obliterati

A guy went in front of Congress several months ago and said if we don't stop the coal burning plants it would be the apocalypse. Not long later some brand new coal burning plants were supposed to go into operation but I don't know what happened with them because I got distracted with other stories. Pretty much it's the apocalypse all over and coal is just a small part of it and I was directing my attention to gasoline, but I'll try to get back on track. Coal is what bad children get for Christmas, everyone knows that right?

But this guy said the only reason he wasn't chaining himself to the doors of newly built coal burning plants was because he was still needed as a scientist and as someone respectable enough to be able to go to Congress and explain how the apocalypse works.

So who got coal for Christmas this year? You see Knoxville recently? This is what 5.4 million pounds of coal sludge looks like:


So that was Monday. But then last night, Obama was without electricity for 11 hours when the coal-powered electric grid went down on Oahu due to massive lightning storm. They hurried to install three new generators and wound up rejecting a fourth, and Ban Labolt says he spent the night in the dark on purpose. My experience with electrical blackouts is pretty specific, and in circumstances like these they're supposed to imply a specific message but I wasn't sure how that applied to Obama. I'm supposed to be able to explain these things, and I was halfway through The Day The Earth Stood Still this afternoon and realized my friend was right this morning, it's all about the coal, the lightning was pretty pissed off about the coal.

They're replaying the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony on NBC at the moment and it's funny in hindsight to see Bush and Putin in the stands conferring and totally ignoring the show, because you know, those pesky Georgians!

Okay pay no attention to this, the whole problem is friggin Space Ghost, which is not a problem, it's all really funny actually.

The thing about the LJ firings is that they fired all the engineers, I kind of don't like that part. I guess they're using the support staff in Russia to maintain the site in the meantime so maybe it's not completely over. If they fired Chris from LJ Abuse though that would be cool.

I liked Sup, they were helpful in dealing with some stalker problems I had once when SixApart did pretty much nothing about it. The one problem I did have with Sup is that I wasn't allowed to use the specific names of people in public posts describing the awful shit they did, which is weird when you're talking about people who are trying to become known in a public arena. Art criticism is protected speech as far as I'm concerned, you should be able to say out loud when the stuff people make is stupid. When you see a mugging and you scream "that guy just mugged an old lady!" it shouldn't be censored as libel or whatever. That guy just mugged an old lady! Everyone should throw forks at him! Maybe that would be different on another blogging service. Someday we can all throw forks at the bad guy, maybe we should organize this by email.

If Livejournal dies you can still find me over at MySpace or Friendster or Wordpress or Blogger or Facebook or Vox or Insanejournal or Tumblr or Tribe or Twitter if you likes. I diversified awhile ago but Livejournal still had all the people so I hung around.

Get back metal children!



Anyway, I'm not done with Livejournal yet. I have problems with people I met on this site but still I'm not done with it. Not to be starting any cold wars or anything but hopefully someone appropriate in Russia will be told what happens when you take my blanky away, and we'll be able to keep our nice playground for awhile.

Morning television is so insulting
the evening still darkened over the highways and a chipper voice slicing into you
in quick pulses about a fucking bake sale.

Who knows what the hell happened when it was darkness everywhere all night
You know?
Who knows what the hell happened except that the farmer's almanac will help you get to work
and there are offramps and red lights blurring on freeways and there is the entirety of the dark side of the earth

half a planet mostly asleep and the vitamins made by sunlight depleted
background radiation and exposure to the voices in the sky until there was nothing else

there's a pile up on 1-5 corridor exit east to fremont
there's a caution out on the early corn trading

Random find:

On the third day, Jesus rose from the dead and he didn't see his shadow, so he went door to door and slid down the chimneys of all the well-behaved children in the neighborhood while dressed as a rabbit. And he left chocolates in their beds and this caused the Angel of Darkness to pass over their houses at night and take only those evil men who had looked back upon their wives as they were led out of Hades. And he turned their wives into pillars of salt, around which men of the nation gathered and fell to arguing over who got the salt and God grew angry and caused them to babble unintelligibly to one another, and so language was born. And it was with this new language that Peter betrayed Jesus in the garden, and he went and hid beneath the rock that became the foundation of the company we know today as Prudential.

