Slam Po-dunk

The Albion River in Mendocino County has been described as "a little podunk river." The real Podunk River is in Connecticut. It is 13 miles long. A total of 400 pounds of water chestnut plants were hand-pulled from the shallow Vinton's Mill Pond in the Podunk River basin. This plant species is not the same as the water chestnut used in Asian cooking. Approximately 15-20 tonnes of fresh Chinese water chestnuts are currently being marketed annually in Australia. "They even know it in Podunk, wherever that may be," commented Mark Twain. The loading dock in Steamboat Willie, released in 1928, the first Disney cartoon to feature synchronized sound, was named "Po Dunk Landing". Mark Twain wasn't around to comment.

Δαδα

(would have liked a day like this)

The Survivor

           That was the year
                       we wintered in
         Montparnasse. The 
                ferry, I remember, 
           was empty apart
                 from us, might never 
                    have sailed except 
              its skipper lived 
                               on the other side 
                      of the river & she 
                            wanted to get 
             home that night. Up-
                stream was thick
                   with forest. There
                       were fireworks 
             somewhere. I heard 
                            them, but I did not 
                     see their bloom.

Now out from Otoliths—Expanding The Radius by Mary Ellen Derwis & Joe Balaz

Expanding The Radius
Mary Ellen Derwis & Joe Balaz
72 pages, full color
Otoliths, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9807651-0-6
$24.95 (currently with free postage in the U.S.)
URL: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/expanding-the-radius/11020602

Early on in Expanding The Radius, Mary Ellen Derwis gives us an untitled narrative sequence of digital art, hinting at the human form, which picks up again towards the end of the book in a more figurative sequence— “Rendezvous”. Intimate portraits, wider anthropological insights, and other strongly titled art also prevail. Among other tightly woven directives, Joe Balaz includes multi-paged narrations “High in Blue”, “Fairly Textual”, and “The Industrial Poet”. Then there are the collaborations which find a distinct third voice, as often happens when two people are so creatively in synch. The book ends with two of Mary Ellen’s urban shots that include typographical symbols and a similar photo, a final pun by Joe— “C and Leave”. Many of these images have appeared separately in the quarterly “Otoliths”; now it’s a pleasure to see/read this combined three headed body of always direct, sometimes humorous, often profound digital art, visual poetry, and collaborations. —C. Mehrl Bennett

In Australia

& New Zealand, following on from the lead of the U.K.—ah, these vestiges of Empire—cars drive on the left-hand side of the road. Which means that nearly all vehicles here, apart from, in the main, a few leftover World War II jeeps, have right-hand drive.

So it was a bit bizarre—downright spooky in fact—to look in my side mirror today & see no-one sitting in what should have been the driver's seat of the car behind me.

The mind shudders hay(na)ku. or: Brigham Curtains

"Buy
Mormon Underwear
Compare Mormon Underwear"

The Australian Federal election

is still some months away, but it seems that one of the platforms Prime Minister Gillard is going to be running on is


A Pwoermd A Day.

are you a Mexican bandit?

Color me old,

but I sometimes struggle with the elasticity of today's terminology.

"Police are investigating whether the four men and two women, aged between 18 and 27, were boy racers."

25 years ago today,

the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was bombed in Auckland Harbor.


The first bomb exploded at 11.38pm, lifting those in the mess off their seats. Davy Edwards rushed into the engine room to find a hole the size of a car, water pouring in. Everyone was ordered off the ship but some went back to grab possessions. Fernando Pereira, the ship's photographer, was one of them, perhaps going after his precious cameras. There was a second explosion and, caught in a rush of water, Pereira drowned.

The crew were in shock. They gave statements to the New Zealand police, who reacted swiftly to the first act of terrorism on their soil. Piecing together statements from members of the public, they were soon questioning a French couple, agents Prieur and Mafart of the French secret service.

Initially, the French government denied all knowledge but it soon became obvious that they were involved. Soon French Prime Minister Fabius appeared on television to tell a shocked world, "Agents of the DGSE (Secret Service) sank this boat. They acted on orders." The French minister of defense resigned.

After the bombing, the Rainbow Warrior was given a final resting place at Matauri Bay, in New Zealand's Cavalli Islands. It has become a living reef, attracting marine life and recreational divers.

The idea was first proposed by the New Zealand Underwater Association. It seemed a fitting end for a ship that had spent its time protecting the marine environment.

It was towed north with a patched hull on 2 December 1987. Ten days later, a crowd of well-wishers looked on as it was given a traditional Maori burial.

Now home to a complex ecosystem, the Rainbow Warrior has become a popular dive destination. The local Maori community maintains its kaitaki (conservation). In a few short years, the Rainbow Warrior became an integral part of the environment it helped protect.

Further details are included on the Greenpeace site from which the above is taken.

got to see

Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles


but also this wonderful Magritte,
one of several versions of Les Amants.

The jpeg size is deceptive. You could fit the Magritte 30 times over into the Pollock.

