Peace Activist Cindy Sheehan Says She Was Roughed Up at New York Rally Scuffle

Reincarnation of Peter Pan
Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer
Kensington Gardens

By Rodrigo Fresan, translated by Natasha Wimmer Faber and Faber, 384 pp, 24.95 dollars


The 100th anniversary of the first performance of Peter Pan has brought renewed life to James Barrie's personification of youthful spirit. There has been a new film version of the play and even a movie made about how the diminutive Scotsman was inspired to write his most famous work. None view the story through a darker glass than Kensington Gardens.

Argentine expatriate novelist Rodrigo Fresan weaves an inventive double helix of literary DNA, intertwining a fictionalized biography of Barrie, the most successful dramatist and author of the Victorian era, with a first-person account of the life of Peter Hook, a fictional children's novelist who has stepped over the edge of reason and into a Neverland of his own creation.

A sort of ying-yang duality lies at the core of the novel, with each element of Barrie's life story having its counterpart, in some cases a funhouse mirror reflection, in Hook's life.

The son of an iconic swinging '60s rock star couple, Hook grows up on a posh estate called, a bit too obviously, Neverland. His parents, the children of wealthy aristocrats, are the nucleus of a rock band called the Beaten Victorians--a sort of anti-Beatles who lament the loss of traditional British values while still embracing the psychedelic scene.

Like Barrie, Hook loses a much loved brother and is neglected and unloved by his parents. While Barrie's mother shut herself up in her room after the death of Barrie's elder brother, Hook's grief-maddened mother dies in Peter Hook's arms singing the chorus of her hit single "You're Not Mine" to her young son after biting off his earlobe.

Unlike Barrie, who stayed childlike in many ways throughout his life, Hook becomes a hardened, cynical adult almost overnight after taking LSD in Kensington Park as a young child.

Hook grows up to become the J.K. Rowling of his world, penning a long-running series of best-selling children's novels starring Jim Yang and his time-traveling bicycle. While Peter Pan is the boy who refuses to grow up, Yang's time-traveling leaves him unable to do so. Fresan makes clear that in as much as Barrie's Peter Pan was inspired by and modeled on the Llewelyn-Davies brothers, Yang is very much Hook's literary alter ego.

Hook tells the story of his life, intermingled with Barrie's, to Keiko Kai, a Japanese child actor cast to play the part of Yang in the first movie based on Hook's work. Hook has kidnapped the young thespian and has sinister plans to wreck his own reputation and try to destroy the "virus" of children's literature forever:

"I was infected; and terminally ill, I consecrated myself to the virus--literature--whose mission, hardly secret at all, is to kill reality and annihilate childhood, supplanting and improving both as much as possible until they've become immortal stories that will never grow old."

Fresan, like Barrie and Hook, understands that children are not innocents in the sentimental, blameless way that adults generally portray and imagine them, but only unknowing or perhaps unconcerned with the consequences of their actions, whether noble or brutal. Pedaling back and forth in time like Yang, Hook, propelled by Fresan's often surrealistic descriptions and energetic, magic-realism tinged storytelling takes his young prisoner well beyond the "second star to the right and straight on 'til morning."

Kensington Gardens is a fascinating, dark and yet whimsical meditation on the nature of childhood, fantasy, neglect and imagination.

(Sep. 18, 2005)

After all, Cajun is actually a derivation of Canadian
This despite the wingnut whining about how no one is helping the US. Note the date of the story. Sept,8. CBC News: Louisiana senator: Thank you Canada

Today's heroes
If this doesn't break your heart, you ain't got one.
Survivor Story: 6-Year-Old Leads Five Toddlers, Baby To Safety - News - MSNBC.com

a joke
A lobbyist, on his way home from work in Washington, D.C., came to a dead halt in traffic and thought to himself, "Wow, this seems worse than usual."


He noticed a police officer walking between the lines of stopped cars, so he rolled down his window and asked, "Officer, what's the hold-up?"


The officer replied, "The President is depressed, so he stopped his motorcade and is threatening to douse himself with gasoline and set himself on fire. He says no one believes his stories about why we went to war in Iraq, or the connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda, or that his tax cuts will help anyone except his wealthy friends. So we're taking up a collection for him."


