Top Ten

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I hope the vomiting virus doesn't make its way over here.

The sickness is often known as "winter vomiting disease".

It is caused by bugs known as small round structured viruses and is highly contagious.

The illness usually starts with the sudden onset of severe and dramatic vomiting.

The victim can be absolutely fine one minute and then vomiting the next. Some people develop diarrhoea.

Symptoms usually last for 24-36 hours, and there are rarely any long-term effects

Just some of the more entertaining and unconnected-to-entries-I've-posted search referrals I've had. But Sharon Tay and "woman with four legs" are the popular winners. Especially fucking Sharon Tay. And now I'll get more...

Actually, the "woman with four legs" is connected--she's a character in a Harry Stephen Keeler book. I did post that.

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Tuesday, January 22, 2002


I've tried a number of ad suppressor/popup killer programs over the last 2 years. Not all of them by a long shot--Proxomitron, AdSubtract, Webwasher among others. But enough. And the new Cookie Cop 2 from PC magazine works the best of any. I don't so much care about cookies (unless they're from an ad), but this utility allows you to see the addresses associated with each site as it downloads, and it's fairly simple to isolate the ones generating the ads. Both Opera and K-Meleon kill popups anyway, so that wasn't so much of a problem. But if you're looking for freeware that does the job simply and effectively, I recommend this one.

Best thing I've gotten out of my complimentary PC Magazine subscription. One of the few things too. It's mostly for small business owners and their IT people.

Maybe I'll list the software I use, when I can access my template again. grrrr...

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Looks like the banks are beating the regulators to choking online gambling.

Although demand by bettors remains brisk, whether they are wagering on sporting events or online games like roulette and blackjack, the credit card companies are concluding that the business is more trouble than it is worth. Internet gambling is illegal in many places, and some types of wagering are barred by federal laws. But beyond that, customers frequently deny having placed bets or simply refuse to pay their credit card bills after running up large gambling debts.

That can pose trouble for credit card companies - as when a California woman lost more than $100,000 but argued in court that gambling debts were not enforceable and had her debts wiped clean in a court-ordered settlement. So in many cases, the credit card companies and banks refuse to approve a transaction if they know it is for a gambling site.

Some Internet casino owners say four out of every five transaction requests are now denied. As a result, some gambling sites, particularly those serving the U.S. market, where eight of every 10 wagers originate, have seen revenue fall at least 30 percent. Analysts who cover the industry say the liquidity crisis has already forced some operations to close.

Experiences included:

Interviewers telling interviewees that another candidate had been selected, but that the firm required that they conduct interviews nonetheless.

Interviewers asking questions illegal under state or federal anti-discrimination laws. These include probes of a candidates' marital status, plans for conceiving children, religious beliefs and political views.

Interviewers providing no resolution regarding a job search and ignoring candidates' attempts to follow up, even after multiple interviews with the company.

The plentiful labor supply created by the country's rising unemployment rate - 5.8 percent in December, the highest in 6 1/2 years - coupled with uncertainties caused by the recession have made the interview process a breeding ground for the unprofessional treatment some job seekers are now experiencing, experts say.

"What you're seeing are people who are panicked, and they're acting the way human beings do in the worst of times, which is badly," says Suzy Wetlaufer, editor of the Harvard Business Review.

"Most (hiring managers) do understand that they have candidates' hopes and dreams in their hands. It's not maliciousness, but the extreme uncertainty of these times," she says.

We can see many foreign websites using fanarts made by Japanese without permission, and most of the time they are displayed with the word "author unknown"......... But do you think that is allowed? Then full credit is given, is that okay? The answer is NO.

Many foreigners think that they are not "stealing" because of the credit, but the Japanese authors, WE prohibit reusing without permission, so that will be same as stealing TO US. So if you want to use Japanese fanarts, why don't you just follow Japanese's rules? Before using fanarts, we are asking others to contact the author. Even if you can't read what is said in Japanese website, We're sure you can find the webmaster's mail address easily if you look around.

First off, this situation with the immigrants with sewn lips and confiscated children is just too much. Ah the New Cruelty. It's patriotic, you know.

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I can see things are wiggy even with the password problem fixed. Please bear with us.

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Now I can't save changes in my template. >:\
Let's see if this still works...

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I can't believe it, it works. I haven't been able to post since 12/25, turns out the FTP password was changed/wrong--I don't know and don't care. Much to post, be back later today.

