Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Marcus Maysles' LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, August 15th, 2007
9:44 pm	Army suicide rate highest in 26 years Army soldiers committed suicide last year at the highest rate in 26 years, and more than a quarter did so while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new military report. The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its scheduled release Thursday, found there were 99 confirmed suicides among active duty soldiers during 2006, up from 88 the previous year and the highest number since the 102 suicides in 1991 at the time of the Persian Gulf War. The suicide rate for the Army has fluctuated over the past 26 years, from last year's high of 17.3 per 100,000 to a low of 9.1 per 100,000 in 2001. Last year, "Iraq was the most common deployment location for both (suicides) and attempts," the report said. The 99 suicides included 28 soldiers deployed to the two wars and 71 who weren't. About twice as many women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan committed suicide as did women not sent to war, the report said. Preliminary numbers for the first half of this year indicate the number of suicides could decline across the service in 2007 but increase among troops serving in the wars, officials said. The increases for 2006 came as Army officials worked to set up a number of new and stronger programs for providing mental health care to a force strained by the longer-than-expected war in Iraq and the global counterterrorism war entering its sixth year. Failed personal relationships, legal and financial problems and the stress of their jobs were factors motivating the soldiers to commit suicide, according to the report. "In addition, there was a significant relationship between suicide attempts and number of days deployed" in Iraq, Afghanistan or nearby countries where troops are participating in the war effort, it said. The same pattern seemed to hold true for those who not only attempted, but succeeded in killing themselves. There also "was limited evidence to support the view that multiple ... deployments are a risk factor for suicide behaviors," it said. About a quarter of those who killed themselves had a history of at least one psychiatric disorder. Of those, about 20 percent had been diagnosed with a mood disorder such as bipolar disorder and/or depression; and 8 percent had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, including post traumatic stress disorder — one of the signature injuries of the conflict in Iraq. Firearms were the most common method of suicide. Those who attempted suicide but didn't succeed tended more often to take overdoses and cut themselves. In a service of more than a half million troop, the 99 suicides amounted to a rate of 17.3 per 100,000 — the highest in the past 26 years, the report said. The average rate over those years has been 12.3 per 100,000. The rate for those serving in the wars stayed about the same, 19.4 per 100,000 in 2006, compared with 19.9 in 2005. The Army said the information was compiled from reports collected as part of its suicide prevention program — reports required for all "suicide-related behaviors that result in death, hospitalization or evacuation" of the soldier. It can take considerable time to investigate a suicide and, in fact, the Army said that in addition to the 99 confirmed suicides last year, there are two other deaths suspected as suicides in which investigations were pending. (Comment on this)
Friday, June 22nd, 2007
1:21 am	Hunting Bloodturtles On and Off the Ivory Coast All that night cats moaned in the dark like cats (143) The policeman’s face bore a constant look of tolerant interest. Set the sack down son and let’s see what all you got there Harrogate rolled the sack from his shoulder and lowered it to the paving and spread the drawstring open with his thumbs. A musky smell rose. He tilted it slightly policeward. The officer thumbed his cap back on his head and bent to see. A prefiguration of the pit. Vouchsafed a crokersack vision of hell’s floor deep with the hairy damned screaming mute and toothy toward the far and heedless city of God. He raised his head and looked at the waiting Harrogate and he looked at the bright sky above Knoxville and he turned to the driver. You know what he’s got in that sack? (215)   This is an essay about Suttree. The first half of this essay is an analysis of the narration in Suttree. This analysis attempts to pin down the point of view. The second half of the essay is dedicated to answering the question of why Suttree makes me cry. By the end of its first half, the essay concludes that the concept "narrator" is a paradigm that does not apply to Suttree. The second half of the essay tries to move from analysis to intuition in hope of finding an alternative paradigm to "narrator." The essay begins by stating constraints and premises. The constraints are a list of topics this essay will not discuss. The premises are my (at times tentative) understanding of what happens in the novel. Here are the constraints. This is not an essay about Suttree’s author Cormac McCarthy. This essay does not deal with evidence that Suttree is autobiographical. This essay is not concerned with other novels by Cormac McCarthy. This essay is also not concerned with any other texts that Suttree echoes, including the Bible. This essay is not interested in the distinction between modern and postmodern and will not return to this point. This is not a dismissal -- these constraints are regrettable. These topics all shed light on the novel and are all worthy of other essays. However, this essay is not concerned with anything outside the novel except me. One of the things that impresses me about the novel is that I love it. Love is idiosyncratic. Thus the reasons I love Suttree are situated not within the novel but within me, and, furthermore, within me this slow Spring of 1997. For this reason, this essay is written in the first person and the second half is as indulgent as the first half is precise. Here are my premises. These premises are my conclusions regarding confusing aspects of the novel. When possible, I provide page numbers that correspond to the evidence from which these conclusions are drawn. My pagination refers to the First Vintage International Edition, May 1992, although other editions may have identical pagination. Cornelius "Buddy" Suttree is an unambitious (on 68 he shows no interest in adjusting to the demands of the marketplace, on 222 he disposes of extremely effective bait because he can’t stand its smell) fisherman of unknown age (my guess is late 20’s or early 30’s) who lives in a houseboat. He has one (living) brother — Carl (17)— and at least two sisters (130, 421). His parents are living and he avoids all contact with them (on 299 he throws away a letter from his father without reading it). He was raised Catholic (251, 253). He also avoids contact with his wife and child, whom he abandoned. In 1950, Suttree is arrested as an accomplice in a pharmacy robbery (321). He serves a (ten or so month) sentence in the workhouse and is released in January 1951. (The fact that Suttree’s charges are revealed to the (alert) reader 220 pages after he has finished serving his sentence should indicate the level of ambiguity that renders this summary necessary.) When Suttree is released, he buys a houseboat, is given two fishing lines strung in the Tennessee River, and lives a hand-to-mouth existence selling catfish and carp, sometimes drum or gar (199). He is college educated (47). He has a reputation for being smart (366), but the only evidence of this is we see that he knows what "yeggs" means (235). (Whether any of the verbose narration can be attributed to Suttree is a question I will return to.) His father’s side of the family, which he detests, is wealthy and powerful. His mother’s side, for which he has some fleeting sympathy, is generally lower middle