The lobbyist asks, "How much have you got so far?"


The officer replies, "About 14 gallons, but a lot of folks are still siphoning

(courtesy of SSquirrel at Eschaton)

A short note from the president



George W. Bush writes a quick note to Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice at the UN world leaders summit.

"I think I might need a bathroom break? Is this possible?"

The President of the United States of America ladies and gentlemen, the leader of the free world, is not sure if he needs to go to the toilet or not. He quite literally will not take a leak without Condi Rice's say so. And we wonder why the world is screwed up.

yes, the potty break note is real
Gelf Magazine: Bush's Bathroom Break: The Photographer Speaks

Nothing's as much fun as fishing with your dad


The Bushes spend some quality time together in New Orleans (stolen from the fine people at suckful.net)

Attention citizens!

The U.S. government today announced that it is changing its emblem from a bald eagle to a condom because the latter more accurately reflects the government's political stance. A condom allows for inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks and gives you a sense of security while you're being screwed.

(someone brought this one into work today and I really had to share)

"Things come apart"

Short of calling in airstrikes, could FEMA and the local authorities have made things much worse in New Orleans?
a quick collection of stuff:

Police wouldn't let evacuees out New Orleans

Drownie, you're doing a heck of a job

Toxic waters will make New Orleans unsafe for a decade

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain --- or else

It's the poverty and class warfare, stupid

mercenaries, not looters, rule the streets

and Krugman, as usual, is dead on correct

What are the wingnuts smoking?

The Liberal Avenger points us to the latest in wingnut outrage over the design of a memorial for the victims of the plane hijacked and crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11. What's next, will they demand a patriotic boycott of crossiants?

IN YOUR EAR
Kevin Wood / Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

ROLLING STONES
A Bigger Bang
Toshiba EMI, 2,548 yen

The day will eventually come--probably about three weeks after Keith Richards' funeral--when the Rolling Stones no longer rock, but their latest release, A Bigger Bang, shows that time has not yet arrived.

Bang is the best Stones album in at least a decade, harkening back to the band's golden era of Exile on Main Street and Sticky Fingers. While not quite in the same league as those earlier classics, Bang could almost be taken for a collection of early '70s B-sides.

Despite the ravages of time, Bang has the energy of a band a third the age of the Strolling Bones. Kicking off with the none-too-subtle barnyard double entendre of "Rough Justice" ("At one time/ you were my prairie chicken/ now you've grown into a fox/ Once upon a time/ I was your little rooster/ am I just one of your cocks?"), Bang has plenty of Mick Jagger strut, but the real musical impetus is the relentless, driving beat provided by Charlie Watts and the twin rhythm guitar attack of Richards and Ron Wood.

The Stones have never really had a strong instrumental soloist in the rock guitar hero mode since the tenure of Mick Taylor, but Richards can do more with a handful of power chords and some distortion than most musicians can with a full orchestra. He and Wood use slide guitar fills and crunchy rhythm riffs to excellent effect. Richards even gets to trade places with Jagger, taking the lead on two songs.

Standout tracks include the acoustic blues number "Back of My Hand" and the rocker "She Saw Me Coming." Politically inclined fans will enjoy the skewering of the White House cabal in "Sweet Neo Con."

The Stones take a lot of abuse from hipper-than-thou critics for their huge corporate-sponsored tours and relentless plowing of the same blues-based classic rock field, but it's a genre they largely invented and perfected long ago.


NEW PORNOGRAPHERS
Twin Cinema
P-Vine Records, 2,415 yen

On first listening to Twin Cinema, those unfamiliar with the New Pornographers might think they've stumbled onto some long-lost drug-inspired late-'60s collaboration between ABBA, Brian Wilson, Jefferson Airplane and Blondie.

The Vancouver supergroup (most of the members have had success with other bands or as solo artists) draw on a wide diversity of influences and abilities to craft incredibly layered, complex power pop that embraces '60s psychedelia, folk rock, New Wave and producer-driven progressive rock with trace elements of punk and a dozen other rock sub-genres. Despite the array of influences, the thoroughly postmodern Pornographers' sound is not so much derivative as it is distilled, and the heady mash of inspirations makes a potent brew.