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Thursday, December 27, 2001

{Billy Wilder} ...But look, it's so stupid, you know, because the guys, the leading men, who get awards have to walk with a limp or act retarded. They don't notice the guy who does all the hard work, who is making it look easy. You can't just open a drawer beautifully and take out a tie and put on a jacket. You have to take out a gun! You have to be afflicted. Then they notice you. Those are the rules that govern the forty-five hundred members of the Academy. I don't know, they're just ... You know very well that Mr. [Dustin] Hoffman, is gonna get the award if he plays the guy who is autistic in Rain Man [1988]. He sweated so much, he worked so hard, so many things to remember. Bullshit.

{Cameron Crowe} I think it's much harder to spot the delicate balance that Lemmon finds in The Apartment [1960]. One inch to the right or to the left and the movie is lost in pathos or sweetness.

{BT} That's right. That's why he was nominated for an award for Days of Wine and Roses [1962] ... because he played a drunk.

{CC} So it's always been like that.

{BT} Sure. Mr. Ray Milland, surely not an Academy Award-worthy actor--won the Oscar for Lost Weekend. He's dead now, so I can say it ... It's just kind of ... yeah ... Academy Awards, phhttt . [Laughs.] Anybody who plays a hunchback has got better chances than a handsome leading man. That is the revenge of the voters, you know, that they don't get the girls.

The amazon link has a deal for this plus Truffaut's interviews with Hitchcock, to which this book has been compared, and which I imagine falls into that same category of essentials for film aficionados.


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Via Blather and "Jennifer Cecil," this vital item about Cambodia's new scorched earth policy on karaoke bars.

"If we know of any karaoke parlor still open, go to close it immediately and take tanks to knock it down,'' Hun Sen told a military commander during a speech broadcast on state radio.

The nation of 16 million will be the first to forever empty its wallets of the familiar coins and notes and replace them with euros. The changeover begins Jan. 1, and the government has opted for a four-week blitz transition - the swiftest among the 12 countries embracing the historic currency switch.

"We're capable of doing it faster than any other member states, so we will," said Finance Ministry spokesman Raymond Salet. "We are the only country that will do it in a month."

[...]

The guilder - which means "golden" - dates back to 1325. In its modern incarnation its bank notes reflect the nation's identity: the painter Frans Hals, the philosopher Baruch Spinoza, a red-and-white lighthouse representing the Dutch seafaring tradition, a bright yellow sunflower redolent of Vincent van Gogh.

The euro bank notes, with their pictures of generic European bridges, are bland by comparison. But still, the Dutch seem unmoved. The general attitude seems to be, "it's only money."

The indifference is linked to traditions of tolerance, pragmatism and the free economy, says Rob Vos, a professor of finance and economic development at the Institute of Social Studies.

The massive flow of Badtrans bytes to Rucker Jr.'s servers caught the eye of the FBI's computer crimes unit, and on Dec. 3 an agent gave him a ring. "I helped them with some information," Rucker Jr. says. "I gave them information I thought might be pertinent to catching the people who were victimizing my server."

But the bureau wanted something else. "They asked me if I could store the data [harvested by the worm] for them and burn it on a CD- ROM," he says. Rucker Jr. balked. "The data I have is juicy. It's good for Big Brother surveillance, but it's not going to help them solve their case." So he stalled, telling the agents to mail a written request for the material.

[...]

"My instinct says not to give this information to the FBI," Rucker Jr. muses. "Thinking that Big Brother is right all the time is bad for our country, it's bad for people's rights, it's bad for people who want to live in little hellholes like this running their own computer companies."

Nearly 10 years ago, Bernstein, one of the original Watergate reporters, issued a perfect indictment of the American media in his magnificent essay, "The Idiot Culture," in the New Republic on June 3, 1992.

"We do not serve our readers and viewers; we pander to them ... giving them what we think they want. In this new culture of journalistic titillation, we teach our readers and viewers that the lurid and the loopy are more important than real news," he noted. Then, he charged that the media--"probably the most powerful of all our institutions today"--wastes that power by ignoring their responsibility to challenge, inform and educate people about what really matters.

Instead, "the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal. The consequence is the spectacle, and the triumph, of the idiot culture."

Everybody agreed heartily. Naturally, things got much worse. Bernstein?s essay, remember, was written before "All O.J., all the time," and before JonBenet Ramsey.