class and inclined toward alcoholism. The novel and the story begin on a summer Sunday in Knoxville 1951 about six months after Suttree is released from the workhouse. By defining the chronology of the novel this way, I am also defining pages 30-62 as a flashback to a previous time (as well as a leap to a different place and point of view). This flashback spans a duration of about four months and ends near January 1st, 1951. Page 63 is the Monday following the Sunday described on 8 through 29. When Suttree, on page 70, addresses J-Bone, Boneyard, and Hoghead with "You sons of bitches havent been to bed," this indicates that the three have been drinking continuously for the 20 or so hours that have elapsed since page 22, having gone through at least two bottles of whiskey before beginning the awful night of drinking that ends with Suttree hungover in jail. The rest of my premises regarding chronology, point of view, and location are less uncertain. They are included as appendices. I have chosen to study the narration of Suttree because it creates three contradictions. The first contradiction is between the language of the narration and that of the characters. I assume this contradiction is apparent to anyone who makes it as far as page 12. My second epigraph is an excellent example of what I mean. My second epigraph, if read carefully, also reveals a less obvious contradiction between types of language within the narration. The description of the dead bats is different than the description of the policeman. This essay will return to this point at the end of its first half. The second apparent contradiction is between the narration and the story. Again, a lexically lush and grammatically complex narration narrates a bleak, desolate, and fairly uninteresting story. It is not that Suttree is an uninteresting character, it’s even worse. Suttree is an uninteresting character and this is the least interesting period of his life. This is the part Suttree would skip when telling the story of his life: how he went to prison then lay drunk on the river for four years in the transition between abandoning his family and abandoning his home town. The story has an archaic, mythic quality, yet the characters are neither noble nor heroic. None of the characters seem to have any consequence on the world outside Knoxville. Nor do they have much consequence within the novel: it has no plot. It is a series of overlapping anecdotes, most of which do not affect the anecdotes that follow. I find a third contradiction between the first 277 pages of the book and the last 196 pages. The first half of the novel is structurally complex and features Gene Harrogate as a central character. In the first 277 pages, the point of view passes between Gene and Suttree. The manner in which the point of view is transferred is complex in that sometimes a shift from one point of view to another may also indicate a shift backward in time. This is the case on pages 30, 107, 269, and 274. This transfer, although confusing, is consistent in that the point of view is almost entirely limited to those two. In the second half of the book, Gene ceases to be a central character, and there are no chronologic regressions. The point of view is Gene’s only twice, and time only moves forward. In one respect, these two "halves" of the book actually are halves — they each span about 23 months, although the first 23 months lasts 80 more pages than the second 23 months. Unlike the first two contradictions, this third contradiction is a contradiction within the narration, not a contradiction between the narration and another aspect of the book. A conventional understanding of narration assumes a single narrator who is a human presence as consistent as, although perhaps on a different diagetic level from, the characters. (The difference in "diagetic levels" is the difference between being a character in the story and telling it.) Although conventional narrators are frequently not characters, they tend to have consistent relationships to the characters and events in the story. The narrator is oriented to the story in a particular way and this does not change. Henceforth I will refer to this relationship or orientation as narrative "distance." Three ways narrative distance manifests itself are tense, person, and access to information. A story in the past tense indicates that the narrator is referring back to it from a future point, and thus knows how it will end. The narrative distance in this case is a longer than the distance between a narrator and a story in the present tense. A first person narrator is frequently a character in the story. In this case the narrative distance between narrator and story is smaller than the distance between a third person narrator and a story. Access to information refers to the narrator’s ability to know information characters do not. Such information can include the thoughts of one or more characters (including motivations that the characters themselves are unaware of), future events, and events taking place undetected elsewhere in the setting. When the narrators are characters in the story, frequently they have access to their own thoughts but not those of other characters. For the purposes of this essay, a narrator with a greater degree of omniscience is considered to be more distant from the story than a less omniscient narrator (the farther away you are the more you can see). None of these three aspects of narration — tense, person, and access — remain consistent in Suttree. The narrative distance oscillates in these respects and others. The concept "narrator" does not apply well here. It is difficult to accept the narration as either a character in the story or omniscient. This oscillation is not obvious when reading the novel because so much else remains consistent. Because the narration follows almost exclusively Suttree through time from past to future with occasional jumps forward, the fact that it shifts between past and present tense is not jarring. Because most of the scenes center around Suttree, the manner in which it leaps in and out of his head is not confusing. The majority of the book is written as if by an invisible observer to Suttree’s actions. However, the narration occasionally discloses information Suttree does not have access to. There are scenes without Suttree. There is one scene at the beginning (30) from the point of view of a character Suttree does not meet until 435 pages and five years later (465). Occasionally the narration will lapse into the first or second person, as if representing a character’s thoughts or addressing a character or both. Most of the scenes happen in chronological order, with ellipses (leaps forward in time to the subsequent scene). At one point the narration reveals knowledge of the future — events to come within the story and even well after. This essay will next list moments of inconsistency in tense, person, and access. The narration is almost entirely past tense. However, it has a tendency to slide into present tense throughout the book. This does not mean that the story suddenly leaps from the past to the present. The verb tense typically changes to present for one or two events in the middle of a sequence of past events. The distance between the narration and the story shrinks at these moments. This tense shift functions as a sort of narrative zoom lens — the distance only appears to get smaller. Many, but not all, of these lapses into present tense can be accounted for by a particular favored sentence construction using "must." Here are four examples: He came up with the pig holding it about the waist, the bucket against the side of his face and blood running all down the front of him, hugging while it kicked and shat. Coming up the creek walking spraddlelegged and half staggering until finally he must stop to rest. He and the pig sitting in the kudzu quietly getting their strength back like a pair of spent degenerates. (139) "Finally he had to stop to rest" would make more sense. In the morning he set out with them. A light heart and deep rejoicing for the fortune of it made the load less heavy yet he must still rest here and there by the streetside. By such stages he labored out Central Avenue small and bowed and wildlooking. What you got in the sack son? (215) Quite similarly, "yet he had to still rest" would be more consistent. Suttree sat beneath the picture. Jones was standing almost in the middle of the little room and he seemed suddenly mindless, a great towering zombie that she must take by one elbow and steer to the table although he has been here before. She’s sewn him up like a hound with carpetthread and the blood beading very fine and bright from the pursings of black flesh, stanching lesser holes with cataplasms of cobweb, binding him in bedlinen. With him drunk at the door two days later demanding to be undone and sewn looser because he could not bend. Eyes raddled with blood, reeking of splo whiskey. (280) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 24th, 2007
