Bill O'Reilly: Is He a Demagogue?

The evidence.

'Must Be a Devil' Diplo

Sometimes It's Good to Be an (Honorary) American

Today's the birthday of two of my favourite Americans: John Crowley and Woody Allen. Crowley wrote the novel Little, Big, which showed me that genre writing can produce great literature (rarely, yes, but it's worth looking), and is also responsible (at least partly) for much of my present happiness. When Lesha and I began our epistolary romance we traded questions about favourite things, including book, mine, of course, being Little, Big. She then bought and read (eventually - but twice, and it's now one of her faves, too) this book. And so I was bitten with the smittenbug. I couldn't help but give my heart into the keeping of such a girl. And Woody made one of our favourite films. Annie Hall, yes. But also so many others: Manhattan, Sleeper, Love and Death, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Everyone Says I Love You, Sweet and Lowdown. So he's answerable for many of my misguided and neurotic notions about romantic love, I guess. He and scores of loveaddled English poets. Anyway, happy birthday guys, and thanks.

'Books Written for Girls' Camera Obscura

'Love Cliché' Bran Van 3000

'Woody' Hayden

Oishii!

Delicious new discovery: Muchuu (which means 'to be in an ecstatic, delirious trance or dream' in Japanese), a British brother-sister duo playing toothsome electro-pop. 

'Somebody Tell Me' Muchuu

Halloween Shenanigans

On a lighter note, this photo reminds me of the many misspent Halloweens of my youth.

'Pumpkin' Tricky

'Youth' Beat Happening

I Am Ezra

It's Ezra Pound's birthday, one of my three favourite American poets (the others being Ammons and Stevens). And despite some very unsavoury aspects to his character (anti-Semitism, treasonous activities), he remains endlessly fascinating. We were introduced not through his poetry (so much later) but a novel by Timothy Findley, 'Famous Last Words'. And I'm not sure where I first read the following poem, but it stunned the feeble brainmeat of my appallingly callow younger self, and left me in thrall to the Imagists for at least a summer of my youth. 

Doria (transliteration of the Greek)

Be in me as the eternal moods

      of the bleak wind, and not

As transient things are–

      gaiety of flowers.

Have in me the strong loneliness

      of sunless cliffs

And of grey waters.

      Let the gods speak softly of us

In days hereafter.

      The shadowy flowers of Orcus

Remember thee.

Bonus poem:

So I Said I Am Ezra

So I said I am Ezra

and the wind whipped my throat

gaming for the sounds of my voice

  I listened to the wind

go over my head and up into the night

Turning to the sea I said

I am Ezra

but there were no echoes from the waves

The words were swallowed up

   in the voice of the surf

or leaping over the swells

lost themselves oceanward

   Over the bleached and broken fields

I moved my feet and turning from the wind

   that ripped sheets of sand

   from the beach and threw them

   like seamists across the dunes

swayed as if the wind were taking me away

and said

I am Ezra

As a word too much repeated

falls out of being

so I Ezra went out into the night

like a drift of sand

and splashed among the windy oats

that clutch the dunes

of unremembered seas

A.R. Ammons

'The Eternal' Joy Division 

Greatness

The editors of This Recording recently took it upon themselves to rank the one hundred greatest writers (ever). I know that these lists, by their very nature, are highly subjective and informed by the compilers respective biases (nationality/ethnicity/language(s) spoken and read/gender/sexual preference/socio-economic background/etc.). So while it was no mean feat, and their chutzpah (hubris?) is commendable (and I'm a little tickled that Byron placed so highly - 25 - although even I think it's ridiculous) , their inclusion of some questionably great writers has to be challenged (but it should also be said that their list certainly made me think about what makes a writer, or a work of literature, great, and that I waited with bated breath to read each installment and to see if, and where, my favourite writers made the cut). Robert A. Heinlein? Mary Shelley? Henry Miller? Lorene Niedecker? These are some of the greatest writers to have lived? I can easily think of dozens of writers I'd have opted for before any of these. And of the hundred writers, seventy-two wrote in English, fifty-five are Twentieth-Century and thirty-nine are American (no Canadians, of course, unless Saul Bellow or Malcolm Lowry are guilty by association). Which is simply absurd. Which is why I'm posting my own list (I suppose I'm as defenceless as anyone against hubris or self-indulgence). Not exactly of the one hundred greatest writers (because how can anyone decide what and who is great - apart from Shakespeare, of course, who, by the way, came in third on This Recording's list, so, clearly, it's complete nonsense), it's a list of my favourite (i.e. what I've read) novels, poets, dramatists, non-fiction works, short fiction collections and works of speculative fiction (in no particular order). But I'll preface it with a dozen (thirteen, actually) writers I think are nonpareil, and didn't make the cut at This Recording. 