[...]

Naturally, everything is different now.

Or is it? Without doubt, the media sobered up the moment the planes hit. Nobody has been taking the war or the international crisis lightly. No station I know about would refuse any longer to put the president on, live, any time he wants.

[...]

By all appearances, it has been a considerable military success.

But what else has it been? Basically, the press has acted as a conduit to report what our government says about the war--with, to be sure, occasional reports and videotapes from the other side.

However, reporting is not merely stenography. This is a vastly complex story, touched on occasionally in high-brow productions like Frontline, but treated as a 50s western by most of the media, and, most of all, by the president of the United States, who speaks to the nation as if we were all 5-year-olds in Methodist bible school.

But years of virulent right-wing propaganda, endlessly repeated on talk radio, has thrown journalists on the defensive. Today, many are most concerned with not being seen as "liberal," a word the far right has been allowed to demonize. Too many reporters seem scared someone will question their patriotism. They should worry instead about asking the hard questions, right now...

Magnifying and applying come I,
Outbidding at the start the old cautious hucksters,
The most they offer for mankind and eternity less than a sprit of my own seminal wet,
Taking myself the exact dimensions of Jehovah and laying them away,
Lithographing Kronos and Zeus his son, and Hercules his grandson,
Buying drafts of Osiris and Isis and Belus and Brahma and Adonai,
In my portfolio placing Manito loose, and Allah on a leaf, and the crucifix engraved,
With Odin, and the hideous-faced Mexitli, and all idols and images,
Honestly taking them all for what they are worth, and not a cent more,
Admitting they were alive and did the work of their day,
Admitting they bore mites as for unfledged birds who have now to rise and fly and sing for themselves,
Accepting the rough deific sketches to fill out better in myself ..... bestowing them freely on each man and woman I see

[....]

The day getting ready for me when I shall do as much good as the best, and be as prodigious,
Guessing when I am it will not tickle me much to receive puffs out of pulpit or print;
By my life-lumps! becoming already a creator!

--from stanza 41 of Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

typing this as I listen to "Big-Eyed Beans From Venus" by Capt. Beefheart and the Magic Band

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Let the Saturnalia begin!

Orgiastic

Confuse forms, unleashing of passions
Confuse forms, by means of inversion
Emotions carried to the extremes
Orgiastic of chaos of supreme

Has to bring the world's dissolution
In a momentary disruption
Although the moment seems definitive
The urge to escape from time into pas-time

Opposites in juxtaposition
While the orgy lasts ultimate fulfillment
Timelessness of eternal moment
The beginning, the end transmutation

That's Stereolab of course.


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There should be an outcry about Russian journalist Grigory Pasko's sentence of 4 years in a high security prison for exposing environmental abuses of the Russian Navy. Will Bush/Ashcroft try to do the same thing here? Slyer than that probably.

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Fractious unsettled nature and humanity during this holiday week for Christians and Kwanzaans(?).

Israeli troops exchange fire and chase gunmen back into Jordan, in the most serious incident for a year on the normally quiet border.

At least 42 people die and dozens are injured as two packed trains collide in Indonesia's Central Java province.

Raging bush fires - blamed for five deaths - force many Australians to abandon Christmas Day celebrations.

President Olusegun Obasanjo sends troops to restore order in south-west Nigeria, after Justice Minister Bola Ige is shot dead in Ibadan.

Argentina's new government announces that it will halt payments on its foreign debt - the biggest default in history.

Six people are killed and 27 hurt as fire spreads through a thatched home for the elderly in Schleswig-Holstein.

India and Pakistan move extra troops and hardware to the volatile border region as diplomatic accusations fly.

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Language, it seems to Sebald, cannot fulfill the narrative task of remembrance. The haunting photographs of long-dead children and abandoned rail stations don't just illustrate his novels; they complete them, and in a unique, Sebaldian way. But Sebaldian describes more than just the author's style. It is more than merely his choice of words, or his idiosyncratic illustrations. It is his willingness to take on the immensely personal and subjective side of social catastrophe, of lost worlds and innocence. Like his characters, from Jacques Austerlitz to the semi-autobiographical, unnamed narrator in "Vertigo," Sebald is possessed by a vision of a lost Europe, one still visible in paintings and architecture, one dedicated to reason and equality yet harboring the violence that would inevitably destroy it.[link]

W G Sebald--whom I've heard much of since Austerlitz has been published in English recently--dead in a car accident at 57, on the 14th. As Clay Risen points out in the review, how Sebaldian. And I haven't read his book yet, but I know that's true already.