10:35 pm	Who Watches the Watchmen Now? Potentially habitable planet found By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer 17 minutes ago For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe." The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun. There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is known about it. And it's worth noting that scientists' requirements for habitability count Mars in that category: a size relatively similar to Earth's with temperatures that would permit liquid water. However, this is the first outside our solar system that meets those standards. "It's a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe," said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the planet. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions." The results of the discovery have not been published but have been submitted to the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. Alan Boss, who works at the Carnegie Institution of Washington where a U.S. team of astronomers competed in the hunt for an Earth-like planet, called it "a major milestone in this business." The planet was discovered by the European Southern Observatory's telescope in La Silla, Chile, which has a special instrument that splits light to find wobbles in different wave lengths. Those wobbles can reveal the existence of other worlds. What they revealed is a planet circling the red dwarf star, Gliese 581. Red dwarfs are low-energy, tiny stars that give off dim red light and last longer than stars like our sun. Until a few years ago, astronomers didn't consider these stars as possible hosts of planets that might sustain life. The discovery of the new planet, named 581 c, is sure to fuel studies of planets circling similar dim stars. About 80 percent of the stars near Earth are red dwarfs. The new planet is about five times heavier than Earth. Its discoverers aren't certain if it is rocky like Earth or if its a frozen ice ball with liquid water on the surface. If it is rocky like Earth, which is what the prevailing theory proposes, it has a diameter about 1 1/2 times bigger than our planet. If it is an iceball, as Mayor suggests, it would be even bigger. Based on theory, 581 c should have an atmosphere, but what's in that atmosphere is still a mystery and if it's too thick that could make the planet's surface temperature too hot, Mayor said. However, the research team believes the average temperature to be somewhere between 32 and 104 degrees and that set off celebrations among astronomers. Until now, all 220 planets astronomers have found outside our solar system have had the "Goldilocks problem." They've been too hot, too cold or just plain too big and gaseous, like uninhabitable Jupiter. The new planet seems just right — or at least that's what scientists think. "This could be very important," said NASA astrobiology expert Chris McKay, who was not part of the discovery team. "It doesn't mean there is life, but it means it's an Earth-like planet in terms of potential habitability." Eventually astronomers will rack up discoveries of dozens, maybe even hundreds of planets considered habitable, the astronomers said. But this one — simply called "c" by its discoverers when they talk among themselves — will go down in cosmic history as No. 1. Besides having the right temperature, the new planet is probably full of liquid water, hypothesizes Stephane Udry, the discovery team's lead author and another Geneva astronomer. But that is based on theory about how planets form, not on any evidence, he said. "Liquid water is critical to life as we know it," co-author Xavier Delfosse of Grenoble University in France, said in a statement. "Because of its temperature and relative proximity, this planet will most probably be a very important target of the future space missions dedicated to the search for extraterrestrial life. On the treasure map of the Universe, one would be tempted to mark this planet with an X." Other astronomers cautioned it's too early to tell whether there is water. "You need more work to say it's got water or it doesn't have water," said retired NASA astronomer Steve Maran, press officer for the American Astronomical Society. "You wouldn't send a crew there assuming that when you get there, they'll have enough water to get back." The new planet's star system is a mere 20.5 light years away, making Gliese 581 one of the 100 closest stars to Earth. It's so dim, you can't see it without a telescope, but it's somewhere in the constellation Libra, which is low in the southeastern sky during the midevening in the Northern Hemisphere. "I expect there will be planets like Earth, but whether they have life is another question," said renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking in an interview with The Associated Press in Orlando. "We haven't been visited by little green men yet." Before you book your extrastellar flight to 581 c, a few caveats about how alien that world probably is: Anyone sitting on the planet would get heavier quickly, and birthdays would add up fast since it orbits its star every 13 days. Gravity is 1.6 times as strong as Earth's so a 150-pound person would feel like 240 pounds. But oh, the view. The planet is 14 times closer to the star it orbits. Udry figures the red dwarf star would hang in the sky at a size 20 times larger than our moon. And it's likely, but still not known, that the planet doesn't rotate, so one side would always be sunlit and the other dark. Distance is another problem. "We don't know how to get to those places in a human lifetime," Maran said. Two teams of astronomers, one in Europe and one in the United States, have been racing to be the first to find a planet like 581 c outside the solar system. The European team looked at 100 different stars using a tool called HARPS (High Accuracy Radial Velocity for Planetary Searcher) to find this one planet, said Xavier Bonfils of the Lisbon Observatory, one of the co-discoverers. Much of the effort to find Earth-like planets has focused on stars like our sun with the challenge being to find a planet the right distance from the star it orbits. About 90 percent of the time, the European telescope focused its search more on sun-like stars, Udry said. A few weeks before the European discovery earlier this month, a scientific paper in the journal Astrobiology theorized a few days that red dwarf stars were good candidates. "Now we have the possibility to find many more," Bonfils said. ___ (Comment on this)
Friday, January 12th, 2007