John Crowley

Robertson Davies

Jane Austen 

Lao Tzu

Edith Wharton

A.R. Ammons

C.P. Cavafy

Yehuda Amichai 

Pablo Neruda

Robert Browning

José Saramago

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Anne Carson

Fiction

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

The Deptford Trilogy - Robertson Davies

The Road - Cormac McCarthy

Light Years - James Salter

Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

Properties of Light - Rebecca Goldstein

Quarantine - Jim Crace

The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel García Márquez

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez

Justine/Balthazar - Lawrence Durrell

Alice's Adventure in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll

The Gormenghast Trilogy - Mervyn Peake

Little, Big - John Crowley

Tristram Shandy - Laurence Sterne

Cancer Ward - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Cat's Cradle - Kurt Vonnegut

The Passion - Jeanette Winterson

The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera

Emma - Jane Austen

The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins

The Leopard - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers

The Good Soldier - Ford Madox Ford

Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison

To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

V. - Thomas Pynchon

Nostromo - Joseph Conrad

Ægypt sequence - John Crowley

The Conversations at Curlow Creek - David Malouf

Written on the Body - Jeanette Winterson

The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje

Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley

Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon

Still Life with Woodpecker - Tom Robbins

Put Out More Flags - Evelyn Waugh

Scoop -Evelyn Waugh

Vile Bodies - Evelyn Waugh

Persuasion - Jane Austen

The Brief History of the Dead - Kevin Brockmeier

A Scientific Romance - Ronald Wright

The Translator - John Crowley

The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton

The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Baron in the Trees - Italo Calvino

Narcissus and Goldmund - Hermann Hesse

Notes from the Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Charterhouse of Parma - Stendhal

Thousand Cranes - Yasunari Kawabata

Poets

Anne Carson

Charles Wright

Rita Dove

Seamus Heaney

Anthony Hecht

J.D. McClatchy

Anne Michaels

e.e. cummings

John Donne

Edward Thomas

Mark Strand

Wallace Stevens

A.R. Ammons

Andrew Marvell

John Keats

Yehuda Amichai

Pablo Neruda

Emily Brontë

Eugenio Montale

Yves Bonnefoy

Pedro Salinas

W.B. Yeats

Catullus

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Walt Whitman

C.P. Cavafy

Ezra Pound

Octavio Paz

Eugénio de Andrade

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Robert Browning

Elizabeth Bishop

Alexander Pope

Lord Byron

Lars Gustafsson

Robert Herrick

W.S. Merwin

Derek Walcott

Cesare Pavese

Galway Kinnell

George Seferis

Rafael Alberti

Czeslaw Milosz

Robert Penn Warren

Fernando Pessoa

Louise Bogan

Charles Baudelaire

Joseph Brodsky

Vicente Aleixandre

Jean Follain

Drama

King Lear - William Shakespeare

Long Day's Journey into Night - Eugene O'Neill

Hamlet - William Shakespeare

Othello- William Shakespeare

Angels in America - Tony Kushner

Iphegeneia at Aulis - Euripides

Antigone - Jean Anouilh

The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde

She Stoops to Conquer - Oliver Goldsmith

The Recruiting Officer - George Farquhar

The Beaux' Stratagem - George Farquhar

Tartuffe/The Misanthrope - Molière

Ondine/The Madwoman of Chaillot - Jean Giraudoux

Uncle Vanya - Anton Chekhov

Galileo - Bertolt Brecht

Non-Fiction

Rubicon - Tom Holland

Melodies Unheard - Anthony Hecht

The Lives of a Cell - Lewis Thomas

The Island of the Colorblind - Oliver Sacks

Religio Medici/Hydriotaphia - Sir Thomas Browne

Patrimony - Philip Roth

The Oldest Dead White European Males and Other Reflections on the Classics - Bernard Knox

The Gutenberg Elegies - Sven Birkerts

The Mirror of Myth - Jasper Griffin

What Am I Doing Here - Bruce Chatwin

Speculative Fiction

Novelties and Souvenirs - John Crowley

The Earthsea Trilogy - Ursula K. Le Guin

Map of Desires - M. Rickert

Shadow of Ashland - Terence M. Green

Tigana - Guy Gavriel Kay

On Wings of Song - Thomas M. Disch

The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin

Dragonsinger/Dragonsong - Anne McCaffrey

Davy - Edgar Pangborn

The Lions of Al-Rassan - Guy Gavriel Kay

Short Fiction

Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You - Alice Munro

A Fanatic Heart - Edna O'Brien

Collected Fictions - Jorge Luis Borges

Collected Stories - Katherine Mansfield

The Stories - John Cheever

'My Year in Lists' Los Campesinos!

Hate Kills

I learned this yesterday in The New Yorker. One of the results of the anti-Semitic furore during the Dreyfus affair was, in 1943, after her arrest by the Gestapo, Madeleine, granddaughter of Alfred Dreyfus, being deported by Vichy France (rife with anti-Dreyfusards) and ending her life at Auschwitz. It's awful how words are simply useless.

'Madeleine' Saint Etienne

Fitzie!

I just learned (thank you, Garrison) that today is F. Scott Fitzgerald's birthday. I think it must be a sign that  I should re-read The Great Gatsby, don't you ? Plus he's just so bloody tragic, and I've been feeling a trifle melancholy recently, so bring on the sadness, Fitzie. 

'We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed' Los Campesinos!

Uncensored

So Banned Books Week begins tomorrow. It celebrates the importance of the First Amendment and the freedom (and right) to choose what one wishes to read. It's quite surprising which books have been challenged or banned and on what grounds. There are the usual suspects, of course, such as Twain's Huckleberry Finn (inappropriate racial slurs), The Catcher in the Rye (because it's "a filthy, filthy book"), and The Satanic Verses (blasphemy!), the Harry Potter novels (Satanism and anti-family sentiments - really?) and Philip Pullman's Dark Materials trilogy (anti-religious, political stance). But also the Lord of the Rings (burned in New Mexico as satanic), Song of Solomon (apparently it's "filth", "trash" and "repulsive"), As I Lay Dying (questions the existence of God - also contains a passage about masturbation), and The Grapes of Wrath (the names of God and Jesus are used "in a vain and profane manner"). Mostly it appears to be issues of sex (and homosexuality), inappropriate language, and the horrors and contagion of irreligious or "humanist" thinking (with a minority upset by the use of racial slurs). 