Last weekend a friend brought me to a party at the KBOO radio station where I had a very nice time and even broke my rule and drank a beer. That part was medicinal and only made me tired, but it was still a great night. I got to speak with the Program Director and one of their record spinning people and ask about the Zappa special they do every year, where did they get the rare music and everything, and it was all very rewarding. KBOO and Zappa had come up elsewhere recently when somebody found a lost interview from 1974 in KBOO's archives, and when I recognized a sticker for Kill Ugly Radio on the lockers in the KBOO hallway, I decided these people were okay, and definitely Friends of Frank.

The Program Director asked the DJ guy when exactly Mother's Day was this year, the usual day of their Zappa marathon, and they looked it up and found it on May 8, which was well-timed for them because it's in the middle of their funding drive, and anyway I think it was good I brought it up, as they might've walked into that holiday unprepared being pre-occupied with other matters. Their formal Zappa collection is basically the complete catalog released on Rykodisk years ago when that company was first starting, but for the Mother's Day special they call in the ringers who bring the rare stuff to the studio. The fact that Mother's Day falls during their funding drive this year (KBOO is listener supported and supposedly has no ads) raises an interesting question about Zappa and money, typified perhaps by the new heading Gail Zappa put up on frankzappa.com: "Lumpy Money". Lumpy Money is also the name of a 3-disc set that she and the Zappa Family Trust put out recently, officially Frank's 85th album, made up of unreleased recordings from near the period when Mr. Zappa recorded "We're Only In It For The Money" in 1968. Its creation between "Lumpy Gravy" and "We're Only In It For The Money" is the obvious origin of the title "Lumpy Money", but still it's kind of humorous considering the state of the Zappa Family Trust these days. Gail really really wants you to buy Lumpy Money, I think she's made that abundantly clear, these people need cash, their shit is falling apart. Here is Gail grabbed from the cover of Absolutely Free, where Frank had originally put a caption under her image which read "My pumpkin".



A few days after the radio station party my friend who brought me there in the first place reported that the Program Director had estimated me to be "the 4th largest Zappa fan", which is some extremely high praise, though lo, I am old and crusty, I forget notes sometimes and say wrong things, I just do not know if I am worthy of this claim of being the 4th greatest Zappa fan, but I shall try to earn it somehow.

For me there is never enough reason to stop playing Zappa tunes or talking about Zappa tunes, it is a complete lifestyle more thorough than Soviet Communism, and even though he's been dead since 1993 there has never been a shortage of new material to think about. I've never even heard Civilization Phase III for instance, so I still have that out there waiting for me. There has also been no shortage of people playing the music, from marching bands, to guitar instructors, to independent piano freaks, multiple touring bands of old Zappa musicians, entire festivals full of people in multiple countries, it is a fairly awesome thing to behold. I never really believed when he died that anything like this could take root, I thought the music was too inaccessible and too hard to listen to for a large audience to be sustained, but I am happy to be wrong about this.

There has been weird shit happening in Zappa land lately. A few weeks ago Ray White didn't show up for rehearsals with Dweezil's band ZPZ and every phone number they had for him was disconnected, so they were very confused until Dweezil was able to find an email in his records from Ray saying that he was quitting the band over a pay dispute. Apparently some musicians got their wages cut in half because the egregiously expensive ZPZ tickets weren't providing enough cash for everything. It sounded like there was some disappointment with Ray over his quitting but to think about it logically, the guy quit because there was no money for his efforts, and his telephones were disconnected for some reason, probably not artistic reasons, probably because he couldn't even afford to keep a telephone while not getting paid to go on tour to sing with the band. Part of this could be my fault maybe, when they came to Portland a few months ago I went to a different show on Hawthorne instead and was just all sorts of dazed when someone told me ZPZ was in town. Wha? Where had I been? We wandered around Hawthorne that night to see if any of the band was still hanging around at the bar on 39th maybe but it was deserted. If I had been more prepared maybe I could have somehow helped Ray White get a few more dollars. Sorry Ray.