3:07 am	Bush war plan draws fire on Capitol Hill Bush war plan draws fire on Capitol Hill By TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer President Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq ran into a wall of criticism on Capitol Hill on Thursday as administration officials drew confrontational, sometimes mocking challenges from both Democrats and Republicans. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in response that the administration might abandon the increase if the Iraqi government doesn't do its part, but he provided no timetable. "I think most of us, in our minds, are thinking of it as a matter of months, not 18 months or two years," he told the House Armed Services Committee. Bush and top members of his national security team sought to rally support for the troop buildup a day after he unveiled his plan for turning around a conflict that has lasted nearly four years and cost more than 3,000 American military lives. Instead, Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice found themselves embroiled in the first pitched exchanges in a battle that is likely to dominate Congress for months or longer and is already shaping the 2008 presidential election. "I think this speech given last night by this president represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam, if it's carried out," Sen. Chuck Hagel (news, bio, voting record) of Nebraska, a potential 2008 presidential contender, told Rice. While he is a Republican, administration officials were defending the plan for the first time to the Democratic-controlled Congress. Bill Nelson (news, bio, voting record), D-Fla., noted his own past support for the administration on the war but said he could not continue. He declared, "I have not been told the truth over and over again by administration witnesses, and the American people have not been told the truth." A new AP-Ipsos poll found approval for Bush's handling of Iraq hovering near a record low — 29 percent of Americans approve and 68 percent disapprove. Bush, visiting with troops at Fort Benning, Ga., cautioned that the troop increase "is not going to yield immediate results. It's going to take awhile." His plan, outlined in a prime-time address to the nation on Wednesday, would raise troop levels in Iraq by 21,500 — from 132,000 to 153,500 — at a cost of $5.6 billion. It also calls for the Iraqi government to increase its own forces and to do more to quell sectarian violence "American patience is limited, and obviously if the Iraqis fail to maintain their commitments we'll have to revisit our strategy," said Gates. At one point Gates, just three weeks on the job, told lawmakers, "I would confess I'm no expert on Iraq." Later, asked about reaching the right balance between American and Iraqi forces, he told the panel he was "no expert on military matters." Committee members pressed Gates, who replaced Donald H. Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, on an exit strategy for the U.S. "At the outset of the strategy, it's a mistake to talk about an exit strategy," he said. Gates, in testimony to the committee and earlier at a news conference, said he was requesting increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 troops over the next five years. He also said the Pentagon would recall to duty sooner than planned some National Guard and Reserve troops who have served yearlong tours in Iraq or Afghanistan. As Rice testified to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Howard Berman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., likened Bush's plan to a "hail Maliki pass" — jokingly combining Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's name with the football "Hail Mary" desperation pass. The U.S. led a coalition that invaded Iraq in March 2003, despite failing to win U.N. Security Council support. The government of Saddam Hussein quickly crumbled and Bush declared major combat operations over two months later. Bush's war effort initially had strong support, both in Congress and among other Americans. Yet that support has eroded as violence has continued. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record), D-Nev., said he hoped to bring up a nonbinding resolution next week expressing opposition to any troop buildup. A similar move is expected in the House. Reid, in a Senate speech, said Bush ignored the results of November's midterm elections that ended 12 years of GOP control of Congress, the advice of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and that of his own top generals. "In choosing to escalate the war, the president virtually stands alone," Reid said. The Senate's top Republican, Mitch McConnell (news, bio, voting record) of Kentucky, threatened a filibuster — a delaying tactic — to block any legislation expressing disapproval of the buildup plan. McConnell conceded that GOP lawmakers as well as Democrats are troubled by Bush's new policy, but he said, "Congress is completely incapable of dictating the tactics of the war." Options for critics of the war to try forcing its end are limited, given the slim margin of Democratic control, especially in the Senate. But votes stating symbolic opposition to the troop buildup could embarrass many Republicans leery of supporting Bush's plan. Rice appeared in the morning before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and in the afternoon before the House counterpart. She was grilled sharply by members of both parties. Not a single member of the Senate panel expressed outright support for the president's plan. One after another offered skepticism on various points — from the rationale for the war to al-Maliki's sincerity and resolve, from the need for additional troops to the administration's ruling out talking to Iran and Syria. "You're going to have to do a much better job" explaining the rationale for the war, "and so is the president," said Sen. George Voinovich (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio. He said Bush could no longer count on his support for the war. Rice acknowledged widespread skepticism among Americans. "I want you to know that I understand and indeed feel the heartbreak that Americans feel at the continued sacrifice of American lives," she said. Rice engaged several tense exchanges with members, including with Hagel, a Vietnam veteran and longtime critic of Bush's Iraq policy. She disputed his characterization of Bush's buildup as an "escalation." "Putting in 22,000 more troops is not an escalation?" Hagel asked. Responded Rice: "I think, senator, escalation is not just a matter of how many numbers you put in." "Would you call it a decrease?" Hagel asked. "I would call it, senator, an augmentation that allows the Iraqis to deal with this very serious problem that they have in Baghdad," she said. When Rice disputed Hagel's contention that Iraq was in the throes of civil war, Hagel shot back: "To sit there and say that, that's just not true." Said Committee Chairman Joe Biden of Delaware: "I believe the president's strategy is not a solution, Secretary Rice. I believe it's a tragic mistake" Rice told senators there was a "national imperative not to fail." The Senate panel was flush with 2008 presidential hopefuls and possible contenders, including Hagel, Biden and Democrats John Kerry of Massachusetts, Christopher Dodd (news, bio, voting record) of Connecticut and Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) of Illinois. Meanwhile, Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., another presidential hopeful, said after a meeting at the White House that he was concerned about al-Maliki's capabilities as well as "whether these are sufficient number of troops. But, he said, "I do think we can succeed." McCain is among a handful of lawmakers who have called for more — not fewer — U.S. troops in Iraq. ___ (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 7th, 2007
12:34 am	the Rueful New Year                                                         ...May You Live In Interesting Times.                                      (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 3rd, 2006