To show my solidarity with these and other writers, I'm reading a book that I own and that has suffered from repeated attempts to silence it's voice. Not sure which, though. It's between Nineteen Eighty-Four ("pro-communist"), The Satanic Verses ("blasphemous to the prophet Mohammed" and Islam and the Koran, too, of course), Brave New World ("orgies, self-flogging, suicide" with characters who show "contempt for religion, marriage and the family", and it makes promiscuous sex "look like fun"), and The Great Gatsby ("language and sexual references"). I considered The Catcher in the Rye but I've read it twice and I really prefer Salinger's stories. I'll probably pick one of the shorter works because I'm currently reading Crowley's Ægypt tetralogy, plus I just began Don Quixote (suffered water damage at some point), not to mention books borrowed from the library for research. In fact, I think it'll have to be Brave New World. Any book that can make promiscuity fun deserves a repeated reading. And I encourage everyone to read one of the challenged books from the American Library Association's list (even the Gossip Girl books have the right to be read and to an audience, I suppose). 

'Read & Re-Read' I Am Robot and Proud

Perfect Symmetry

Gorgeous new shimmery pop from Welsh indie kids Los Campesinos! 

'The Sea Is a Good Place to Think of the Future' Los Campesinos!

Bounty

Tomorrow I begin harvesting Chinese cabbages. They're a variety of Monument cabbage - not the one I thought I'd planted (apparently this a common problem, even though the seed packet described the variety I wanted), but it'll still make gallons of kimchee. So I'm preparing the kitchen and turning it into my kimchee factory for the next two days. We may be forced to eat pizza and ice cream until we're able to cook again, but I'm pretty certain Lesha will manage to bear it somehow (she's awfully resilient). So here are some photos of the garden - beginning several weeks ago, the most recent from last week (and the cabbages are even larger now).

'Cook It Up (Madlib Remix)' Aesop Rock

It's All Too Much

Our neighbourhood in North Portland (University Park) is a delight to the eyes and nose. It's simply bursting with indescribably beautiful flora: trees (majestic, warty, delicate and fruit-bearing - our neighbours have Italian plums which shade our yard and we've benefited thereby with so much fruit), shrubs/bushes, grasses, vegetables (tomatoes and pumpkins everywhere - and, yes, I know they're actually fruits) and, of course, flowers - especially sunflowers. But, since the summer is rapidly ending, the sunflowers are suffering from advanced macrocephaly. They remind me of triffids, in fact (Lesha agrees that they're quite creepy - with their enormous expressionless faces). Still, I wish I could bear their burden for them. 

'Sunflower' Low

Art Attack

Damien Hirst is a humourless wanker of the first order. And Pharmacy is an iconic work of art? I'm mystified, truly.

'Art Attack' The Maynards

Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag

I realized after posting the Gorey link that today is my (other) nephew's birthday, and in light of this my sister might assume that Gorey's work somehow indicated my feelings (conscious or otherwise) for him (or children as a whole). Which is completely untrue. I like kids, really I do (mostly) - there are many I even love. I merely stumbled into the Gorey website and decided I had to link to it. My nephew is probably the sweetest boy I know, and the funniest (ask him to tell you a joke, particularly a knock-knock joke). And what I said for his older brother's birthday is true of him as well; I don't see him often enough (it feels worse, in fact, because I moved to Massachusetts five months before his birth, and so have seen him even less frequently than his brother - and I can't believe I've been an expat for four years). Anyway, Happy Birthday from your west coast Aunt and Uncle, and I'll work on making a Gorey enthusiast of you.

Goreyness

I'm posting this link for some friends who aren't exactly thrilled that their friends and families are busily reproducing, and are thus feeling increasingly outnumbered as representatives of a happily childless state.  And I suppose for anyone else who has an unequivocal loathing for children, or simply loves Edward Gorey's work (or macabre art) as much as I do. 

'Cool Kids of Death' Saint Etienne

Amour Haiku VIII

Leaves underfoot crunch - 

berries too, with purple pops. 

Late summer, Portland.

'Gone Like Summer' Strawberry Story

'I Know Where the Summer Goes' Belle & Sebastian

How to Stuff...

This YouTube video has surfing, day-glo bikinis, bikinied girls shimmying, and awesomely big hair. Not to mention infectious tweepop to brighten everyone's day. What more could one ask for?

'Wild Bikini' Tullycraft

Birthday Stuff

It's my nephew's birthday today. He's all of seven, which simply flabbers my gast. I don't see him often, which upsets me profoundly. He's such  a sweet and interesting and fun boy that I wish I could see him more. Time's passing much too quickly, and it's really disturbing. So happy birthday and have a wonderful day, you. 

'Happy Birthday' Röyksopp

Too, Too Sick-making

Ugh! Am I the only one who finds the Evian babies commercial repulsive (and disturbing and exploitative)? Who finds this sort of grotesquerie adorable? This, my friends, is an omen of worse things yet to come. So go read some Waugh to while away your remaining time on this ailing planet of ours. 

