonsister! (Click on the image to enlarge.)

US Feds Ordered "Assassination City" Police to STOP Screening for Weapons at Obama Rally

Per The Fort Worth Star Telegram, "[s]ecurity details at Barack Obama's rally [in Dallas, Texas] Wednesday stopped screening people for weapons at the front gates more than an hour before the Democratic presidential candidate took the stage at Reunion Arena.

"The order to put down the metal detectors and stop checking purses and laptop bags came as a surprise to several Dallas police officers who said they believed it was a lapse in security.

* * *

"Several Dallas police officers said it worried them that the arena was packed with people who got in without even a cursory inspection.

"They spoke on condition of anonymity because, they said, the order was made by federal officials who were in charge of security at the event."

You can't even get into the Dallas Museum of Art without having your bag inspected.

Hunter S. Thompson, Richard Nixon, Noam Chomsky, Etc.

— all this and more is yours on DU.

"'The trail of Richard Nixon, if it happens, will amount to a de facto trial of the American Dream. . . . The real question is why we are forced to impeach a president elected by the largest margin in the history of presidential elections . . . . The necessity of actually bringing Nixon to trial, in order to understand our reality in the same way the Nuremberg trials forced Germany to confront itself . . . .' Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Washington: The Boys in the Bag, 1974, The Great Shark Hunt.

"The old fashioned American way of dealing with problems like Richard Nixon was to sweep them under the rug. Kick him out of office in disgrace, arrange a pardon so that his actual crimes — and especially the identities of his coconspirators in high places, such as the business community — could never be revealed. Ensure that the mechanisms that he used to steal power are left in place so that the same methods can be used again, as Noam Chomsky so presciently noted in 1973:

“'But the conditions that permitted the rise of McCarthy and Nixon endure. Fortunately for us and for the world, McCarthy was a mere thug and Nixon's mafia overstepped the bounds of acceptable trickery and deceit with such obtuseness and blundering vulgarity that they were called to account by powerful forces that had not [yet] been demolished or absorbed. But sooner or later, under the threat of political or economic crisis, some comparable figure may succeed in creating a mass political base, bringing together socioeconomic forces with the power and the finesse to carry out plans such as those that were conceived in the Oval Office. Only perhaps he will choose his domestic enemies more judiciously and prepare the ground more thoroughly.' Noam Chomsky, 'Watergate: A Skeptical View,' The New York Review of Books, September 20, 1973.'"

Murakami Snarfs Up Bombed Billboard

Details here.

Cao Fei’s "iMirror"

. . . a documentary “filmed” entirely in Second Life and directed by her SL avatar China Tracy. Including some slightly hilarious avatar disco dancing and rather long credits at the end, Part 3, below, is 9:28 min.



Part 1 opens with a great quote from William J. Mitchell's Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City: "I construct, and I am constructed, in a mutually recursive process that continually engages my fluid, permeable boundaries and my endlessly ramifying networks. I am a spatially extended cyborg."

More iMirror: Part 1, Part 2.

Info re- current exhibits of Fei's work at Artkrush, which quotes Fei, "[i]n the end, I think this 3-D world is the future world." Which 3-D world?

Body Worlds UPDATE

Re- my previous post . . . The Times reports that Gunther von Hagens, "sometimes dubbed Dr. Death," plans to put some 150,000 plastinated body parts on sale to the public.

"Dr. von Hagens says that he will not sell the body parts if it damages the dignity of the corpse.

"'That means forbidding the use of the body sections as, for example, placemats for cocktail glasses,' he says, 'and if the owner wants to get rid of the body bits he will be required to cremate them and not simply throw them in the bin.'

". . . . so far he has been promised 8,568 corpses and has 531 in stock, all swimming in baths of alcohol awaiting his chemical treatment" -- in addition to the hundreds already plastinated and in touring exhibits?

Suck My Fish Cakes

What got me about this story is, "[t]he cost of the meal came to £284.68, including a 10% service charge." Per the first currency converter that popped up, that's $554.23, so the server's tip was automatically ca. $55.42.

Whistle-Blowers' Site Taken Off-Line in the U.S.