Before that ZPZ lost another musician, a keyboardist named Aaron Arntz, and they were really confused trying to figure out how they were going to play tours of Australia and Japan without him. Dweezil's requirements for a potential replacement are pretty strict: "a replacement would need a minimum of 4 months of solid solitary practice on all of the material before showing up to a single rehearsal with the band", so it's not like a new keyboardist is showing up soon. Dweez has reported in from Japan though and said the shows are going pretty okay. You know what they have in Japan? Shitloads of female Zappa fans, girls who know all the words and headbang to the guitar solos. I know I know, this makes no sense, what kind of sicko mutant of any gender at all would learn all the words? *cough*

But this is not why I've come here today, in the hours before the Easter Bunny comes by later and gets me baked as shit.

I am here because of Easter.

LEGEND HAS IT that Frank had a favorite among all his guitar solos, specifically the one from Filthy Habits, a very evil song in 5/4 which was finally released on the Sleep Dirt album after years of turmoil with Warner Brothers. WB did not like that Frank was trying to fulfill a four-record deal by showing up with four records' worth of music for one album, which was to be called "Leather". Warner Brothers wanted four different albums presumably with four different promotional tours for each one, and so refused to release Leather in its original form. Then Frank tried to release it under another label but Warner Brothers broke out some lawyers. Then he just went and played it on the radio for free, and the only public copies of Leather for many years were owned by hobbyists who managed to randomly record the radio that afternoon. The songs came out on subsequent albums in bits and pieces, most notably Sleep Dirt, which is without doubt one of my favorite Zappa albums of all time. "The Ocean is the Ultimate Solution" from the end of that album might be one of the greatest rock instrumentals ever recorded by anyone at all, and the science fiction theme of Sleep Dirt only gets more timely as years go by. What would the giant spiders talk about while on their way to conquer Earth? Would they only talk business? Would they let personal drama get in the way of destroying the Earth people? Do you have a guess?

Conversely, transversely, whatever, to Frank's love of Filthy Habits, Gail Zappa has a favorite solo of her own. ACCORDING TO LEGEND, Gail's favorite Zappa solo is Watermelon in Easter Hay, from the end of the Joe's Garage album, which was a three-act musical play from 1979 about Frank's turmoil with Warner Brothers and other forces. The autobiographical Joe character had been put in jail for breaking an expensive Scientology sex toy, where he was imprisoned with the musicians and record executives who became criminals when music had been outlawed. He fantasized about guitar solos and irritating noises through all his time in prison and when he was finally released, there was no one to play tunes with anymore, and seemingly no hope for himself.

The Central Scrutinizer narrates Joe's dilemma:

This is the CENTRAL SCRUTINIZER...Joe has just worked himself into an imaginary frenzy during the fade-out of his imaginary song...He begins to feel depressed now. He knows the end is near. He has realized at last that imaginary guitar notes and imaginary vocals exist only in the imagination of The Imaginer...and... ultimately, who gives a fuck anyway...So...So... Excuse me...So...Who gives a fuck anyway? So he goes back to his ugly little room and quietly dreams his last imaginary guitar solo...

Which happens to be Watermelon in Easter Hay. The song's name comes from an unattributed rant from somewhere along the way, "playing in this band is like trying to grow a watermelon in Easter hay."

WHY DOES THIS MATTER? WHAT IS THE POINT!

