"Anthony Wiener:

. . . Taking the sex out of sex scandals." (Thanks, Pryderi!)

So, what did Weiner do that's so intolerable?

Did he break any laws? No.

Did he broadcast lewd images to minors? No.

Did he cheat on his wife? Not unless you count flirting with other women and likely wacking off while fantasizing about them, things most other politicians have doubtless done.

Is it that he was vain? Surely, again, other politicians are equally guilty.

Is it that he got caught and lied about it? Maybe; but the behavior he got caught in had nothing to do with his job performance, and i.m.h.o., was none of our dam' business. (It's not like Weiner lied, e.g., to get the U.S. into an unnecessary war.) (And if it is our dam' business, by all means, let's get ALL our Congresscritters on the record re- their masturbatory habits, and see if we can catch any more fibbers.)

Is it that he spoke out for liberal positions and made most other Dems look like wusses?

Boone Needs Dental Surgery!

Mostly recently seen on the cover of Glamourpuss, Boone first achieved stardom as the "Narcoleptic Cat":



Unfortunately, he's apparently enjoyed a few too many bonbons. My friend and Boone's human, Julie, writes,

[Boone] was recently diagnosed with Feline Oral Resorptive Lesions on his two lower canine teeth, which is very painful and makes it difficult for him to close his mouth all the way. His vet prescribed some pricey pain pills to last a week or so, but he will have to undergo surgery to take care of the problem. This means he'll have to be put under anesthesia and have those teeth removed and the roots drilled.

We have positive expectations that the surgery will be successful and he'll be able to enjoy life again, but the estimated cost is in the hundreds. Although Kitty Wigs enjoys a lot of press, we are a very small (1 person/1 cat) home business.

Several of Boone's fans and friends suggested that we stage a fundraiser to help defray the cost of surgery, so here it is. We chose to use this site so we can provide complete transparency about the costs and how much money we have raised.

You can donate or find more info here.

AUDiNT: Dead Record Office at Art in General

. . . (NYC). This sounds really interesting; wish I could go. "The artists [Jon Cohrs, Toby Heys and Steve Goodman] relay the evolution of the project as follows:

For the past 60 years, AUDiNT have been conducting research, rituals, and experiments into the opening of the 3rd ear, a dimension that is opened when sound, ultrasound, and infrasound are simultaneously deployed in a precise schema of sequencing, duration, and amplification. The 3rd ear forms a conduit for the channeling of voices and frequencies allowing communication between the living and the dead, sanity and insanity and between disparate locations in space and time.

Ever since AUDiNT's defection from the U.S. military at the end of WWII, our mission has been to submerge the frequency-based phenomenon that had been accidentally discovered by the Ghost Army (when they deployed 3 turntables to fabricate deceptive soundscapes intended to deceive the Nazis as to the true numbers and whereabouts of the allied forces). Wishing to keep this powerful sonic weapon out of government and military hands, AUDiNT's founding members smashed the original battlefield discs, and split the waveformed content of the original master recordings into small packages of sound which were then discretely embedded into sound effects and stereo fidelity records.

Throughout the following decades AUDiNT were responsible for the mass production of the test tone record and special effects vinyl—a collection that ended up in flea markets, thrift stores and church bazaars, forming what is known as The Dead Record Network. It was through the Dead Record Network that we distributed these encrypted recordings as an open secret, ensuring that, in the future, the vital bits of analogue information concerning the ultimate vibrational weapon discovered during WWII would remain in a fragmented social circulation.

Adapting to the tactical battlefields of the 21st century networks, capitalizing on the viral dynamics of digital networks, we are systematically uploading our research archive that has been compiled throughout the past 60 years (while probing the hauntological power of sonic weaponry). This ritualized uploading of the spectral archive aims to create a prospective archive of waveformed affect that is propagated throughout the living dead networks of our communication systems. This tactical shift - to open up our archive to the public - relates to our new mandate of arming the mass populace with the efficacy of sonic weaponry so that it does not become the sole preserve of the military-entertainment complex. With its dark science and sonically dissonant content, AUDiNT's Dead Record Office is the enshrined location from which this viral transfer begins.

(Emphasis supplied. In an interesting line from Macbeth (Act iv, scene i), the eponymous protagonist exclaims to the three witches, "Had I three ears, I'ld hear thee.")

The installation will be on view June 17–July 23, 2011, at Art in General, 79 Walker St., with an opening reception Fri., 6/17 6-8pm and a special program, "The Martial Arts of Sonic Hauntology," on Mon., 6/13, 7-8:30pm.

Opportunity Cost: What the US Gave Up for 10 Years of Tax Cuts

"ThinkProgress, using data on various social spending projects from the National Priorities Project – which does these calculations for the cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars – has estimated ten other possible policies we could’ve paid for at the same $2.5 trillion price of the Bush tax cuts. . . . For the same price as the Bush tax cuts, which did little to help the economy, we could’ve sent tens of millions of students to college, retrofitted every household in America with the capacity to generate alternative energy, hired millions of firefighters and police officers, effectively ended our national shame of having kids who lack health care coverage, or put millions of more teachers into classrooms. . . . " Details here.

Inside View

More here. (Thanks, Ben!)

Bloomsday at The Reading Room

"Bloomsday" is celebrated annually in Dublin, New York, and elsewhere on June 16, the day on which James Joyce's Ulysses takes place. Bloomsday celebrations sometimes feature a walking itinerary reproducing that of the book's main character, Leopold Bloom, as well as readings from the novel, which has been acclaimed by some critics as the greatest ever written.

Per Wikipedia, an unabridged reading in 1982 ran nearly 30 hours; but Bloomsday Dallas will last just a few. The celebration will begin at 6 PM with a screening of Harrell Fletcher's video art piece, Blot Out the Sun (wrangled by moi), which was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial. In Fletcher's video, service station employees and patrons read lines from the novel concerning death, love, social inequality, and the relationship between individuals and the universe. This will be followed by readings from the novel by Jeff Whittington, Charles Dee Mitchell, and Diane Orr.

In addition, Jennie Ottinger's "book" sculpture, Ulysses, will be on view, courtesy of Conduit Gallery. The work is part of her larger library project, which was shown at the 2011 Volta Art Fair in NYC.

Bloomsday Dallas will take place on Thurs., June 16 at The Reading Room, 3715 Parry Ave. (between Exposition and Commerce), from 6 - 10PM.

More at The Reading Room.

UPDATE: Below is scholar Frank Delaney's rap tribute to Joyce (thanks, Karen!):

New Work by Mark Leckey

The trailer for his new show, See We Assemble, at Serpentine:



Leckey won the Turner Prize in 2008. Below is what I believe to be all of his Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (1999). All this should give you plenty to enjoy and digest; but if you want more, size your browser window so you can see both Fiorucci and Cassini Mission in the previous post below, keep Fiorucci on full volume, reduce the Cassini volume to one bar, and start both from the beginning, so they're running at the same time. Re-start Cassini as desired.)



More Leckey on his myspace page or on YouTube.

"Cassini Mission"

By Chris Abbas, using NASA footage.



(Thanks, JP!)