. . . that is, the eminently useful Wikileaks. As reported by the BBC, the site, which "allows whistle blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents[,] has been taken offline in the US.

* * *

"The site was founded in 2006 by dissidents, journalists, mathematicians and technologists from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa.

"It so far claims to have published more than 1.2 million documents."

Versions of the site hosted in other countries such as Belgium and India can supposedly still be accessed.

P.S.: Note to journalists: it's ok to have more than one sentence per paragraph.

UPDATE Feb. 29, 2008: Per the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the order that disabled the wikileaks.org domain name in the U.S. has, for now, been rescinded. EFF attorney Matt Zimmerman said, "[a]ttempting to interfere with the operation of an entire website because you have a dispute over some of its content is never the right approach. Disabling access to an Internet domain in an effort to prevent the world from accessing a handful of widely-discussed documents is not only unconstitutional -- it simply won't work." The ACLU has also intervened. Consider donating.

From the Collection of Robert E. Jackson

Photographer unknown. The collection of photos by "average Americans trying out their cameras" was scavenged by Jackson from yard sales and antiques shops and was recently shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

"I'm not a hot shot, I'm not rich," Jackson said laughing. "I work in a cubicle."

(From The Seattle Times via snarky -- thanks!)

At the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, TX, through April 27, 2008.

Martin Creed's New Tate Commission: Run, Dick, Run!

Tate Britain has commissioned Creed to create a new art work to be exhibited in a 300 foot-long (90m) gallery hall, in which the artist will, Times Online understands, "do no more than get individuals to run through the gallery every minute for months on end." Ah, but which individuals?

Creed won the Turner Prize in 2001 for Work No. 227: The Lights Going On and Off.

Unofficial Tallies in NYC Understated Obama Vote

According to The New York Times, "[b]lack voters are heavily represented in the 94th Election District in Harlem’s 70th Assembly District. Yet according to the unofficial results from the New York Democratic primary last week, not a single vote in the district was cast for Senator Barack Obama.

"That anomaly was not unique. In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district." More here.

During the last several years, there have been more than one election reform bill pending in Congress, most of which were "bandaids" that would have failed to assure meaningful transparency and auditability. To understand the merits and status of any particular bill, I recommend verifiedvoting.org (you might want to bookmark that for the next time you get e-mail urging you to support particular legislation -- I had serious problems with one bill moveon was pushing).

Ending the Iraq war and health care reform are urgent issues. But for me, the top two priorities are election reform and media reform, because our ability to respond effectively regarding everything else depends on those two.

Last I checked, none of the leading Presidential candidates' official websites addresses either election reform or media reform, presumably because the corporate media and others aren't asking about them. To ask the candidates about those issues, for Huckabee go here, for McCain go here, for Clinton go here, and for Obama go here.

Woebken & Okada: New Picnic Threat

This "Ant" device created by Chris Woebken and Kenichi Okada is intended to simulate the experience of being an ant. Exhibited at a masters student show at London’s Royal College of Art. (Via dezeen.)

Clinton & Obama Supporters: Pls Refute This if You Can

I happen to believe there can be no bigger, better art work/ game/ life purpose than trying to help make a "better" universe, however you might prefer to define that. If you agree, you might rhyme with this.

TWO STEPS to Voting in the Texas Dem Primary

The primaries in Texas will be held on March 4, 2008.

Per Texas Dem party rules, there are TWO steps. Texas has both a New Hampshire-style primary AND an Iowa-style caucus.

1. Go to the polling place and vote.
2. Return to your polling place at 7:15 PM and sign in at your party convention. You do not have to stay and caucus, you just need to sign in.

Only 3/4 of the total Texas delegation (126 delegates) will be based on the primary returns. The other 1/4 (42 delegates) will be distributed based on the number of people attending the precinct convention. To "attend" you need only sign in (at which point you indicate your candidate) and then you can leave.

Of course, if you want to stay -- and if you want to actually run to be a delegate -- you can do that, too.

It's vital to go and sign in, because that sign-in number determines the percentage in attendance for Obama vs. Clinton vs. Undecided, and delegates are allotted based on that number alone. The choosing of delegates is a subsequent step that's based on the sign-in sheet, but separate from it.

