Hypocrite parents

October 15, 2004

It’s clearly of a piece that Dick Cheney and his wife would be indignant over Kerry mentioning their daughter’s homosexuality on the one hand, and that George Bush and his wife on the other are dead-set against stem-cell research. That piece is called double standard. I wish that more members of “first families” in the […]

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Better late than not at all

October 13, 2004

It’s taking me longer to get around the blog neighbourhood these days, and so I missed Doug‘s terrific pointer to Sarah McLachlan’s World on Fire video earlier this month. McLachlan and friends spent one tenth [correction: one tenthousandth] of a typical high-end music-biz budget to make this video, and gave the other nine-tenths (in a […]

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Jacques Derrida — Ghost Dance

October 9, 2004

Jacques Derrida died of cancer in Paris during the night from Friday to Saturday, Oct. 8; he was 74. Since it’s not a very well-known film, I decided to dig out a couple of paragraphs I wrote nearly 20 years ago about Ghost Dance, made by Ken McMullen in 1983. Among others, it starred Jacques […]

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How soon is now?

October 7, 2004

In March 1990 I saw a tv commercial, which I wrote about as follows in my journal: A group of noble and frisky children are trying to “liberate” a good cereal that is hidden away in a dark, impenetrable castle, guarded by a dangerous, huge man dressed in black.  All black, including a hood: he’s […]

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Wiped out

October 6, 2004

(My hands smell of vicks vapo-rub.) Bah, bad bugs, bed bugs, bugged to bed, must. Ugh, bad bugs, nasty virus bad bugs, mid-level low-hanging bad-weather ever-present pests, find another bed. Wind? Clear sweep? No not yet? Salt, sore throat rinse, swish bad bugs out, salt should clear. Gold once, minerals both, fortresses on salt roads, […]

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Chocolate Cake

October 5, 2004

I think I’ve mentioned The Chocolate Cake a couple of times recently. This is the recipe, adapted from the Devil’s Food Cake recipe in Iva Bennett and Martha Simon’s 1973 edition of The Prudent Diet: Assemble a collection of three smallish bowls and one larger one for mixing. Take 1/2 cup of cocoa powder — […]

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Mixed bag

October 2, 2004

No chocolate cake recipe yet. I’ve been reading around in several unrelated articles, all found on Arts & Letters Daily. First, there was a fascinating interview with Christopher Hitchins by Johann Hari, In enemy territory?: He is appalled that some people on the left are prepared to do almost nothing to defeat Islamofascism. “When I […]

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The Devouring Mothers, what Niki had to say

September 30, 2004

I have a book, handbound with string through two holes in its cardboard covers. It’s small — maybe 20cm x 16cm? — and was “published” in November 1972 by Gimpel Fils, probably in conjunction with an exhibition. It’s called The Devouring Mothers and consists of twenty-six pages of lithographs by the ever-wonderful Niki de Saint […]

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Ma(r)king it up

September 29, 2004

Haven’t written much lately, have I? A few annoying health problems intervened, and the usual “I can’t believe I have this much to do” panic, too. Yes, it’s true that I try to spout a constant stream of anti-fascist propaganda when I cleave to denigrating the “work makes you free” claptrap, yet somehow I, too, […]

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I stopped wearing contact lenses; sadly, the medieval period still advances on us

September 14, 2004

An early winter has settled on Victoria — at least, that’s what it feels like. Drought and heat are just a memory: gone the searingly empty summer air incinerated to elemental oxygen, replaced instead by palpably moist air, a veritable wet blanket that encourages the unspeakable undercover doings of moss and fungus and all things […]

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