The point is that since then, Gail has very famously become the most prominent form of Zappa censorship there is left anywhere in the world, pulling valuable items off Youtube and suing a yearly Zappa festival in Germany because she wasn't getting any royalties. Even Warner Brothers has been acting up again. I would like to try to find a way to convince the Right People to let the Right Music through at the Right Time.

This is a version of Watermelon in Easter Hay played by an enthusiast, a friendly neighborhood guitar instructor, who was not paid to do it and who shouldn't have to be scared of playing such a beautiful song on the open internet.

http://g1zmo.livejournal.com/42471.html

The cat has been good today.

Filmmakers have more than a feeling about Boston
By Carolyn Giardina
Sun Dec 23

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Boston is fast becoming Hollywood Northeast. Martin Scorsese's "The Departed" was set in the Bay State and more than half of the film was shot on location, but only about $6 million of its $90 million budget was spent in Massachusetts, with a larger amount of the location work going to New York, according to Nicholas Paleologos, executive director of the Massachusetts Film Office.

"Fast-forward 24 months: 'The Pink Panther 2' had nothing to do with Massachusetts and not a single scene takes place in Massachusetts -- but Massachusetts got the lion's share of the location spending," he said. In large part, this trend can be attributed to an aggressive tax incentive plan allowing productions that drop more than $50,000 in Massachusetts to receive a 25% rebate on everything they spend in the state. Nine major features were shot in Massachusetts this year, pouring more than $125 million in direct expenditure into the local economy, up 150% from 2006, said Paleologos

"Before (the incentives), those pictures would stay in the state for a week or two shooting exteriors and then shoot in another place where they could get a tax credit," he said. Contributing to the program's success to some degree is the greenback's slide against the Canadian dollar, prompting producers to look for cheaper location options in the States. And Boston has been met with enthusiasm. "Everywhere you turn, the camera is a feast for your eyes," said Mike Paseornek, president of production at Lionsgate. "Boston has not ever been overused as a city for a setting in movies. You have a fresh look at something audiences haven't seen for quite a while. "As long as the tax incentives stay in place, we will be returning to the city."

Lionsgate recently filmed "My Best Friend's Girl," starring Dane Cook and Kate Hudson, in the Boston area. The production team took full advantage of the city, shooting along the Charles River and Commonwealth Avenue as well as at Fenway Park, Quincy Market and Boston Common. "Boston was right for this movie, and the tax incentives made it possible to get the film done within the budget," Paseornek said.

Similarly, Rob Paris, one of the producers of "The Lonely Maiden," starring Morgan Freeman, Christopher Walken, William H. Macy and Marcia Gay Harden, said: "We are filming downtown at a customs house. We shot in the North End and Paul Revere Mall. We've done great iconography to incorporate into the movie, which I think is going to give it a nice extra layer that previously we weren't going to have." He added that the producers initially were looking to shoot in Vancouver, but the slumping U.S. dollar coupled with the tax incentives made Boston the more advantageous choice.

Other productions that filmed in Boston this year included Denzel Washington's Christmas Day release "The Great Debaters," and the Mick Jagger-produced "The Women," starring Meg Ryan. In production are Richard Kelly's "The Box," starring Cameron Diaz, James Marsden and Frank Langella, and "Real Men Cry," starring Mark Ruffalo, Ethan Hawke and Amanda Peet.

Descendants of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse break away from US
WASHINGTON (AFP)

The Lakota Indians, who gave the world legendary warriors Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, have withdrawn from treaties with the United States, leaders said Wednesday.

"We are no longer citizens of the United States of America and all those who live in the five-state area that encompasses our country are free to join us," long-time Indian rights activist Russell Means told a handful of reporters and a delegation from the Bolivian embassy, gathered in a church in a run-down neighborhood of Washington for a news conference.

A delegation of Lakota leaders delivered a message to the State Department on Monday, announcing they were unilaterally withdrawing from treaties they signed with the federal government of the United States, some of them more than 150 years old.