Senate Dems Agree: the Constitution Really Is "Just a Goddamned Piece of Paper"

-- as Bush put it.

A number of Senate Dems, including Senator Clinton, have voted in favor of granting telecoms immunity for abetting the Bush administration's wholesale, warrantless spying on U.S. citizens, in gross violation of our Constitutional rights. Senator Obama voted against granting the immunity. You can check the roster here.

Remember, this isn't just about the telecoms, or even just deterring illegal spying. It's also about (1) whether the telecoms have any reason to reveal who in the Bush administration pushed for the illegal spying and (2) whether anyone in the future has any incentive to say "no" to the next violation by our government of our fundamental rights.

WaPo: U.S. Border Agents Seizing Laptops, Phones and Copying Info

The Washington Post reports that federal agents at U.S. borders have been seizing and copying the contents of some travellers' laptops, cellphones, and other electronic devices.

The Association of Corporate Travel Executives has tracked complaints from members whose laptops were seized without warrants and without any crime ever being charged. The laptops were usually returned days later, but one member's laptop has yet to be returned after more than a year.

At least two global corporations have directed their executives not to carry confidential business material on laptops overseas. One law firm has instructed its lawyers crossing U.S. borders to carry only "blank laptops," preferring the risks of having their docs hacked while accessing them over the internet to the risks of government search and seizure.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and other organizations plan to sue to force the government to disclose its policies on border searches, including which rules govern the seizing and copying of the contents of electronic devices.

B.t.w., on the corporate surveillance side, when I accessed the WaPo article, the company or its associates wanted to set 22 cookies. For now, I'm denying all that appear to be not so much for my benefit as for someone else's, which appears to be at least 95% of them.

"MySpace Intro Playlist"

A delicious collection curated by Guthrie Lonergan, here.














E.g., what could be better than:



I also loved this one and this one.

Furry Utopians

A fun doc about another way to be differently-oriented. Ca. 4 min. including a couple of brief ads:


(Thanks, Ben!)

Help Defeat Telecoms' Third Push for Immunity for Warrentless Wiretapping

In response to grass-roots pressure, legislation has twice been successfully filibustered that would have granted telecoms immunity for abetting the Bush administration's indiscriminate wiretapping in gross violation of our Constitutional rights. Apparently a third push for immunity is now underway. Please go here to urge your representatives to defeat it.

"Specimens" Animation by Bradly Brown

See the hi-def version of Radium's first in-house music video, with animation by artist Bradly Brown, here. Art Direction by Bradly Brown and Jeff Hunt; © 2008 Radium/Table of the Elements.

Reinventing the Wheel

From National Georgraphic, via Dark Roasted Blend (scroll down).

Kristin Lucas's "Whatever Your Mind Can Conceive" at And/Or Gallery

. . . in Dallas, Texas -- one of the best shows I've seen anywhere in the last twelve months; smart and insightful, expressing archetypal yet urgent concerns in the idioms of today.

There are two, thematically-related parts. In the front gallery is her "contemplative installation including video, light box prints, cast rocks, and laser cut comets" featuring, among other things, fragments of a narrative including sessions the artist undertook with a real hypnotherapist to treat a grotesque eruption on her face that she purports to believe enhance her job performance as a bingo caller. In the back of the gallery is her related, "Refresh group exhibition [comprising the legal documentation and courtroom sketches from when] she legally changed her name from Kristin Lucas to Kristin Lucas as a kind of re-awakening, [plus portraits] she had her colleagues produce . . . of her before and after the change."

The work in the front gallery is shown in the picture but looks better as installed at And/Or. There are three channels of video, one screening on a boxy, older computer monitor that's been painted with a finish similar to that of the fake "rocks," and two screening wholly or partly on beautifully-knotted plywood -- a last-minute decision that may sound weird but looks fantastic and works well with the Western setting of the narrative.

See the show if you can; more info on And/Or's site.

For Your Snarky Valentine

My friend Julie Jackson, the creator of Kitty Wigs among other things, just added a great new product to her subversive cross stitch shop: limited edition Natalie Dee cross stitch kits. Take a look.