10:11 pm	MORE THAN 380 SICK ABOARD WORLD'S LARGEST CRUISE SHIP More than 380 passengers and crew aboard the world's largest cruise ship were sickened by a virus during a seven-day Caribbean cruise, cruise officials said Sunday. Norovirus sickened 338 passengers and 46 crew members about the Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas, and they were treated with over-the-counter medication, the Miami-based company said. The ship, which had roughly 3,800 passengers and 1,300 crew members, returned Sunday as scheduled to the Port of Miami. Crew members sanitized frequently touched surfaces such as railings, door handles and elevator buttons after the short-lived outbreak began, officials said. A guest previously exposed to norovirus likely brought it on board Nov. 26, the company said. Noroviruses, characterized by stomach flu-like symptoms, affect about 23 million Americans annually, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. An outbreak struck more than 700 passengers and crew members aboard a trans-Atlantic cruise last month on the Carnival Cruise Lines' Liberty. The Freedom of the Seas, which was christened in May, can carry more than 4,000 people aboard its 15 passenger decks. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006
2:19 am	Road to Peace                   Young Abdel Madi Shabneh         was only 18 years old    the youngest of nine children he'd never spent a nite away from home and his mother held his photograph                                                     up in the NY times you see the killing has intensified                                           Along the road to peace  A tall thin boy with a wispy moustache disguised as an Orthodox Jew on a crowded bus in Jersusalem  some had survived World War II And the thunderous explosion blew out windows 200 yards away With more retribution and seventeen dead along the road to peace Now at King George Avenue and Jaffa Road  passengers boarded bus 14a In the aisle next to the driver Abdel Madi Shabneh And the last thing that he said  On earth is "God is great and God is good" And he blew them all to kingdom come  upon the road to peace In response to this another kiss  Of death was visited upon Yashir Tehah Israel says is an Hamas senior militant                               And Israel sent four choppers in Flames engulfed, tears wide open And it killed his wife and his three year old child  leaving only blackened skeletons It's found his toddlers bottle and a pair of small shoes and they waved them in front of the cameras But Israel says they did not know that his wife and child were in the car There are roadblocks everywhere and only suffering on TV Neither side will ever give up their smallest right along the road to peace Israel launched it's latest campaign against Hamas on Tuesday Two days later Hamas shot back and killed five Israeli soldiers So thousands dead and wounded on both sides most of them middle eastern civilians They fill the children full of hate to fight an old man's war  and die upon the road to peace "And this is our land we will fight with all our force" say the Palastinians and the Jews Each side will cut off the hand of anyone who tries to stop the resistance If the right eye offends thee then you must pluck it out And Mahmoud Abbas said Sharon had been lost out along the road to peace Once Kissinger said "we have no friends, America only has interests" Now our president wants to be seen as a hero  and he's hungry for re-election But Bush is reluctant to risk his future in the fear of his political failures So he plays chess at his desk and poses for the press  10,000 miles from the road to peace In the video that they found at the home of Abdel Mahdi Shabneh He held a Kalashnikov rifle and he spoke with a voice like a boy He was an excellent student, he studied so hard, it was as if he had a future He told his mother that he had a test that day out along the road to peace The fundamentalist killing on both sides is standing in the path of peace But tell me why are we arming the Israeli army with guns and tanks and bullets? And if God is great and God is good why can't he change the hearts of men? Well maybe God himself is lost and needs help Maybe God himself he needs all of our help Maybe God himself is lost and needs help He's out upon the road to peace (Comment on this)
Monday, November 20th, 2006
5:56 am	Devil's Warning Kissinger: Iraq military win impossible By TARIQ PANJA, Associated Press Writer Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday. Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq's regional neighbors — including Iran — if progress is to be made in the region. "If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," he told the British Broadcasting Corp. But Kissinger, an architect of the Vietnam war who has advised President Bush about Iraq, warned against a rapid withdrawal of coalition troops, saying it could destabilize Iraq's neighbors and cause a long-lasting conflict. "A dramatic collapse of Iraq — whatever we think about how the situation was created — would have disastrous consequences for which we would pay for many years and which would bring us back, one way or another, into the region," he said. Kissinger, whose views have been sought by the Iraqi Study Group, led by former Secretary of State James Baker III, called for an international conference bringing together the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Iraq's neighbors — including Iran — and regional powers like India and Pakistan to work out a way forward for the region. "I think we have to redefine the course, but I don't think that the alternative is between military victory, as defined previously, or total withdrawal," he said. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 9th, 2006
12:45 am	God of Child He looked like something come against the end of a springloaded tether or some slapstick contrivance of the filmcutter's art. ... The hounds' voices in that vast and pale blue void echoed like the cries of demon yodelers. ... He'd long been wearing the underclothes of his female victims but now he took to appearing in their outerwear as well. A gothic doll in illfit clothes, its carmine mouth floating detached and bright in the white landscape. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 23rd, 2006
8:39 pm	RIP Habeas Corpus September 29, 2006, the US Senate agreed to the Military Commissions Act of 2006 which gives US President George Bush unprecedented power to detain and try people as part of their “War on Terror.” President Bush is then expected to sign the Act into law. Broadly, the new Act does 3 things: Strips the right of detainees to habeas corpus (the traditional right of detainees to challenge their detention); Gives the US President the power to detain indefinitely anyone—US or foreign nationals, from within the US, and from abroad—it deems to have provided material support to anti-US hostilities, and even use secret and coerced evidence (i.e. through use of torture) to try detainees who will be held in secret US military prisons; Gives US officials immunity from prosecution for torturing detainees that were captured before the end of 2005 by US military and CIA. The bill was passed by the Senate sixty five votes in favor, thirty four against. Twelve Democrats joined the Republican majority. The House passed virtually the same legislation a few days earlier on Wednesday, 27 September. The New York Times noted the far-reaching powers the Act will give the president, and other top officials observing that, “Rather than reining in the formidable presidential powers … asserted since Sept. 11, 2001, the law gives some of those powers a solid statutory foundation. In effect it allows the president to identify enemies, imprison them indefinitely and interrogate them—albeit with a ban on the harshest treatment—beyond the reach of the full court reviews traditionally afforded criminal defendants and ordinary prisoners.” Furthermore, not only does the Act allow the president to determine the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions, “it also strips the courts of jurisdiction to hear challenges to his interpretation.” This