They also visited the Bolivian, Chilean, South African and Venezuelan embassies, and will continue on their diplomatic mission and take it overseas in the coming weeks and months, they told the news conference.

Lakota country includes parts of the states of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming. The new country would issue its own passports and driving licences, and living there would be tax-free -- provided residents renounce their US citizenship, Means said. The treaties signed with the United States are merely "worthless words on worthless paper," the Lakota freedom activists say on their website. The treaties have been "repeatedly violated in order to steal our culture, our land and our ability to maintain our way of life," the reborn freedom movement says.

Withdrawing from the treaties was entirely legal, Means said. "This is according to the laws of the United States, specifically article six of the constitution," which states that treaties are the supreme law of the land, he said. "It is also within the laws on treaties passed at the Vienna Convention and put into effect by the US and the rest of the international community in 1980. We are legally within our rights to be free and independent," said Means.

The Lakota relaunched their journey to freedom in 1974, when they drafted a declaration of continuing independence -- an overt play on the title of the United States' Declaration of Independence from England. Thirty-three years have elapsed since then because "it takes critical mass to combat colonialism and we wanted to make sure that all our ducks were in a row," Means said. One duck moved into place in September, when the United Nations adopted a non-binding declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples -- despite opposition from the United States, which said it clashed with its own laws.

"We have 33 treaties with the United States that they have not lived by. They continue to take our land, our water, our children," Phyllis Young, who helped organize the first international conference on indigenous rights in Geneva in 1977, told the news conference. The US "annexation" of native American land has resulted in once proud tribes such as the Lakota becoming mere "facsimiles of white people," said Means. Oppression at the hands of the US government has taken its toll on the Lakota, whose men have one of the shortest life expectancies -- less than 44 years -- in the world.

Lakota teen suicides are 150 percent above the norm for the United States; infant mortality is five times higher than the US average; and unemployment is rife, according to the Lakota freedom movement's website. "Our people want to live, not just survive or crawl and be mascots," said Young.

"We are not trying to embarrass the United States. We are here to continue the struggle for our children and grandchildren," she said, predicting that the battle would not be won in her lifetime.

Free coats! - About 1,000 Coats Headed To S.D. Reservation
KATHY WATERS/HIGHLANDS TODAY
By Bill Rettew Jr. of Highlands Today
Published: December 20, 2007

From left: Sheri and Simon Bjorn sort coats on Tuesday in south Lake Placid. The couple and other members of their family are going to Wounded Knee in South Dakota to deliver about 1,000 coats and other donated items.

LAKE PLACID — A local winter coat drive to warm the residents of a Lakota Sioux reservation at Wounded Knee, S.D., exceeded the expectations of organizer Betty Luckey and her family.

Luckey dreamed of collecting 500 coats. Thanks to overwhelming response, she will be able to present almost 1,000 coats to 500 residents — and just in time for Christmas.

The residents are unable to afford winter coats and often bundle up with blankets and wear several shirts. Coats donated include five fur coats, several coats manufactured by London Fog and many made from cashmere and camel hair. "There were beautiful coats hanging in closets — some never worn, with the tags still on them — and many were used very little," said Betty Luckey. "Several people bought new coats — especially for the children."

Betty Luckey, her four grandchildren and her two daughters are packing for an early departure today, with a trailer in tow, to arrive in time to give out coats Sunday evening. "Santa Claus has been really, really busy — a job well done," said Betty Luckey. "The people of Highlands County really responded. I'm going to have the happiest Christmas of anybody on the planet."

Sheri Bjorn said her mother planned for years to help the Indians after a stint as a Bible school teacher at the reservation and is excited to travel in one of vehicles towing trailers headed to South Dakota. "When she started to get the word out, she didn't know if anybody would respond," said Sheri Bjorn, "and now we don't have room for anything else. It's all going to go, we just don't know yet how. "I think it will all work out. Everything has so far."