Transform Your Wii into a Virtual Reality Portal

Worth watching all the way through (4:45 min. total).



If this could be combined with a holographic screen to make it work for more than one viewer . . . total reality control.

Lakai's "Fully Flared" Intro

"Cloud" Sculpture has a Silver Lining

. . . conceived by the British art and design studio, Troika:



(Thanks, Ben!)

Further Research Confirms: Over 1 Million Iraqi Citizens Killed

Further survey work by Opinion Research Business, in association with the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies, has confirmed an earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. More here and here.

Nessie in Tokyo

Video here (please scroll down. Thanks, Ben!)

Shual

Go here and wait a few seconds (speakers rec'd) . . . nice.

MUST SEE: "The Century of the Self" by Adam Curtis

I've now watched all of Parts 1 and 4 and plan to watch all parts at least twice, taking notes. For me, this is the most important documentary since "Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media" (1970).

The Century of the Self presents more proof than anyone could ever want that we are living in a fantasy created for us by powerful elites -- a fantasy that pretends to offer happiness but that actually diverts us both from effective action and from true fulfillment.

We all kinda knew that, but the documentary provides fascinating details about how it's been done and for how long, as well as insight into the implications for our future. To take back control of our lives, we'll need more than just the general idea, both in order to free ourselves and in order to help make others aware.

You can see the series on the Internet Archive or Google Video.

Knowledge truly is power. Please run don't walk to see The Century of the Self, and tell everyone you know to see it. More details, including the embedded Part 4, in my previous post on it, here.

You S*ck at Photoshop, Episode 3

By Donnie. Episode 1 here and Episode 2 here. Thanks, Ben!

Laika the Russian Spacedog

Laika, by Zune Art. (Thanks, snarky!)

Seven Screens

Seven Screens is a platform for temporary, digital art projects in Munich. Each stele can be interpreted as a fragment, as an autonomous image carrier, as a sculptural monument, or as an architectural element. There is no vantage point from which the seven screens can be viewed together to form a contiguous field. It's left to the viewer's cognition to resolve the elements into a closed entity.

Works in the pic at right, from upper left to lower right, are: Haubitz+Zoche, Munich: 2027; ART+COM, Berlin: Reactive Sparks; Diana Thater, Los Angeles: Off with their Heads; Mader/Stublic/Wiermann, Berlin: reprojected. (Copyright: Osram Art Projects. Photographers: Haubitz+Zoche, Stephan Kausch, Mader/Stublic/Wiermann.) This spring's offerings will include works by ART+COM, Anouk de Clercq, and Bjørn Melhus.

The project's curator is Christian Schoen (director of CIA.IS, Center for Icelandic Art, Reykjavík, and commissioner of the Icelandic pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2007 and 2009.) Additional information at Osram.

(Thanks, e-flux!)

Could Jon Stewart be Getting Desperate

enough – because of the writers' strike – to be reading my blog? Tonight he aired an interview of the author of the book mentioned in one of my prior posts, Amazon Customers' Tags for "Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left".

Jenny Holzer Installation

I tried to resist blogging this but couldn't. At MoCA, from both ends of a huge room, poems by 1996 Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska are starkly projected. Giant beanbags dot the space like islands. On view through fall 2008; more at The NYT.

Holzer's is a great example of art I started out hating but quickly came to love. The first thing of hers I saw was a large, LED display of the text, "Money Creates Taste." The town I live in seems to refute that idea utterly. But the statement stuck in my mind in the same way something odd in Shakespeare sometimes does -- something that at first seems paradoxical or just wrong, and later seems so circuitously right (see Cleanth Brooks' The Well Wrought Urn).

And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
With windlasses and with assays of bias,
By indirections find directions out . . . -- Act II, scene i, Hamlet

AT&T Considering Monitoring All Internet Traffic

Mind-bogglingly bizarre: per Slate.com, "last week AT&T announced that it is seriously considering plans to examine all the traffic it carries for potential violations of U.S. intellectual property laws. The prospect of AT&T, already accused of spying on our telephone calls, now scanning every e-mail and download for outlawed content is way too totalitarian for my tastes." I'm not sure why they'd bother, if that were the only motivation; sounds more like they're floating an after-the-fact rationalization for Mark Klein's allegations.

brag on my niece

Her "Favorite Quote: 'oh look, a wall...OW! the wall hurts!'"