can have far-reaching consequences. For example, Amnesty International says the legislation will lead to violations of international law and standards and accuses the US Congress of “failing human rights” by voting for this Act and says it “deeply regrets that Congress failed to resist this executive pressure and instead has given a green light for violations of the USA’s international obligations.” The international human rights organization expands on the above 3 points (see previous link) and is summarized here: Striping habeas corpus and other fundamental rights On this issue, Amnesty international notes that the Act will: Strip the US courts of jurisdiction to hear or consider habeas corpus appeals challenging the lawfulness or conditions of detention of anyone held in US custody as an “enemy combatant.” Prohibit any person from invoking the Geneva Conventions or their protocols as a source of rights in any action in any US court. Permit civilians captured far from any battlefield to be tried by military commission rather than civilian courts, contradicting international standards and case law. Limit the right of charged detainees to be represented by counsel of their choosing. Power to detain indefinitely and torture On this issue, Amnesty international notes that the Act will: Fail to provide any guarantee that trials will be conducted within a reasonable time. Permit the executive to convene military commissions to try “alien unlawful enemy combatants”, as determined by the executive under a dangerously broad definition, in trials that would provide foreign nationals so labeled with a lower standard of justice than US citizens accused of the same crimes. This would violate the prohibition on the discriminatory application of fair trial rights. Establish military commissions whose impartiality, independence and competence would be in doubt, due to the overarching role that the executive, primarily the Secretary of Defense, would play in procedures and in appointments of military judges and military officers. Permit, in violation of international law, the use of evidence extracted under cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, or as a result of “outrages upon personal dignity, particularly humiliating or degrading treatment”, as defined under international law. Permit the use of classified evidence against a defendant, without the defendant necessarily being able effectively to challenge the “sources, methods or activities” by which the government acquired the evidence. Give the military commissions the power to hand down death sentences, in contravention of international standards…. The clemency authority would be … President Bush [who] has led a pattern of official public commentary on the presumed guilt of the detainees, and has overseen a system that has systematically denied the rights of detainees. Permit the executive to determine who is an “enemy combatant” under any “competent tribunal” established by the executive. Giving US officials immunity from prosecution On this issue, Amnesty international notes that the Act will: Narrow the scope of the War Crimes Act by not expressly criminalizing acts that constitute “outrages upon personal dignity, particularly humiliating and degrading treatment” banned under Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions. Prohibit the US courts from using “foreign or international law” to inform their decisions in relation to the War Crimes Act. The President has the authority to “interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions.” Endorse the administration’s “war paradigm”—under which the USA has selectively applied the laws of war and rejected international human rights law. Constitution, Rights Groups, and Others Alarmed Amnesty International has also noted that the US has already been using techniques that are only now being passed into law. In effect, the US has already been violating human rights: The past five years have seen the USA engage in systematic violations of international law, with a distressing impact on thousands of detainees and their families. Human rights violations have included: Secret detention Enforced disappearance Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment Outrages upon personal dignity, including humiliating treatment Denial and restriction of habeas corpus Indefinite detention without charge or trial Prolonged incommunicado detention Arbitrary detention Unfair trial procedures Yet at the same time, US officials have continued to characterize the USA as a “nation of laws” and one that in the “war on terror” is committed to what it calls the “non-negotiable demands of human dignity,” including the “rule of law.” … During the debates on the Military Commissions Act, members of Congress expressed their support for the program, despite the fact that it violates international law. Thousands of detainees remain in indefinite detention without charge or trial in US custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. In passing the Military Commissions Act, Congress has failed these detainees and their families. Those defending human rights should be prepared for a long struggle. — USA Military Commissions Act of 2006—Turning bad policy into bad law, Amnesty International, September 29, 2006, AI Index: AMR 51/154/2006 Furthermore, Amnesty International continues its criticisms noting “how vulnerable the law is to elastic interpretation, manipulation or selective application by the state. And that, for better or worse, a government can use policy to drive the law rather than vice versa. In the USA’s case, a long-held resistance to applying international law to its own conduct compounds the problem.” Legal groups, such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, are already preparing to challenge the constitutionality of the law in court, as Democracy Now! noted in an interview with the Center’s president, Michael Ratner, and with Senator Patrick Leahy, who was very critical of the bill’s implication. That interview’s transcript is cited here at length for it summarizes some of the fears and ramifications further: Amy Goodman: … if you could explain exactly what this bill that the Senate has just approved … Senator Patrick Leahy: First off, … it’s a terrible bill. It removes as many checks and balances as possible so that any president can basically set the law, determine what laws they’ll follow and what laws they’ll break and not have anybody be able to question them on it. … Habeas corpus was first brought in the Magna Carta in the 1200s. It’s been a tenet of our rights as Americans. And what they’re saying is that if you’re an alien, even if you’re in the United States legally, a legal alien, may have been here ten years, fifteen years, twenty years legally, if a determination is made by anybody in the executive that you may be a threat, they can hold you indefinitely, they could put you in Guantanamo, not bring any charges, not allow you to have a lawyer, not allow you to ever question what they’ve done, even in cases, as they now acknowledge, where they have large numbers of people in Guantanamo who are there by mistake, that they put you—say you’re a college professor who has written on Islam or for whatever reason, and they lock you up. You’re not even allowed to question it. You’re not allowed to have a lawyer, not allowed to say, “Wait a minute, you’ve got the wrong person. Or you’ve got—the one you’re looking for, their name is spelled similar to mine, but it’s not me.” It makes no difference. You have no recourse whatsoever. This goes so much against everything we’ve ever done. Now, we’ve had some on the other side say, “Well, they’re trying to give rights to terrorists.” No, we’re just saying that the United States will follow the rules it has before and will protect rights of people. We’re not giving any new rights. We’re just saying that if, for example, if you picked up the wrong person, you at least have a chance to