Day: August 27, 2004

I’ve been a bit slack with these, but it’s not like any of you care in the first place so I feel pretty guiltless.

Artist of the Day: A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible.   A webcomic heavy on the painting and humour that not quite everyone will like. It’s not exactly upbeat. Think basement jazz.

also:

Anne Harper. Unhappy children done macabre on canvas.

Victory! Victory is mine! I want to jump up and down and hug people and throw confetti and burn things!

    

“I know I can express more emotion that laughter, anger, and let’s fuck”

Just a note: Videogame character Bloodrayne will pose topless for Playboy magazine. CNN Money article. The bar has been raised. The girls no longer even have to exist.

in other news: I am a canny bitch. The cam is now operating, though I need to hook it up to things for anyone to see.

The end of Vancouver summer is today.

Somehow there should be more angst to it. Instead there’s only empty waiting for the rain. My day is on hiatus, waiting for a few things today. Another GlobalFreeloader is coming to stay the weekend, she calls today. Robin is due on the phone as well. Socializing the autistic boy with I don’t know what today. He’s started talking about girls. I’m on-line with my painter, he’s talking about his time spent with Karen Findly and her stories of being married to Buckowski. It’s quietly fascinating, full of older men who drink too much, but not quite enough to make up for being trapped in a box for hours at a time with this pale lightless light flooding in. Not enough people on-line this morning, not enough people answering mail. Naked wrapped in a blanket, I feel like an internet orphan. I want so very badly something to do, someone to talk to. For something to do while trapped, I’ve been grumbling at the webcam again. No luck. Could always hook it back up to the roomate computer, though the cable doesn’t reach very far. My rooms terribly messy at any rate. Silks, x-rays, a shifting pile of papers and books. Nothing for anyone to see.

The painful idiocy of the war situation has finally grown to enough of a sore that Bush has begun hint at apologies. Still, note, without any word of wrong-doing. Everything has been mis-calculation and the Iraq invasion is still perfectly justified.

However, the up-coming Republican influx into New York isn’t going too well. Apparently so many people are trying to leave town in time that it’s making head-lines. There’s also been hints at blockades which “shouldn’t affect those leaving the city” due to a possible raising of the cities level of TerrorAlert from orange to red.

As well, the police response is looking rather, well, creepy.

from here: The New York City Police Department (NYPD) has dispatched hundreds of cops around the country to put some 56 people under 24-hour surveillance in advance of the Republican National Convention (RNC)… According to a report issued by WABC News in New York City, the subjects of this spying operation have been identified as “primary anarchists” by the NYPD. They are each being watched by teams of five detectives plus one supervisor, according to the television news report. The surveillance teams are being sent as far away as California, North Carolina, Washington DC and Boston… Another group of 20 police officers have been masquerading as anarchist protesters as part of a deep undercover operation. 

…The NYPD showed off to reporters last week some of the latest hardware it has developed to use against protesters. Devices include an Italian-made helicopter with a ‘night sun’ floodlight, small handsaws that can cut through chains linking protesters, and a new 45-pound mega-megaphone that can be heard by demonstrators several blocks away. Known as a ‘long range acoustic device,’ the megaphone also can emit a piercing sound—like a smoke detector, only much louder—designed to break up crowds. Such devices were sent to Iraq for use by troops earlier this year… Police assigned to play the role of protesters were swarmed by cops—on foot, in police cars, on motorcycles and on bicycles—and the ‘protesters’ were herded away.

…Helmeted paramilitary police armed with assault rifles have already been deployed in nearby Pennsylvania Station and subways, along with National Guard troops, NYPD canine units and regular beat cops. Other police have mounted stepped-up street patrols.

…By denying a permit for Central Park, the city administration of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the NYPD are inviting the kind of chaos and disruption they claim they are trying to prevent… Given the acknowledged infiltration of protest groups by New York City police, the danger of violent confrontations sparked by agents provocateurs is very real.

I love complicated whimsical music late at night. It’s possible to imagine dancing spontaneously occurring under a hundred streetlamps just out of view. I will never understand why more of the world is not awake these precious hours of early morning. The lack of humans makes it a lonely time to be aware, but oh the darkness is so nice outside my window. Just black with the occasional wail of dying alone frieght train brakes. My favorite time for that sound is the middle of the hot afternoon, when the sun is harshly burning images of everything white into your retinas. Heat rising off the pavement in blurry waves and a group of kids in shorts are learning how to skateboard when suddenly -that sound-. That wrenching at the human spirit artificial howl. It’s misplacement makes it precious in a way that it isn’t at night. On a basic level, like seeing the face of who you’re talking to, like having a voice, such sounds are allowable at night. Being alone belongs to the darkness.