Three trucks containing coats and supplies, towing horse trailers or U-Haul type trailers, were stranded by severe weather Monday night in Nebraska, but were able to reach the reservation on Tuesday.

A separate trailer is headed north, packed full with toys. One hundred fifty children will each receive a new toy and a second used toy which appears almost new. The Faith Lutheran Church, of Sebring, donated dozens of winter coats which were slow sellers in the church's thrift shop. Pastor Stanley Hollow-Horn of the Wounded Knee Church of God will help with distribution at the uncompleted church and local community center.

Electrical heaters were also purchased at Wal-Mart to heat a room in each of the reservation's homes. "So badly they need heaters," said Luckey. "Many homes are without heat because the propane gas gives out."

Luckey wants to also present all 500 residents an orange or other piece of Highlands County citrus. "I want to do it every year," said Luckey, about the trip to South Dakota. "I hope my children continue it."About 1,000 Coats Headed To S.D. Reservation

Fire Breaks Out on White House Grounds
Shawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency
A fire broke out Wednesday in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington.
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: December 20, 2007

WASHINGTON — A two-alarm fire broke out on the White House grounds Wednesday morning, sending 1,000 federal workers scurrying for safety and damaging Vice President Dick Cheney’s ceremonial suite in the historic Eisenhower Executive Office Building across the street from the West Wing.

Mr. Cheney was not there when the fire started about 9:15 a.m.; he and President Bush were in the White House Situation Room for an intelligence briefing. The two were informed of the blaze when they returned to the Oval Office, and later went outside together to shake the hands of firefighters who had responded.

There were no serious injuries, but one person, a marine, suffered cuts when he punched his hand through a fifth-floor window to escape the smoke by crawling onto one of the building’s ornate Mansard roofs. He could later be seen, in his full dress uniform, calling to rescue personnel, who quickly reached him and escorted him to safety.

The ornate gray Eisenhower building, built in the 1870s and 1880s to house the War Department, the State Department and the Department of the Navy, was billed as “an ornament to the city of Washington” during its construction. Richard M. Nixon used it for his day-to-day working office, preferring it to the Oval Office. Dwight D. Eisenhower held the nation’s first televised press conference there.

The building’s centerpiece is the second-floor ceremonial office of the vice president, with two Belgian black marble fireplaces and wooden floors designed in a geometric pattern of mahogany, white maple and cherry. The office was used by 16 secretaries of the Navy beginning in 1879. In 1929, after a Christmas Eve fire damaged the West Wing, President Herbert Hoover moved in.

The desk is of particular significance; it was first used by Theodore Roosevelt in 1902, and its inside top drawer has been signed by all who have used it since the 1940s, including President Harry S. Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson when he was vice president.

It was not clear Wednesday whether the desk sustained any damage. Mr. Cheney’s spokeswoman, Lea Ann McBride, said the office, which Mr. Cheney has used for television interviews and swearing-in ceremonies, suffered smoke and water damage, but was not damaged by the fire. The White House press secretary, Dana Perino, lamented that the “gorgeous floors” are now “under water.”

Ms. Perino said the fire apparently began in an electrical closet or a telephone room not far from Mr. Cheney’s suite; city fire officials said it did not seem suspicious.

But, this being Washington, conspiracy theories and political wisecracks were rampant in its aftermath. When Mr. Bush visited wounded soldiers at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center in the afternoon, a reporter asked just how Mr. Cheney managed to be in the president’s office at the time of the fire.

Mr. Bush just chuckled.

Holli Chmela contributed reporting for this article.

Scientists find source of cosmic dust
Thu Dec 20

PASADENA, Calif. - Scientists in California have uncovered the best evidence yet that cosmic dust in the early universe mostly came from the explosions of giant stars.

The Spitzer Space Telescope recently detected large amounts of space dust, 10,000 Earth masses worth, in the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A located 11,000 light-years away.