get somebody independent to make that judgment. … And under the Constitution, that habeas can be suspended if there is an invasion, if there is an insurrection. We have neither case here. Even the most conservative Republican legal thinkers have said this is not a case to suspend habeas corpus. … the fact is this [Act] allows the Bush administration to act totally arbitrarily with no court or anybody else to raise any questions about it. It allows them to cover up any mistakes they make. And this goes beyond just marking everything “secret,” as they do now. Every mistake they make, they just mark it “secret.” But this is even worse. This means somebody could be locked up for five years, ten years, fifteen years, twenty years. They have the wrong person, and they have no rights to be able to say, “Hey guys, you’ve got the wrong person.” It goes against everything that we’ve done as Americans. You know, when things like this were done during the Cold War in some of the Iron Curtain countries, I remember all the speeches on the Senate floor, Democrats and Republicans alike saying, “How horrible this is! Thank God we don’t do things like this in America.” I wish they’d go back and listen to some of their speeches at that time. Amy Goodman: Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, … your response … about this groundbreaking legislation? Michael Ratner: Well, I think Senator Leahy really got it right. I mean, what this bill authorizes is really the authority of an authoritarian despot to the president. I mean, what it gives him is the power, as the senator said, to detain any person anywhere in the world, citizen or non-citizen, whether living in the United States or anywhere else. I mean, what kind of authority is that? No checks and balances. Nothing. Now, if you’re a citizen, you still get your right of habeas corpus. If you’re a non-citizen, as the senator pointed out, you’re completely finished. Picked up, legal permanent resident in the United States, detained forever, no writ of habeas corpus. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 14th, 2006
8:30 pm	Aha! Or rather, the Fox network was maybe actually right NASA can't find original tape of moon landing WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government has misplaced the original recording of the first moon landing, including astronaut Neil Armstrong's famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," a NASA spokesman said on Monday.    Armstrong's famous space walk, seen by millions of viewers on July 20, 1969, is among transmissions that NASA has failed to turn up in a year of searching, spokesman Grey Hautaloma said. "We haven't seen them for quite a while. We've been looking for over a year and they haven't turned up," Hautaloma said. The tapes also contain data about the health of the astronauts and the condition of the spacecraft. In all, some 700 boxes of transmissions from the Apollo lunar missions are missing, he said. "I wouldn't say we're worried -- we've got all the data. Everything on the tapes we have in one form or another," Hautaloma said. NASA has retained copies of the television broadcasts and offers several clips on its Web site. But those images are of lower quality than the originals stored on the missing magnetic tapes. Because NASA's equipment was not compatible with TV technology of the day, the original transmissions had to be displayed on a monitor and re-shot by a TV camera for broadcast. Hautaloma said it is possible the tapes will be unplayable even if they are found, because they have degraded significantly over the years -- a problem common to magnetic tape and other types of recordable media. The material was held by the National Archives but returned to NASA sometime in the late 1970s, he said. "We're looking for paperwork to see where they last were," he said. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 18th, 2006
12:44 pm	Bad Lee Coye Brown A merchant sends his servant to the marketplace for provisions. Shortly, the servant comes home white and trembling and tells him that in the marketplace he was jostled by a woman, whom he recognized as Death, and she made a threatening gesture. Borrowing the merchant's horse, he flees at top speed to Samarra, a distance of about 125 km, where he believes Death will not find him. The merchant then goes to the marketplace and finds Death, and asks why she made the threatening gesture. She replies, "That was not a threatening gesture, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra."
Monday, May 22nd, 2006
11:40 pm	But it's not a great novel for one reason, and one reason only: Dan Brown can't write. There, I said it, the emperor has no clothes, there is no Santa Claus and Cousin Marty isn't resting, he's in a mental asylum. Living in a large, glass house, I'm loathe to trash another writer and I told my editors as much, but I've had too many quiet nights with a pint ruined by some moron derailing my silence with, So, have you read The Da Vinci Code? It's awesome… Yes, I've tried… I'm about three quarters of the way through it. It's slow going, what with the blood leaking from my eyeballs every few pages, or having re-read a paragraph or a line of dialogue two or three times to ask myself, did he actually write that? People think this is good? Below are five passages I've quoted, minus the character names; two from the Code and three are not. See if you can tell which were written Dan Brown, and which weren't (answers below):                                                                               1) They walked past the huge multicolored and vaguely anthropomorphic metal sculpture that stood guard outside the station area. The sculpture always reminded [her] of how she felt after a heavy weekend: split into pieces, one eye by her toes, the other perched on her ear. 2) She was moving down the corridor toward them with a long, fluid strides… a haunting certainty to her gait. Dressed casually in a knee-length, cream-colored Irish sweater over black leggings, she was attractive and looked to be about thirty. Her thick burgundy hair fell unstyled to her shoulders, framing the warmth of her face. Unlike the waifish, cookie-cutter blondes that adorned Harvard dorm walls, this woman was healthy with an unembellished beauty and genuineness that radiated a striking personal confidence. 3) He relished the unaccustomed silence of the country and the privacy which the garden afforded. It was large, partly walled, and the remainder enclosed by a tangled hedge bordering fields that undulated from down to the village somewhere below. Wild and overgrown though it was, the garden had transmuted neglect into beauty: clematis and honeysuckle toppling over the crumbling brick walls and a confusion of rampant ivy threatening to smother the orchard. 4) Two minutes later she was creeping out of the open front door and heading for the path toward the stables. To the left of the gazebo, a heavy iron gate guarded the entrance to the grotto. She'd never been there- it had always been too overgrown- but she'd heard the gardeners clipping it back on her first morning… A quick examination confirmed that the padlock was missing. [She] brushed the orange flakes of rust from her fingers and gave the gate a shove. It swung open with an eerie creak. 