'A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays' De La Soul

Books Are Too Fun

So we've reached the midpoint of the year, and I've been ruminating (perhaps sympathetically, since I've been reading about ruminants - becoming meat, alas - in The Compassionate Carnivore). I read a lot (it's been suggested possibly more than is wise or safe for a mens sana), usually discriminatingly, but, even so, nearly everything I read in the course of the year is thereafter expelled from my library, mostly as a matter of practicality, since we haven't the space for everything I - or my wife - has ever read, but also because  I simply won't reread much from the year's list. I read about fifty to sixty books each year (much of which is poetry, as my wife will quickly point out), and, often, what I read, while enough to hold my interest while reading, and generally entertaining to a greater or lesser degree, simply doesn't meet Kafka's criterion of being that axe. But here are ten books, that I've read in the past six months, that do ( I feel) merit retention. 

1 Rumor Verified - Robert Penn Warren (which I haven't, in fact, kept, but I replaced with Warren's Collected Poems - he's a fine poet, and I don't know why we haven't met before now)

2 The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines - John Crowley  (one of my favourite writers, author of my favourite novel, Little, Big, I'm currently (re)reading his Ægypt cycle)

3 Mother Love - Rita Dove (the more I read of Dove, the more I find myself thinking she's the best American poet living today)

4 Map of Dreams - M. Rickert (a recent discovery; lovely and literate fabulisms that haunt me still)

5 Thousand Cranes - Yasunari Kawabata (short and also haunting)

6 Shadow of Ashland - Terence M. Green (ditto)

7 The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein (not exactly a fun read, but probably the most important book I've read this year)

8 The Road - Cormac McCarthy (simply gorgeous prose, and says more about the human condition in one sentence than many others can hope to with their entire œuvre - okay, so I'm guilty of gross hyperbole)

9 The Best of the Best American Poetry - Harold Bloom, editor (I'm a Bloomsian through and through, and this volume contains so much wonderful poetry)

10 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (reread after watching the BBC version, and it's still incomparable, despite lacking zombies)

'Wrapped Up in Books' Belle & Sebastian

Sometimes You Just Need to Run Amok (or in Circles)

From Harper's Weekly Review: Tasmanian wallabies were eating opium poppies, getting high, and running around, causing crop circles (reminding me of this, from Boing Boing). 

'Perfect Circle' R.E.M. 

I Am Afraid

Earlier this spring I began watching the films of The Criterion Collection, inspired to do so partly by a post from This Recording (in turn inspired by Diablo Cody, writer and erstwhile stripping sensation, responsible for Juno, the best movie yet about unplanned teenage pregnancy and fatherhood ambivalence) and partly by the realization (arrived at while compiling my list of favourite movies) that I really ought to expose myself to the work of the great auteurs of cinema, and who better than The Criterion to educate me (of course, I later found that Michael Bay has two films in the collection, so every theory is flawed). 

I've since watched Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau's fairytale), Casque d'Or (tarts and gangsters and love), A Generation (coming-of-age tale and the rightness of communism), Grand Illusion (war is hell, even for aristocrats), The Ice Storm (Nixon-era anomie), The Lady Vanishes (great Hitchcockian escapist fun), The Most Dangerous Game (Leslie Banks is deliciously wicked as a Russian nobleman who enjoys the hunt), The Rules of the Game (satire of the French upper-class - and I can't believe how many animals died during the filming), and Solaris (the alienness of the alien - if you think this is difficult viewing, try watching Stalker). Pretty heady stuff, I think you'll agree.

And in June I watched two classics from Japanese cinema: Kwaidan (ghosts and demons, with lovely cinematography) and Onibaba (especially horrific, with the main female protagonist suffering a grisly fate), both from 1964, and both clearly (I think) influences on Ringu (which still gives me the occasional nightmare) and hence the horror genre of the last decade (all three are based on Japanese folktales, which may explain the similarity in sensibility). Which is the real reason for this post: this Italian poster of Onibaba, which is absurdly salacious (granted, there's a lot of naked flesh in the movie, especially for 1964, but still). 

'I'm Afraid of Japan' Final Fantasy

Canada, We Love You

Happy Fête du Canada everyone! Just a little expat longing for home today. But my morning began with my wife serenading me with Oh Canada (or her version, anyway, which is considerably shorter - I've got to teach her the French version, because it's way sexier, with its foyers and épopées, and its valeur trempée).

'Love Song to Canada' Jason Collett

'Home As a Romanticized Concept Where Everyone Loves You Always and Forever' Woodpigeon

Amour Haiku VII

Balzac's moustache won

friends, renown, regard and love:

books helped, too, perhaps.

'Grow Your Own Fucking Moustache, Asshole' The Wet Secrets

Semi-Permanence

The conditions on my permanent resident status were removed, and I'm now legally a resident of this country until 2019 (!). My Canadian passport will expire in less time (pooh to you Canada, with great big knobs). 

'Greencard Husband' Gogol Bordello

In the Ground

First planting Saturday: Swiss chard and dandelion greens. Small accomplishment, sure, but they'll be tasty. And my wife's help has been invaluable, especially while I'm in a weakened state. I'm going to name a variety of potato after her, since she's my babkalove (no, but really, a gooseberry, or some other delectably silly fruit). 

'Sweet Potato' Sia

Vermilove

Still toiling on the nascent garden. It's rained quite a bit today, which is wonderful, since the soil in our yard is (was) having trouble breathing: it felt like it was dry-heaving from a lack of moisture. Of course, all the weed seeds I've liberated while removing sod (what thankless and tedious work - especially done entirely by hand) have been given a huge green thumbs-up, and will soon start their bid for backyard domination. I'm ready for them, though (Allie too). Let the battle begin! 