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Monday, December 24, 2001


This review of Juni'chiro Tanazaki's (1886-1965) newly translated stories reminds me of Barbara Gowdy's work. That book cover is a still or poster from the movie Kissed , based on one of Gowdy's stories "about a beautiful young woman who is sexually excited by the intense energy she believes corpses radiate." Molly Parker is very uh cool in this film.

Also brought Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami to mind, a book I loved in the late 70s. I'll have to find a copy of it and his roman a clef 69.

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New evidence that "nothing is true," even as less and less is permitted (to paraphrase Burroughs' favorite Hassan i Sabbah quote).

It was way too easy to find those links.

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2001 will obviously be remembered for the lives lost on 9/11 most of all. But we lost some significant others as well. Kesey, Harrison and Lemmon stand out for me.

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I think the concept of integration by income instead of race is a great idea, done intelligently. Anything that moderates the brittle (though often subconscious) income-based class divisions that haunt American society can't be a bad thing, unless standards are lowered for everyone in the process. That shouldn't be a big deal, and communities like Cambridge MA and Charlotte NC are leading the way.

The shift is in part the result of a series of recent court decisions that have struck down some racial integration efforts as unfair to nonminority students or putting too great a burden on school systems. For many districts, income-based school placement represents a legal path toward racial diversity, since income and race are correlated.

But it also reflects a growing awareness that income, even more than race, is a strong predictor of academic achievement. Notably, students in schools with high concentrations of poverty are much less likely to succeed.

"Two factors are combining to really promote this as part of an important trend," says Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, and author of a book on economic desegregation. "Quite frankly, a number of communities are trying to find a legal way to maintain racial diversity as a byproduct. But there are also a lot of very sound educational reasons to want to do this on its own."

[...]

In general, experts say schools have a bigger impact on low-income children than on middle-class kids, for whom family is a stronger educational influence. So putting poor students into a largely middle- class school usually benefits them without hurting the rest.

But "if you sprinkle a few middle-class kids in schools where there are overwhelming concentrations of poverty, they're not going to change the culture of the school, and they're likely to do worse," admits Mr. Kahlenberg. "Most studies seem to find a negative effect [in schools with] above 50 percent low-income."

The Cambridge school committee is trying to reassure parents by requiring that schools improve their instruction as well as their equality. If such safeguards don't work, the risk is that well-off parents may flee the system.

Unfortunately, among much of the literati, there's a belief that fantasy literature is something less than what the classics of the Western canon teach. You know, fantasy is just escapism. But it's also about the search for truth and for our place in the world, a yearning that has only heightened since Sept. 11.

In Harry Potter-speak, it's the mortal, or "muggle," Vernon Dursley's way of executive life in the mundane moneymaking fast lane versus a way of life that passionately embraces wonder. It's the quest for low-orbit missile defense versus aiming for the moon and Mars. One clings to self-interest, the other reaches for "the cathedral of the imagination," as Wyn Wachhorst terms it in "The Dream of Spaceflight."

If there's any escapism in fantasy for adults, it's the desire to escape the incessant demand to make money in order to accrue more things, like a snail hugging its hard shell about itself. It's also about getting away from conformity with others whose social and political views and skin color are like one's own, and where adventure means a sale at Filene's and the latest episode of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"

One is a Western battle to end international terror; and the local warlords clearly want to do that too. But it also appears that these warlords are as interested in making as much money as possible out of the world's current interest in eastern Afghanistan.

[...]

The goal of taking bin Laden "dead or alive" has never, apparently, been a top priority of the Afghan commanders, senior commander Haji Zahir said yesterday.

[...]

At the same time, Zahir and several other leading warlords in the Jalalabad area have displayed the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that has long made the region famous for smuggling opium and Sony television sets.

Journalists who arrive on the Afghan border without the proper permission from the governor are turned away and told to buy into the "package deal" in Peshawar. That package provides them food, lodging, and access to the front lines. Even after getting into Afghanistan, "customs" posts up and down the road to Jalalabad demand additional "entry fees."

The world has been living on tenterhooks, thanks to the Afghan fighters whose love for hype and a great battle includes giggling uncontrollably at incoming rocket fire.