Help Bust the Media Blackout on Edwards!

John Edwards is the candidate whose positions on the issues are closest to mine -- he's the only one besides Kucinich who seems willing to take on our corporate masters -- and who I believe has a real chance to win -- last I saw, polls showed him more electable than either Clinton or Obama; see, e.g., here.

But the corporate media's pretty much blacked out coverage of his campaign. E.g., in Iowa, where all three top Dem contenders campaigned hard, he beat Clinton, even though I understand she outspent him 7 to 1 -- yet media coverage of the results barely mentioned him. CNN has simply stopped including Edwards in their polls, while continuing to include all four of the top Republican candidates -- even though, despite the dearth of attention to Edwards, the last poll CNN did that included Edwards showed him beating all four Republicans handily (see here).

Let's make it impossible for the media to continue to ignore Edwards. This Fri., Jan. 18, has been designated for an effort to break all records for a single day's donations by raising $7 million for Edwards on that day.

Ask yourself why the corporate media prefer to ignore Edwards. (If nothing comes to mind, see, e.g., David Sirota or jamess on Daily Kos.)

If you like Edwards, put a tickler in your calendar and make a donation on Fri., Jan. 18 -- you can do it here. Remember, all donations will be matched.

(Thanks to KingOneEye on Daily Kos and News Corpse, The Internet's Chronicle of Media Decay, for the info on this initiative).

Last night I happened to see Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961, script by Irwin Allen & Charles Bennett), which yielded this memorable quote, among others: "Nothing is inevitable, except defeat for those who give up without a fight."

UPDATE: It's official. The Project for Excellence in Journalism's latest campaign coverage index for January 6 - 11 shows that Edwards got only 7% of the political coverage during those days -- less than one-fifth of what Clinton got, less than one-fourth of what Obama got, and substantially less than that given to Huckabee, even though he, like Edwards, finished third in the New Hampshire primary.

In a recent article, "Study: John Edwards Doesn't Exist," Greg Sargent writes, "Indeed, the virtual media blackout of Edwards got so glaringly obvious that even New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt urged his paper to give Edwards more attention back in November. At a certain point we should just acknowledge that Edwards basically got screwed . . . ." Make that present tense.

"The Century of the Self" by Adam Curtis

Below is Part 4 of an excellent BBC series documenting how, beginning in the 1920's, Freudian theories gave rise to public relations techniques that have been used to uncover irrational, often self-centered or petty motivations of whole populations, so as to either cater to or manipulate them.

(Note, this video is nearly an hour long -- wish it moved a bit more quickly -- but the info is fascinating and important, and the visuals and audio are terrific -- well-edited, with lots of cool archival stuff. If you can't spare the time, I'm providing a cursory summary of some of the main ideas below.)



These psychoanalytically-derived techniques have been used not only by businesses in designing or selling products but also by politicians (and, I might add, by religious leaders -- see, e.g., Brands of Faith) in marketing themselves.

Some using these techniques believed they were helping to bring about a more democratic system in which the consumer or voter was "king." But the point of a "focus group" is not to hear our considered opinions on any given topic but rather to discern the more primitive desires and fears we might not admit to if asked but that often, with or without our awareness, drive our behavior.

After decades of immersion in the P.R. resulting from these techniques, we've gone from seeing ourselves as exploited by business interests to -- rightly or benightedly -- viewing the marketplace as a main source of identity support and fulfillment.

But our democracy has to some extent been reduced from an electorate actively undertaking organized action to make the world better for others as well as ourselves to a relatively atomized, passive agglomeration of consumers who secretly feel entitled to prioritize gratification of their every self-centered whim.

We feel we are free, but in reality, we've been enslaved through our unconscious fears and desires. We all kinda knew that, but the documentary provides fascinating details about how it was done, which can help arm us against such efforts in the present, as well as providing insight into the implications for our future.

You can see the other parts of the series on the Internet Archive or Google Video.