Also, I've discovered some excellent gardening resources since arriving in Portland, including Steve Solomon's bible for west-coast growers, Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, and The Maritime Northwest Garden Guide (a packed 76 pages offering an abundance of information and delight), published by Seattle Tilth. And I finally picked up a copy of Worms Eat My Garbage, so be prepared to greet our partners in composting magic when visiting us in Portland. 

'Garden' Winter Family

Zombies vs Monsanto: Battle of the Monstrous

Some films and books to consider: Food, Inc. (oh, Monsanto, when will the evildoing end?), The End of the Line, Flow, The Compassionate Carnivore (because of my ulcerative colitis, I've been forced to renew meat consumption until the flare is controlled, so I'm looking for veggie converts, or at least humane meatlove - you know who you are), Bottomfeeder, Stuffed and Starved. Not always pleasant viewing or reading, so here's some lighter fare when you need some downtime from the doom: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (probably ridiculous, but who can resist?), Scoop (if you haven't read Waugh yet, this is my favourite), Groovitude (why do we submit to feline tyranny?), Theories of Everything (we love you Roz!), Bringing Up Baby (I can't give you anything but kale...Baby), WALL-E (I know, but it's adorable, admit it), Harold and Maude (love - and death, too - is beautiful),  Amélie (don't all our hearts belong to her?), and Bubba Ho-tep (Bruce Campbell is nine kinds of awesome, at least).

'Zombie Song' The Besties

No-Till Is Still Best

So, we've moved to Portland (Oregon). If you read my wife's blog (and you should), you already know this. I haven't posted about this relocation (or anything else) because 1) my ulcerative colitis, which has been in remission for about three years, recently returned to plague me, and I've been considerably weakened as a result, and 2) when not suffering from severe intestinal pain and fever, etc., I'm toiling to convert our backyard into a productive garden. I took copious notes, however, while we crossed the country (Williamstown to Portland - over 3,000 milesm or 4,800 kilometres for fellow Canadians), and I'll post something soon to delight and terrify your jaded hearts (why not). 

Yesterday, while preparing our yard for vegetable love and herbal delights (basil, cilantro, and parsley rather than anything more exotic, alas), I unearthed the (shallowly) buried remains of Lilly, the pet (cat, probably, or something smaller and of the rodent persuasion, considering the size of her burial container) of the previous occupants, who, if her gravestone (handmade, with mingled love and unappeasable grief) is any indication, met an untimely end in 2000. I felt awful, of course, having disturbed her mortal remains of their well-deserved rest (I also found fragments of many plastic flowers, which is so poignant - imagine the little girl/boy, bereft, placing this bouquet on Lilly's grave). And I couldn't help but imagine Pet Sematary - visions of her unquiet spirit returning to haunt and torment me, not to mention the likely evisceration in store for me as a desecrator, however inadvertently.  So I reinterred her bagged remains, and sowed daisies, zinnias and cosmos - an odd assortment, perhaps, but colourful, certainly. Anyway, it provoked  a meditation on mortality - mine, of course, because it's a particular obsession, but mostly Mieko's. He's only six, yes, but this trip across America aged him a little - it was very hard for him (and us too). He's a maddeningly lovable dunderhund, and he's irreplaceable - which is true of all our pets. So here's a song for Lilly and Mieko and all the dogs (and cats, rodents and miscellaneous furred, feathered and scaly beasts) who love us still.

'Dead Dogs Love Us Still' Carbon Dating Service

Self-Improvement

Same-sex marriage is an abomination before God, but breast implants are perfectly acceptable, and boost a girl's confidence, as well (provided they're free?). 

'Her Breasts Were Still Small' Tribeca

Amour Haiku VII

Shirtless and sweating,

housepainters employ their art:

bellyfat glistens.

'Naked If I Want To' Cat Power

Amour Haiku VI

Squirrel squashed by fate:

passing traffic disturbs crows

feasting raucously.

'Buzzards and Dreadful Crows' Guided By Voices

Amour Haiku V

Sun burns, but the wind 

kisses our faces sweetly:

mud is dog's best friend.

'Burned by the Sun' Beulah

Amour Haiku IV

Apple blossom scent

lingers on the evening air:

you taste like cherries.

'Cherry Blossom Girl' Fireflies

Mayhem

If this had been our cat, Peaches, utter carnage would have been the outcome: a veritable bath of puppy blood, bones, fur and tears.  

'Everybody Wants to Be a Cat' Psapp

(cuteoverload is entirely to blame)

Sticky

Cute, yes, but they're still stickers: I'm sure the adhesives used aren't organic. (via BoingBoing)

'Covered in Bugs' Glass Candy

Bonne Fête!

Happy birthday to my favourite rabble-rouser, fellow Canadian Naomi Klein. I recently finished The Shock Doctrine, and it shouldn't have held any (or very many) surprises, but, not infrequently, it made me ill. It was epiphanic. Read it if you haven't already (and No Logo, too - and I know, it links to Amazon in the UK, but I really liked Penguin's cover).

'Shellshock' New Order

Waterworld?

It's certainly beautiful, but how will it feed the People? Or is it seafood hereinafter (and slower avians, perhaps)?

'Warmer Climes' Boatclub

'What the Water Gave Me' cub

Cartographic Delights

Another fabulous find courtesy of Boing Boing, Strange Maps collects fascinating, bizarre, and simply beautiful maps of all kinds (generally less conventionally mappy, though). These are two recent maps that caught my eye (books and beers, baby). 

'Maps' Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Nautical Pop-Up Fun

I don't really know much about Lisa Hannigan (she's Irish, she writes lovely songs), but this video is almost inexpressibly moving. And who made those pop-up books? I want one for my (future) children (Thank you, Fabulist!).