The band makes excellent use of its wealth of vocal talent with alt.country songstress Neko Case trading lines with frontman and main songwriter A.C. Newman (Zumpano) and gruff-voiced Dan Bejar and the whole band chiming in on harmony backing vocals that add further energy and depth to the tuneful melange of sound.

Newman's hook-laden songs stray far from the typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus pop structure, yet manage to be catchy and memorable while following a form all their own. While maintaining a cohesive sound throughout the album, the cuts range from up-tempo indie rockers like the title cut to the more gentle, sunny-sounding acoustic-guitar tinged "These are the Fables" and the Beatlesesque "Sing Me Spanish Techno."

(Sep. 8, 2005)

NOLA cops hard pressed to cope -- No tolerence for looters?

An interesting story from AP's generally excellent Jim Litke....

New Orleans' Thin Blue Line Stretched Taut

By JIM LITKE
The Associated Press
Sunday, September 4, 2005; 7:33 PM
NEW ORLEANS -- There may be no better way to explain the desperation on the city's ravaged streets than this: In the past few days, two police officers took their lives with their own weapons and dozens have turned in their badges.

New Orleans' thin blue line is frayed at the edges.

Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley on Sunday identified two officers who committed suicide as Sgt. Paul Accardo, the department's spokesman, and Patrolman Lawrence Celestine. He called both "outstanding cops" and friends.

Asked how they died, Riley put a finger to his temple, then paused.

"Both of them," he said, shaking his head slowly. "Used their own guns."

Several dozen of the city's 1,600 police officers have failed to report for duty, and some have turned in their badges.

*********************************************

Remember the wingnut's "shoot the looters" campaign and the President's promise of "zero tolerance for looting"? Well if you read all the way down the story you find some interesting information about how the cops in NOLA have been feeding themselves....
*********************************************

On top of the burdens of law enforcement, officers have had to forage for food and water and even for places to relieve themselves.

"Our officers have been urinating and defecating in the basement of Harrah's Casino," Police Superintendent Eddie Compass said last week. "They have been going in stores to feed themselves."

*********************************************

The obvious joke about some officers obeying orders to shoot looters a little too strictly would be in very bad taste, but then so is the on-going bullshit about how the people of NOLA turned into looting savages overnight because of the hurricane. People do what they need to do to survive. There will always be a few assholes who use others misfortune to fill their own pockets, in this case its a few thugs, usually its the Republican Party and Halliburton.

Until I get around to it

heeeeeeere's Sisyphus

Katrina round-up

All the Katrina links you'll be able to stomache may be found here with a huge tip of the fedora to Sisyphus Shrugged, whom I really ought to add to the links, as she writes a damn good blog.

...And the horse he rode in on

How is George W. Bush a lying prick bastard, let me count the ways:
number one
number two
number three
number four - and by the way, Dubya's concern for Trent Lott is sure to be moving for those in New Orleans 9th ward who have lost what little they had

What would you look like on South Park?
Create-A-Character Hours of fun for the whole family.

About as sharp as bag of wet mice

"I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."
-George W. Bush

""When the levy break, we gonna have no place to stay"
-Led Zepplin
ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES has the full skinny on the reaction of curious George

So much to blog, so little time to blog it in

I'm just returning to work after two weeks off. I thought I'd have plenty of time to do lots of deep meaningful blogging while on holidaze (and daze is the operative term) but nooooo! Instead, as the photos below should indicate, I've been bicycle Yoda for the two young ones ("Do or do not you must, there is no try") who have finally found their wheels. Ken has everything but starting pretty much down pat without the training wheels after only two weeks and should be pedalling off to kindergarten by the end of the week. Lucy is more interested in telling everyone about her pink princess bike than actually pedalling, but seems to have the hang of it.

Other than that we spent some time at the parents-in-law's in Sendai (home of beef tongue and earthquakes) saw lots of fireworks and spent a couple days at the beach in Kamakura - more about all this later.

In the meantime, New Orleans is being washed out into the Gulf of Mexico and another good blogger has died in Iraq.
His blog can be found here - and anyone who has a large photo of Woody Guthrie on their blog and carries a copy of the Subterraneans around while serving in Iraq has to have gone to heaven.