On a somewhat related subject, I'd like to recommend the recent New Yorker article, "Twilight of the Books," on the effects of the rise in TV watching and relative decline in reading. Among other things, it describes studies suggesting that proficient readers may think differently than people who rely more on visual communication. While both kinds of thinking are probably valuable, it appears that, generally, visual communication involves thinking oriented toward graphic, functional-narrative or emotional content, while reading facilitates abstract reasoning and an ability to compare and contrast subject-matter based on a wider array of kinds of logic.

Interesting to think about in connection with other studies about TV. As I wrote in a previous post (analyzing the Smith/Cohen cover video of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit"), "We all live in an ever more fully-saturated mass-media environment that continually urges us to consume and invites us to flee consciousness above all. Studies have shown how much TV has in common with both addiction and brainwashing – see here, here, and here. TV is unusual in that on the one hand, the brains of people watching it appear much more inert than usual, with their critical faculties turned almost completely off, while on the other hand, they are nonetheless uncritically absorbing the commercial and other messages being transmitted."

Why We Can't Know Who Won the Primary in NH

A friend e-mailed me about a moveon.org petition along the lines of, aren't you glad they had paper ballots in NH and don't you wish they were everywhere? Which prompts this post.

Paper ballots or no, most NH votes were counted on Diebold optical scanners proven hackable and yielding dubious results in past elections. We know that in 2004, the media "adjusted" the exit polls to more closely match reported vote totals; so exit polls are no longer all that helpful. In NH, between the exit polls and the most recent previous polls not long before, there was a surprising swing in %'s away from Obama and in favor of Clinton -- but little or no changes in the %'s for other candidates.

Personally, I don't know what happened; but moveon's failure to fully grasp the problem gives me no confidence in their ability to identify the solution.

For help getting up to speed on this issue, start by checking out RFK, Jr.'s articles in Rolling Stone on election fraud in 2004 and subsequent elections, here and here, and then check for updates on the issue in democraticunderground.com's Election Reform forum.

Given that the problems have not been fixed, it's more important than ever that we vote in massive numbers.

UPDATES: Dennis Kucinich "has sent a letter to the New Hampshire Secretary of State asking for a recount of Tuesday’s election because of 'unexplained disparities between hand-counted ballots and machine-counted ballots.'" He says he's making the request not because he thinks a recount would affect his own total but in the interests of "public confidence in the integrity of the election process." More here.

But apparently, it's to be only a partial recount. Here's why one election fraud expert, Mark Crispin Miller, doesn't expect the recount to tell us whether or not fraud really occurred.

Amazon Customers' Tags for "Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left"

doughy pantload (209) wingnut welfare (184) i can has job mom (159) propaganda (157) editor promised cake (142) conservative (61) must read (44) liberals bashing books not yet published (43) politics (43) censored by liberals (40) censored by the left (39) banged out by howler monkeys (28) books written while high on cheeto dust (22) ten pounds of crap in a five pound book (15) if michelle malkin is over your head (14) social security is like treblinka (11) cheetohnacht (10) the truth (10) finally the truth (8) true (8) code pink invaded poland (7) ghost writer quit when i tried paying hi... (7) its not cheapening when we do it (7) teh stoopid (7) a fascist wannabe publishes his fantasie... (6) ein vol ein reich ein bag von cheetos (6) ghost writer quit when i tried to pay hi... (6) i can has funyuns (6) lunatic ravings (6) sadly no (6) waste of a good tree (6) attend to luicannes bunions (5) cheetohesque (5) doughy pantloads premiere (5)

dumber than a bag of hammers (5) how not to design a book cover (5) makes ann coulter seem sane (5) pathetic revisionism (5) relatives in high publishing places (5) self-parodies (5) what a boat load of crap (5) wingnut (5) worst book ever (5) bird vomit (4) bored the stenographer to sleep (4) codswallop (4) delusional (4) dialectic of cheetohlightenm ent (4) doughbob loadpants (4) excretory (4) hate is good philosophy for idiots (4) holocaust denial (4) innaleckshul wannabe wannabe wannabe lol (4) ludicrous is too kind a word (4) mother-boy (4) oxymoron (4) pantsload (4) poor catnip substitute (4) pot kettle black (4) professional simpleton (4) soon to be remaindered (4) truth (4) wtf (4) a dunce with an editor (3) blame the liberals first (3) books by rubes (3) cheeto macht frei (3)