5) Perfect. Now all that remained was to close and lock the door. Leaving the box on the ground for a moment, he grabbed the metal door and began to heave it closed. As the door swung past him, [he] reached up to grab the single bolt that needed to be slid into place. The door closed with a thud, and [he] quickly grabbed the bolt, pulling it to the left. The bolt slid a few inches and crunched to an unexpected halt, not lining up with its sleeve. Paragraphs two and five, above, were both taken from The Da Vinci Code. The first, third and fourth paragraphs are taken from the following: Cheap Trick, by Astrid Fox (Black Lace, 2001); The Reckoning, by Anonymous (Blue Moon, 1998); A Gentleman's Wager, by Madelynne Ellis (Black Lace 2003). As you might have gathered, those last three are soft-core porn paperbacks; Astrid Fox' and Madelynne Ellis are most likely pseudonymns for writers who realized that Anonymous was already taken (is it me, or does Astrid Fox sound like some female superhero's alter ego?). I'm not trying to be cruel, but prove a point. My first measure of a writer is how he or she handles language, and the level of writing in Code is clearly no better than pulp novel pornography. To be fair, there's likely some undiscovered and formidable talent wasting away in some of those little black paperbacks. But as near as I can tell, Code isn't much better than the bulk of those… having skimmed a number of them to find appropriate passages, I noticed that the writing in some of them was noticeably better than Brown's, though the dialogue was terrible in all of them; Brown also shares with his pornographic brethren a penchant for detailed descriptions of churches, museums and gardens, along with many parochial authority figures. The only things keeping Dan Brown from being just another Astrid Fox are a lot of dumbed down history lessons and a lack of spanking. (Comment on this)
Monday, May 15th, 2006
11:46 pm	Necropolis Ho! Now, who will be the witness? When the fog’s too thick to see And I saw a friend beside a wall Her hands were raised in supplication And her face I could not see at all And I raised my hands in rage And brought them down again And we entered through the eastern door And I entered through the eastern door And she entered through the eastern door Now, who will be the witness? When you’re all to blind to see O yeah, yeah And time gets somewhat muddled here But no matter, no matter Here come the events all tumbling down Now, beyond the wall was a great garden Into which we passed Me and my friend And the place was all overgrown with weeds And behold from it’s centre there rose a great fountain The fountain with the healing waters And we knelt down by the rim And I dipped my hand in And she dipped her hand in too And I said are you healed? And she said well are you healed? And I said yes, I’m healed And she said well, yes I’m healed then too And I said babe, you are a liar Babe, you are a liar Babe, you are a liar, too Now, who will be the witness? When you’re all to healed to see? And I kissed her once, I kissed her twice And made my way to leave her And she raised her hand up to her face And brought it down again I said that gesture, it will haunt me That gesture it will haunt me And I left there by the eastern door She left there by the western door Now, who will be the witness there? When you’re blind and you can’t see Who will be the witness there When you’re all so clean and you cannot see Who will be the witness there? When your friends are everywhere Who will be the witness there? And your enemies have ceased to care (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 16th, 2006
10:46 pm	07886 468657                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               In the port of Amsterdam There's a sailor who sings Of the dreams that he brings From the wide open sea In the port of Amsterdam There's a sailor who sleeps While the riverbank weeps With the old willow tree In the port of Amsterdam There's a sailor who dies Full of beer, full of cries In a drunken down fight And in the port of Amsterdam There's a sailor who's born On a muggy hot morn By the dawn's early light  In the port of Amsterdam Where the sailors all meet There's a sailor who eats Only fishheads and tails He will show you his teeth That have rotted too soon That can swallow the moon That can haul up the sails And he yells to the cook With his arms open wide Bring me more fish Put it down by my side Then he wants so to belch But he's too full to try So he gets up and laughs And he zips up his fly In the port of Amsterdam You can see sailors dance Paunches bursting their pants Grinding women to paunch They've forgotten the tune That their whiskey voice croaks Splitting the night with the Roar of their jokes And they turn and they dance And they laugh and they lust Till the rancid sound of The accordion bursts Then out to the night With their pride in their pants With the slut that they tow Underneath the street lamps In the port of Amsterdam There's a sailor who drinks And he drinks and he drinks And he drinks once again He drinks to the health Of the whores of Amsterdam Who have promised their love To a thousand other men They've bargained their bodies And their virtue long gone For a few dirty coins And when he can't go on He plants his nose in the sky And he wipes it up above And he pisses like I cry For an unfaithful love In the port of Amsterdam In the port of Amsterdam (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 18th, 2006
8:52 pm	How cain I pl-ay footsie? What you gonna do when you get out of jail? Stepping in a rhythm to a Kurtis Blow Who needs to think when your feet just go? With a hiditihi and a hipitiho Who needs to think when your feet just go?  Bohannon Bohannon Who needs to think when your feet just go?! ...Bohannon (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 2nd, 2006
7:51 pm	Too Tasteful for Human wurds "This one is a little strange even by Logan’s standards. Is that an alien that the she-male panther-thing is straddling? His copy leaves something to be desired. The flow stumbles a bit, and it’s very curious that he will not fully spell out the word “fucked”, yet he will draw a massive, pink phallus projecting from a woman’s groin, quivering in the face of a nervous alien. I give this one an A++ instead of my usual A+++ mark. " (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 8th, 2006
2:09 am	If you wanna see what's inside of Sally/You'll find that doll in a hole out in the alley                           Well I go yonder mountain and build me a still And I send you a gallon for a five dollar bill Well it's beefcake when I'm hungry, Whiskey when I'm dry And it's greenbacks when I'm hard off and hell when I die If the sea were made of Whiskey and I was a duck I'd swim to the bottom and never come up Oh, but the sea ain't made of Whiskey and I ain't a duck So I play Jack Of Diamonds and trust on my luck     (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 31st, 2005
9:05 am	She's Hit *** Roy and I worked the night shift at the Pall Rio, a kitty-kat spot for the local boys and sailors in from the port a few miles east. The only thing I knew about Roy was his wife was nuts. That’s how he said it, nuts. Not that he'd would be lying, but I never figured how that could be-—marrying a nut. Me, I talked too much about that life with Roy. The bachelor’s life, he called it. A free man in a free town Roy’d say. Never could bring myself to agreeing quite to that, but you might say I had it okay. There was the redhead in 408, every third Tuesday or so. Never let me turn the lights off, but you know—-redheads. Anything you figure a regular girl don’t want to get into these carrot tops do. Nobody knows why. Least of all anybody at Pall Rio from eight-in-the-evening to six-in-the-morning shift Sundays through Thursdays. Alma behind door 202 was a different matter altogether. No lights, no hints, no French business. That’s all she’d call it-—french business. Never much occurred to me as a business afore 202’s pretty Alma. Guess everybody gets their learning curve someday. *** (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 13th, 2005
9:34 pm	The eye, like a strange Balloon, mounts toward infinity *** All he could see were her eyes, unsupported by flesh. his mind was backing away faster than he was, but it had come up against a terrible insight. ~ RMS 1974 Wish I was an apple dangling from a tree Every time Cindy'd pass me by she'd take a bite out of me I wish I was a bluebird I'd never fly away I'd sit up on Cindy's shoulder baby and sing to her all day... (Comment on this)