Archives for July 2007

Remarks by Dana Gioia on Arts Education

I received this through an email list and wanted to share it:

IN THE FRAY: The Impoverishment of American Culture Remarks delivered by Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in his Stanford Commencement Address on July 17, 2007

There is an experiment I’d love to conduct. I’d like to survey a cross-section of Americans and [...]

Not falling far from the Bush

BBC Radio does a story about a planned coup by a group of right wing businessmen, including Prescott Bush.

The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse [...]

Writin’ & Fightin’

Write Fight is back and I’ve entered into this weeks battle! The challenge was to write a story using the title: “Death Comes with ________” where each writer could fill in the blank or use the word “Bananas.”

I chose to write a story called “Death Comes with Jeff.” If you can take a few minutes [...]

Rich, White & Stupid

. . . But very, very scary!!

An amazing report from The National Review’s cruise: a bunch of rich, white, reactionary, neo-cons who don’t bother to censor themselves and say things like:

A sweet elderly lady from Los Angeles is sitting on the rocks nearby, telling me dreamily about her son. “Is he your only child?” [...]

Read This: A great Mother Jones article about Iraq

I just read an amazing piece in Mother Jones: “The Way to Go In Iraq,” by Peter Galbraith. I’ll be honest, I am against the war, have been from the beginning, yet I don’t really know what is going on over there. I hear about “benchmarks” but don’t know what those benchmarks might be [...]

Blog Structure

So, a few weeks ago I made a big deal about how I was going to do daily entries and that each day would have it’s own topic. While I wasn’t 100% on that commitment, I was trying to keep up with if for about 3 weeks. Then, last week I stopped doing it. Why? [...]

GRRR!! Can’t get the bullets removed from my pages list!

If anyone can make a suggestions, I would hugely appreciate it. Here’s what I think is the necessary code:

From the CSS:

/*** NavBar Format ***/

#Nav { margin-top: 8px; padding: 0; list-style: inline; float: right; font-family: Calibri, Verdana, Trebuchet, Arial, Sans-Serif; font-size: 14px; margin-right: 12px; }

#Nav li { float: left; color: #fff; }

#Nav li.first a{ color: #fff; text-decoration: none; }

#Nav a { float: right; padding: 0 5px 0 5px; text-align: center; line-height: 30px; text-decoration: none; color: #fff; width: [...]

New Music

A very dark and scary piece that I created tonight using Garageband loops and samples from the Freesound Project.

Voices Decay and the City Screams a Death as Alien Crystal Bleeds

Samples used include:

plagasul – “grito matriz” cognito – “perceptu_schoolyard” fabe – “bigben_5_uhr_5_a_clock_my_grandmas_clock” meatball4u – “explode4″

the “All Dead” Sample is a supposedly real EVP of a ghost – can’t remember [...]

Playing the Negative: Theatre as “Not . . . But”

It’s a Brechtian thing, but as I was writing a story, I realized that I have a habit of noting when characters do not say or do something. If every decision we make is, in one sense at least, a negation of all the other possibilities we might have chosen, how do you represent this [...]

Keith Olberman Calls Out Bush

You really need to see this!

(hat tip to Pam Spaulding at Pandagon)

(link to Crooks & Liars)