The discovery comes two months after Spitzer found freshly made dust in the wind bursting out of super-massive black holes.

Astronomers believe both supernovae and quasars are responsible for the dust that helped seed early stars. Dust is essential in the cooling process to make stars, which are predominantly gas.

Researchers at NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology used a telescope instrument to analyze infrared light from the supernova and construct maps of the dust to determine the quantity and composition.

Results will be published in the Jan. 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

Hopes Dim for U.N. Solution for Kosovo
By WARREN HOGE
December 20, 2007
Kosovo Struggles to Forge an Identity (December 17, 2007)

UNITED NATIONS — The Security Council signaled Wednesday that it would not be able to resolve the status of Kosovo, the breakaway Kosovo Struggles to Forge an Identity (December 17, 2007)Serbian province, and that a solution would have to come from outside the United Nations.

John Sawers, the British ambassador, emerged from a closed Council meeting to say that what he had heard inside from Vojislav Kostunica, the Serbian prime minister, and Fatmir Sejdiu, the president of Kosovo, “underlined just how enormous the gulf is between the two parties.”

Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, said that the two had “irreconcilable differences” and that the time had come to proceed with granting Kosovo the independence it has sought but Serbia has resisted.

“The continuation of the status quo poses not only a threat to peace and stability in Kosovo but also to the region and in Europe,” Mr. Khalilzad said.

Mr. Sawers said the European Union would proceed based on the plan for “supervised independence” with protections for the Serbian minority developed by Martti Ahtisaari, the United Nations envoy, and sent to the Council in March. Serbia and Russia, its ally on the Council, had rejected that plan because it led to independence for Kosovo.

The dispute has pitted the principles of sovereignty and self-determination against each other and produced a stand-off between Serbia, backed vigorously by Russia, and Kosovo, supported by the United States and the European Union.

Massimo D’Alema, the foreign minister of Italy, who presided over Wednesday’s session as this month’s Council president, said the intervention of Russia and the United States had pushed the Serbian government and Kosovo even farther apart.

He said that President Boris Tadic of Serbia had told him, “I can’t let the Russians be more Serbian than me.” And the Kosovars, Mr. D’Alema said, “can’t let themselves appear less Kosovar than President Bush.”

While Mr. D’Alema said Italy backed the European Union plan for Kosovo’s independence, he said “the Americans have underestimated the difficulties of the situation.”

Leaders of Kosovo’s 1.8 million ethnic Albanians have said they will declare their independence only in coordination with the United States and Europe, both of whom have counseled against abrupt action. Mr. D’Alema said he believed that the declaration would be made in March. Kosovo, a province of Serbia with a population that is 90 percent ethnic Albanian, has been administered by the United Nations since 1999, when an American-led NATO bombing campaign ended Serbian repression of the Albanian majority.

Serbia, with the strong backing of Russia, says it will never agree to the departure of Kosovo, which it views as a cradle of Serbian nationhood.

Serbia is instead offering a return to the autonomy it had as part of the former Yugoslavia.

Wednesday’s meeting occurred after four months of talks among Belgrade and Pristina and mediators from the United States, Russia and the European Union that were held to satisfy Russian demands for more time. The West contends that the talks produced no movement and Moscow argues that they were substantive and should continue.

Restrictions for Australian terror supporter
Thu Dec 20

ADELAIDE, Australia - Former Guantanamo prisoner David Hicks remains a terror threat, a magistrate said Friday as he ordered restrictions on his movements after he is released from an Australian prison next week. Hicks, a former kangaroo skinner who was convicted of supporting al-Qaida at a U.S. military tribunal after being captured in 2001 in Afghanistan, will be subject to a midnight-to-dawn curfew and have to report to police three times a week under the order. "I'm satisfied that coupled with the defendant's views expressed and his capability and training ... that the defendant is a risk of taking part in a terrorist act," Federal Magistrate Warren Donald said.