L'amour

This is so trippy (but wonderfully so). Ain't love grand?

'I Found Love' Styrofoam and Sarah Shannon

Unite!

Happy May Day!

'Confessions of a Futon Revolutionist' - The Weakerthans

'Protest Song' - Buck 65

Stop

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." Mohandas Gandhi

Check this out. Please.

'Animals' - Ketch Harbour Wolves

Final Poetry Post

National Poetry Month comes to an end today, and I thought I'd close with a poem from the poet I began with. Also, read more poetry!

'Sonnet XV' William Shakespeare

When I consider everything that grows

Holds in perfection but a little moment,

That this huge stage presenteth naught but shows

Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;

When I perceive that men as plants increase,

Cheer'd and check'd even by the selfsame sky,

Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,

And wear their brave state out of memory:

Then the conceit of this inconstant stay

Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,

Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay

To change your day of youth to sullied night;

       And all in war with Time for love of you,

       As he takes from you, I ingraft you new.

'Act III Scene 2 (Shakespeare)' - Saul Williams

Favourites

While looking for a clip from Spartacus online (does anyone else remember Spartacus saying "I'm not your God!"), I stumbled upon a YouTube list of the 90 best movies ever made, which was a response to this list. While many good (and yes, great) films can be found on both, I took exception to several inclusions (The Crow? Forrest Gump? Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennett?!). Which led me to create my own. Except it isn't, by any means, an authoritative list of the greatest films of all time. Unfortunately, I haven't seen as many of the world's cinematic masterpieces as I ought to have. They're simply my favourite flicks (of course, any exercise of this nature is subjective). It's skewed somewhat to recent releases (there are more American movies, too, than I expected), and some of my own choices are likely indefensible, but I love them regardless of aesthetic considerations. Also, I thought 100 would be sufficient, but found I couldn't limit myself to fewer than 125 (a Bems' dozen, as I told my wife).

The Age of Innocence

Amélie

American Beauty

Annie Hall

The Apartment

Away from Her

Babe

Ball of Fire

The Barbarian Invasions

Beautiful Girls

Bed and Board

Being John Malkovich

Best in Show

The Bicycle Thief

Blood Diamond

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Bringing Up Baby

Bubba Ho-Tep

A Bug's Life

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Casablanca

Catch Me If You Can

Childstar

Clueless

The Corporation

Corpse Bride

Curse of the Golden Flower

Dangerous Liaisons

Dead Man Walking

Decline of the American Empire

Dr. Strangelove

Double Indemnity

Dumbo

Drugstore Cowboy

The Elephant Man

The Empire Strikes Back

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Everyone Says I Love You

Fargo

A Fish Called Wanda

Four Weddings and a Funeral

From Russia with Love

Genevieve

Glory

The Godfather

The Godfather Part II

Gone With the Wind

Groundhog Day

Happiness

Harold and Maude

Heat and Dust

Highway 61

The House of Mirth

Hud

The Incredibles

In the Mood for Love

In the Name of the Father

Juno

The Lady Eve

The Last Emperor

The Last King of Scotland

Laura

Lawrence of Arabia

Leningrad Cowboys

Life of Brian

Limbo

The Lion in Winter (Peter O'Toole)

Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Lost in Translation

The Maltese Falcon

Memento

Me and You and Everyone We Know

Monsters, Inc.

My Man Godfrey

Naked

Open Your Eyes

The Opposite of Sex

Pan's Labyrinth

The Player

Psycho

Pulp Fiction

The Purple Rose of Cairo

Raise the Red Lantern

Ran

Rebecca

Reservoir Dogs

Richard III

Rocket Science

Roman Holiday

The Savages

Say Anything...

Shakespeare in Love

The Shawshank Redemption

The Shop Around the Corner

Shrek

Slacker

Sleeper

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut

Spartacus

The Squid and the Whale

Stage Beauty

The Station Agent

The Sugarland Express

Sweet and Lowdown

Talk to Her

Thank You for Smoking

The Thin Man

The Thin Red Line

To Catch a Thief

Topkapi

Trainspotting

Triplets of Belleville

Trois Couleurs Trilogy

Trust

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Unforgiven

A Very Long Engagement

Waitress

Wall-E

Washington Square

Welcome to the Dollhouse

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

The Wings of the Dove

The Wizard of Oz

Wristcutters: A Love Story

'Movie Romance' - Love Is All

Addendum: May 9, 2009 - I just watched The Ice Storm and Stranger than Fiction (more on this film later) and had to add them to the list.

Tempests

'Rain' Edward Thomas (woefully underappreciated)

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain

On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me

Remembering again that I shall die

And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks

For washing me cleaner than I have been

Since I was born into this solitude.

Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:

But here I pray that none whom once I loved

Is dying to-night or lying still awake

Solitary, listening to the rain,

Either in pain or thus in sympathy

Helpless among the living and the dead,

Like a cold water among broken reeds,

Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,

Like me who have no love which this wild rain

Has not dissolved except the love of death,

If love it be towards what is perfect and

Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

'Here Comes the Rain Again (Freemasons Remix)' - Eurythmics

'Rain' - Ugress

Nearing the End

April 24 

'Petit Mort pour rire' - Tristan Cobière

Va vite, léger peigneur de comètes!

Les herbes au vent seront tes cheveux;

De ton œil béant jailliront les feux

Follets, prisonniers dans les pauvres têtes…

Les fleurs de tombeau qu'on nomme Amourettes

Foisonneront plein ton rire terreux...