cheeto-erotic asphyxiation (3) cheetos uber alles (3) chickenhawk (3) conspiracy theory (3) doughy (3) failure (3) fairy tales for simple people (3) hatemonger (3) ignorance (3) illiterate (3) im more delusional than mom (3) ishtar (3) jfk killed six million jews (3) jonah made a poopie (3) just kind of sad (3) lame (3) leftists (3) low-grade fish wrapping (3) missed deadlines (3) moron (3) no pictures or crayons (3) not censored if its for sale (3) only a retard would read this (3) remainder bin fodder (3) revisionist (3) revisionist history (3) rewriting history (3) the white male is the jew of liberal fas... (3) unbelievably offensive and unfunny (3) used for 35 cents in 1 month (3) vomit inducing (3) 1 star because zero stars isnt an option (2) 100 percent fact free (2)

(More about the book, by Jonah Goldberg, here.)

Texas Deer Hunting Vehicle

How could slaughtering shy, soft-eyed animals be more fun?

David Lynch on Mobile Video

Esp. true of Lynch's films, which are packed with highly-symbolic visual details that would be invisible on a small screen (regardless of the resolution).

Excerpt from "I-Be Area"

by Ryan Trecartin, via The New York Times. "Ah think Ah just saw a highly advanced, 3-D, text message of mah future self givin' me the middle finger, and I'm gonna f*ck right back in his face." -- "You're totally paranoid!" -- "Ah know what my original wants to look like, and I can't believe you tried to re-cycle me into that person . . . I mean he looks cool and Ah liked him, [but] that's not my original and Ah know he's somewhere LAUGHING . . . ."

Per The NYT, a lot longer than his A Family finds Entertainment (right) but still engrossing; judging from the excerpt, considerably less frenetic.

The same article mentions other works I'd also love to see, including new work by Sadie Benning and Nathalie Djurberg.

My Loony Bun Is Fine Benny Lava

(Thanks, Ben!)

Healthcare in the U.S.

(Graph from naked capitalism.)

So, if our money isn't lengthening our lives, where's it going?

I recently had bunion surgery and my doctor prescribed a knee-walker to help me get around during the recovery. The manufacturer told me they could ship one for ca. $250 and get it to me in 3 days.

My insurer told me it would be covered only if I got it through an "in-network provider."

Now, you might think the point of dealing with "in-network providers" would be that the insurer could negotiate cheaper prices; but apparently, no.

Out of a list of at least a dozen supposed in-network providers, it turned out only one could actually provide the item -- and it would take at least two weeks, partly because special authorization was required from the insurer, because this in-network provider's price to procure the item was over $1,000.

I called the appeals people at the insurer and said hey, we can get it quicker from the manufacturer and you'll save over $700.

The insurer could not have been less interested.

When the knee-walker finally arrived, it was an inferior model from a different manufacturer.

I have to at least ask whether the insurer and its in-network provider weren't splitting the mark-up at my employer's and ultimately all of our expense (not to mention the delay and other inconvenience).

The California Nurses Association (CNA)/National Nurses Organizing Committee (NNOC) is collecting healthcare horror stories as part of their campaign in support of publicly-funded healthcare, which they call "CheneyCare," for all of us. You can tell your own story and sign their petition here.


UPDATE: Eliz. Edwards on TDS tonite (May 20, '09) said, out of every $700 paid for to United Healthcare, $1 was paid to the CEO.

Audio Tour for the Lawrence Weiner Retrospective

From an interview of Lawrence Weiner at artkrush, re- the retrospective of his work now on view at the Whitney:

"AK: The audio tour for the retrospective . . . doesn't provide the usual explanations of the works in the show — rather, it provides a soundtrack for viewing it. What is this audio compilation, and what do you hope it conveys to viewers?

"LW: IT IS A REMIX OF RECORDINGS THAT I HAVE MADE WITH MUSICIANS OVER TIME — AN AMBIENT SOUNDTRACK."

The show at the Whitney runs through February 10, then opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles on April 13.