Hicks is due to be released on Dec. 29 from the Yatala high security prison in the southern city of Adelaide, after completing a seven-year prison sentence struck after a plea deal with U.S. authorities that resulted in him being returned home from Guantanamo. The father of two was captured in December 2001 by the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, where he had been fighting with the Taliban, and spent more than five years at Guantanamo Bay before being tried. A U.S. military commission at Guantanamo sentenced Hicks, a Muslim convert, in March to seven years in prison, with all but nine months being suspended after he pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorism. Under a plea bargain, Hicks was returned to Australia to serve the remainder of his sentence.

Hicks has admitted he attended al-Qaida training camps in Pakistan, and police prosecutors who sought the control order said evidence showed Hicks undertook "substantial training" in basic arms and combat, guerrilla warfare and advanced marksmanship from al-Qaida and the Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. On Thursday, police lawyer Andrew Berger quoted letters sent in 2001 by Hicks to his family in which he said he had met al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden 20 times and described him as a "lovely brother." Hicks' lawyers said he did not object to being the subject of a control order, but that he believed some of the conditions were too onerous. Hicks' father, Terry, has said his son wants to forget about his recent past and get on with his life by enrolling in university.

Thomas Logan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Publisher: Marvel Comics
First appearance Origin #1 (November, 2001)
Created by: Bill Jemas
Paul Jenkins
Joe Quesada (story)
Andy Kubert (art)

Characteristics
Abilities none

Thomas Logan is a fictional character of Marvel Comics. He was created by Bill Jemas, Joe Quesada, and Paul Jenkins. He was featured in the limited series Origin, which detailed the formative years of Wolverine of the X-Men and was published from November, 2001 to July, 2002.

Character biography

Thomas Logan lived in Alberta, Canada during the late 19th century. He was the groundskeeper for the Howlett estate, but was also an alcoholic, and was short-tempered. He is the father of Dog Logan, but his exact date of birth is unknown.

There is much debate as to whether or not he is in fact James Howlett's biological father. This is hinted towards in the series, with the fact that the adult James Howlett looks exactly like Thomas Logan. The fact that Wolverine at some point in his life deliberately starts going by the name Logan also lends credence to this theory.

He was an abusive, alcoholic father who beat his own son and introduced the boy to the drinking of alcoholic beverages. He had a violent temper, a mean disposition, and flew into uncontrollable rages.

He was kicked off of the Howlett estate for failing to control his son. Afterward, Thomas returned armed, with his son Dog, and killed his former employer John Howlett. He was in turn killed by James Howlett when the youth drove his newly manifested bone claws into Thomas' chest. James killed Thomas Logan to defend himself and his mother from Thomas, who was drunk, armed, and had already committed a murder.

Powers and abilities

Thomas Logan was not known to have any superhuman powers, but as his offspring may have been mutants, it is possible he may have been one as well. He definitely did not have a regenerative healing factor. There is another cause of James' powers-in a comic, it says that James could have inherited his powers from his mother, Elizabeth Howlett, who committed suicide because of that possibility.

Cool car.

Such a relief to find sculpture that doesn't suck. So nice. Ahh.





Something which takes talent to make.





Something not made by a sculptor too busy shaving designs in his pubes to execute something wonderful.

I saw The Fountain last night and obviously liked the story. Some day when the principles used in the plot are more well known maybe they'll laugh at the melodrama involved.

I wrote something for Warren Ellis' board on a thread about the "danger" of being "political" and it included the story of being followed in Stockton on election day when all our cars broke down and our cell phones stopped working, and also I was going to mention the thing about the undercover NYPD people at the Billionaires meetings, but then quit the application without saving because I needed to shut the computer down in a hurry for something.

This is the picture I was going to post with the little blurb:

Reet is in San Fran now, he just had an opening, I always laugh at that word now, "opening".

Shit, I couldn't embed a video on this thing. It was here:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/116