Et les myosotis, ces fleurs d'oubliettes...

Ne fais pas le lourd: cercueils de poètes

Pour les croques-morts sont de simples jeux,

Boîtes à violon qui sonnent le creux...

Ils te croiront mort! - Les bourgeois sont bêtes - 

Va vite, léger peigneur de comètes!

April 25 

'The House of Life (Nuptial Sleep)' Dante Gabriel Rossetti

At length their long kiss severed, with sweet smart:

   And as the last slow sudden drops are shed

   From sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled,

So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.

Their bosoms sundered, with the opening start

   Of married flowers to either side outspread

   From the knit stem; yet still their mouths, burnt red,

Fawned on each other where they lay apart.

Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams,

   And their dreams watched them sink, and slid away.

Slowly their souls swam up again, through gleams

   Of watered light and dull drowned waifs of day;

Till from some wonder of new woods and streams

      He woke, and wondered more: for there she lay.

April 26

'The Human Abstract' William Blake

Pity would be no more,

If we did not make somebody Poor:

And Mercy no more could be,

If all were as happy as we;

And mutual fear brings peace;

Till the selfish loves increase.

Then Cruelty knits a snare,

And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,

And waters the ground with tears:

Then Humility takes its root

Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade

Of Mystery over his head;

And the Caterpillar and Fly,

Feed on the Mystery.

And it bears the fruit of Deceit,

Ruddy and sweet to eat;

And the Raven his nest has made

In its thickest shade.

The Gods of the earth and sea

Sought thro' Nature to find this Tree,

But their search was all in vain:

There grows one in the Human Brain.

April 27

'Monna Innominata (14)' Christina Rossetti

Youth gone, and beauty gone if ever there

   Dwelt beauty in so poor a face as this;

   Youth gone and beauty, what remains of bliss?

I will not bind fresh roses in my hair,

To shame a cheek at best but little fair,–

   Leave youth his roses, who can bear a thorn,–

I will not seek for blossoms anywhere,

   Except such common flowers as blow with corn.

Youth gone and beauty, what doth remain?

The longing of a heart pent up forlorn,

   A silent heart whose silence loves and longs;

   The silence of a heart which sang its songs

 While youth and beauty made a summer morn,

Silence of love that cannot sing again.

April 28

'Complainte de Nostalgies préhistoriques' Jules Laforgue

la nuit bruine sur les villes.

Mal repu des gains machinals,

On dîne; et gonflé d'idéal,

Chacun sirote son idylle,

     Ou furtive, ou facile.

Echos des grands soirs primitifs!

Couchants aux flambantes usines,

Rude paix des sols en gésine,

Cri jailli là-bas d'un massif,

     Violuptés à vif!

Dégringolant une vallée,

Heurter, dans des coquelicots,

Une enfant bestiale et brûlée,

Qui suce, en blaguant les échos,

     De juteux abricots.

Livrer aux langueurs des soirées

Sa toison où du cristal luit,

Pourlécher ses lèvres sucrées,

Nous barbouiller le corps de fruits

     Et lutter comme essui!

Un moment, béer, sans rien dire,

Inquiets d'une étoile là-haut;

Puis, sans but, bien gentils satyres,

Nour prendre aux premiers sanglots

     Fraternels des crapauds.

Et, nous délèvrant de l'extase,

Oh! devant la lune en son plein,

Là-bas, comme un bloc de topaze,

Fous, nous renverser sur les reins,

     Riant, battant des mains!

La nuit bruine sur les villes:

Se raser le masque, s'orner

D'un frac deuil, avec art dîner,

Puis, parmi des vierges débiles,

     Prendre un air imbécile.

'Love Like Blood' - Killing Joke

'Windmill Wedding' - Air France

'Verses from the Abstract' - A Tribe Called Quest

'Testament to Youth in Verse' - The New Pornographers

'Nostalgia' - The Long Blondes

Erstwhile Pleasures

'The Welcome to Sack' Robert Herrick

So soft streams meet, so springs with gladder smiles

Meet after long divorcement by the Iles:

When Love (the child of likenesse) urgeth on

Their Christal natures to an union.

So meet stolne kisses, when the Moonie nights

Call forth fierce Lovers to their wisht Delights:

So Kings & Queens meet, when Desire convinces

All thoughts, but such as aime at getting Princes,

As I meet thee. Soule of my life, and fame!

Eternall Lamp of Love! whose radiant flame

Out-glares the Heav'ns Osiris; and thy gleams

Out-shine the splendour of his mid-day beams.

Welcome, O welcome my illustrious Spouse;

Welcome as are the ends unto my Vowes:

I! far more welcome than the happy soile,

The Sea-scourg'd Merchant, after all his toile,

Salutes with tears of joy; when fires betray

The smoakie chimneys of his Ithaca.

Where hast thou been so long from my embraces,

Poore pittyed Exile? Tell me, did thy Graces

Flie discontented hence, and for a time

Did rather choose to blesse another clime?

Or went'st thou to this end, the more to move me,

By thy short absence, to desire and love thee?

Why frowns my Sweet? Why won't my Saint confer

Favours on me, her fierce Idolater?

Why are Those Looks, Those Looks the which have been

Time-past so fragrant, sickly now drawn in 

Like a dull Twi-light? Tell me; and the fault

Ile expiate with Sulphur, Haire, and Salt:

And with the Christal humour of the spring,

Purge hence the guilt, and kill this quarrelling.

Wo't thou not smile, or tell me what's amisse?

Have I been cold to hug thee, too remisse,

Too temp'rate in embracing? Tell me, ha's desire

To thee-ward dy'd i'the'embers, and no fire

Left in this rak't-up Ash-heap, as a mark

To testifie the glowing of a spark?

Have I divorc't thee onely to combine

In hot Adult'ry with another Wine?

True, I confesse I left thee, and appeale

'Twas done by me, more to confirme my zeale,

And double my affection on thee; as doe those, 

Whose love growes more enflam'd, by being Foes.

But to forsake thee ever, co'd there be

A thought of such like possibilitie?

When thou thy selfe dar'st say, thy Iles shall lack

Grapes, before Herrick leaves Canarie Sack.

Thou mak'st me ayrie, active to be born,

Like Iphyclus, upon the tops of corn.

Thou mak'st me nimble, as the winged howers,

To dance and caper on the heads of flowers,

And ride the Sun-beams. Can there be a thing

Under the heavenly Isis, that can bring

More love unto my life, or can present

My Genius with a fuller blandishment?

Illustrious Idoll! co'd th'Ægyptians seek

Help from the Garlick, Onyon, and the Leek,

And pay no vowes to thee? who wast their best

God, and far more transcendent than the rest?

Had Cassius, that weak Water-drinker, known

Thee in thy Vine, or had but tasted one

Small Chalice of the frantick liquor; He

As the wise Cato had approv'd of thee.

Had not Joves son, that brave Tyrinthian Swain,

(Invited to the Thesbian banquet) ta'ne

Full goblets of thy gen'rous blood; his spright

Ne'r had kept heat for fifty Maids that night.

Come, come and kisse me; Love and lust commends

Thee, and thy beautie; kisse, we will be friends

Too strong for Fate to break us: Look upon

Me, with that full pride of complexion,

As Queenes, meet Queenes; or come thou unto me,

As Cleopatra came to Anthonie;

When her high carriage did at once present

To the Triumvir, Love and Wonderment.

Swell up my nerves with spirit; let my blood

Run through my veines, like to a hasty flood.

Fill each part full of fire, active to doe

What thy commanding soule shall put it to.

And till I turne Apostate to thy love,

Which here I vow to serve, doe not remove

Thy Fiers from me; but Apollo's curse

Blast these-like actions, or a thing that's worse;

When these Circumstants shall but live to see

That I prevaricate from thee.

Call me The sonne of Beere, and then confine

Me to the Tap, the Tost, the Turfe; Let Wine

Ne'er shine upon me; May my Numbers all

Run to a sudden Death, and Funerall.

And last, when thee (deare Spouse) I disavow,

Ne'er may Prophetique Daphne crown my Brow.

'The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism' - The New Pornographers

Earth Day Shenanigans

The defendants: Competitive Enterprise Institute, Coca-Cola, and innumerable corporate greenwashing wankers. 

'Planet Earth' -  Duran Duran 

'World Spins Madly On' - The Weepies

'Perfect World' - Cranes

Earth Day is all well and good. But try this for some real change. Musical change. Also, here's a fantastic video exposing the dirty truth about Clean Coal (directed by the Coen Brothers!). Plus, some wisdom from Grist's fabulous Girl Guru, Umbra.

Beebalm (and joy and bliss)

I wasn't able to find a poem suitably earthy to celebrate today, so here's my compromise. I'm a little loopy about bees.

'The Humble-Bee' Ralph Waldo Emerson

Burly, dozing, humble-bee,

Where thou art is clime for me.

Let them sail for Porto Rique,

Far-off hearts through seas to seek;

I will follow thee alone,

Thou animated torrid-zone!

Zigzag steerer, desert cheerer,

Let me chase thy waving lines;

Keep me nearer, me thy hearer,

Singing over shrubs and vines.

Insect lover of the sun,

Joy of the dominion!

Sailor of the atmosphere;

Swimmer through the waves of air;

Voyager of light and noon;

Epicurean of June;

Wait, I prithee, till I come

Within earshot of thy hum, –

All without is martyrdom.

When the south wind, in May days,

With a net of shining haze

Silvers the horizon wall,

And, with softness touching all,

Tints the human countenance

With a color of romance,

And, infusing subtle heats,

Turns the sod to violets,

Thou, in sunny solitudes,

Rover of the underwoods,

The green silence dost displace

With thy mellow, breezt bass.

Hot midsummer's petted crone,

Sweet to me thy drowsy tone

Tells of countless sunny hours,

Long days, and solid banks of flowers;

Of gulfs of sweetness without bound

In Indian wildernesses found;

Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure,

Firmest cheer, and bird-like pleasure.

Aught unsavoury or unclean

Hath my insect never seen;

But violets and bilberry bells,

Maple-sap, and daffodels,

Grass with green flag half-mast high,

Succory to match the sky,

Columbine with horn of honey,

Scented fern, and agrimony,

Clover, catchfly, adder's tongue,

And brier roses, dwelt among;

All beside was unknown waste,

All was picture as he passed.

Wiser far than human seer,

Yellow-breeched philosopher!

Seeing only what is fair,

Sipping only what is sweet,

Thou dost mock at fate and care,

Leave the chaff, and take the wheat.

When the fierce north-western blast

Cools sea and land so far and fast,

Thou already slumberest deep;

Woe and want thou canst outsleep;

Want and woe, which torture us,

Thy sleep makes ridiculous.

'Bees' - Caribou

'Bumblebees' - Kelly de Martino

'Bees' - Laura Cantrell