I'm sitting

in a room in what is described as a "boutique hotel" writing this. The hotel's not bad; my only complaint the apparent lack of connectivity of its wireless network. So, went out to buy a topup for our "travelling" national telephony broadband connector, came back, plugged it in. At which point the hotel network decided to come in/on loud & strong, so I'm using that.

Frost this morning, white underfoot; but the predominant color of Canberra is black. Black hoodies, black leather jackets, black full-length coats, black pants, black shirts, black sweaters, or a combination of any or all can be found adorning 80% of the people I've seen today. I felt quite at home in my black corduroy coat.

Tomorrow is our day for being strictly tourists, but this afternoon I'm heading off to the National Gallery, to see Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles. Bought by the Whitlam Labor Government in 1973, its purchase created an outcry, partially because the Australian public considered they could do better, partially because of the price paid. $US2 million. Now it's regarded quite differently. It's a national treasure, an example of the forward-looking nature of Australian perspicacity in buying seminal works of art.

Plus it's currently valued at something like $180 million.

Now out from Otoliths—modulations by Márton Koppány

modulations
Márton Koppány
52 pages, full color
Page size 7½" x 7½"
Otoliths, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9807651-2-0
$19.99 (currently with free postage in the U.S.A.)
URL: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/modulations/11269905

Nearly sixty years ago, Charles Olson warned, “The poet cannot afford to traffick in any other sign than his ‘one’,” preparing the way whether he knew it or not for Márton Koppány to take leave of his native Hungarian and to move into English, where for more than two decades he has been creating traffic signs with the gleeful abandon of a deranged city planner with an advanced degree in Dada. Or maybe not so deranged. I read the poems in modulations as perfectly sensible, whether fish are emitting thought bubbles in the sky, or a table’s legs are deconstructed to show their essentially asemic nature. Language is our great connecting principle and Koppány’s language artfully breaks, reduces, and repairs poetry with a metaphysician’s discomfort matched with a physician’s healing touch. —Peter O'Leary

There was a time when pictures and writing were not as separate as they are today, a time when the picture was given not just to show but to tell; a sort of “picture-writing.” And each “pictograph” was as an aperçu, at once an insight into and a brief digest of the thought to be communicated. The poet Márton Koppány has found for himself a form most becoming of his intuition; each panel here is an aperçu into that space where picture and writing are one, that space where the mind knows the word in the figure of its substance, that space that is language-in-eidos. And so I see Koppány’s panels as “eidographs,” as urtexts of “eidetic poetry.” —Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, author of The Logoclasody Manifesto

What can you say about . . . except that . . . with clouds just
where they . . . which is, to say, in short, a master of the . . .,
as well as . . . the. For instance, the refle . . . one poem
of the invis. . . stillness (         ), not to exclude (

                                    In fullest slowest color. —Bob Gru . . . n

The minimalist visual poetry of Márton Koppány has many qualities lifting it high and above most visual poetry composed over the last 100 years in any language. We are fortunate he has chosen to compose in his second language, American English, wedded to discipline. His manifestations always lean forward into the new, not a mere recycling of the old and worn out. It brings smiles, smirks and the belly laugh. It is consistently permeated with the rare characteristic of awe so many others lack and never reach for. And, for me, on too many occasions, his visions give me a jealous wish that it had come my way rather than his. —Karl Kempton

"José, can you?"

"Si."

The genesis of an urban myth?

or: "Will the real one-armed bandit please stand up."

"New Zealand Police say the one-armed man, who was pictured on camera helping to rob a brasserie at gunpoint, was spotted feeding a large amount of cash into poker machines at a local tavern the next night."

[fragment]

No record of it exists except as a refutation; & the only record of the refutation is a fragment of a manuscript without provenance, attributed by the late Umberto Allegrezza, on the basis of stylistic & scribic elements, to Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi, better known as al-Khwarizmi, astronomer, the inventor of algebra, & rumored to be author of a lost—or rather hidden—treatise on calculus which, it has been claimed, was the basis for both Isaac Newton's method of fluxions and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz' integral notation.

The manuscript records the thoughts of al-Khwarizmi on a homily by his contemporary Photius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, adherent to a different religion, entitled "All Life is an Accident Waiting to Happen," aware that it was an ironic title since what Photius was advocating was the exact opposite.

al-Khwarizmi's piece has an equally ironic title; "All Accidents are a Life Waiting to Happen."

Now out from Otoliths— Grzegorz Wróblewski's A Marzipan Factory

A Marzipan Factory
Grzegorz Wróblewski
(translated from the Polish by Adam Zdrodowski)
112 pages
Otoliths, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9807651-1-3
$15.95 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/a-marzipan-factory/11184884

A Marzipan Factory is the most original and enticing book of poems I have read in years. It is Kafkaesque and yet tender, cynical and yet warm, elliptical and yet wholly immediate. Grzegorz Wróblewski can take the most ordinary of phenomena and then give them the twist of a knife: to "spare" the life of a living organism—a "dry" tangerine for instance—is, from another angle, to forget it. The pleasures and terrors of sex, of age, of the fear of death, of the deceptions of our social life, have rarely been so brutally—yet wittily and charmingly—documented as they are in these short, often gnomic poems, surprisingly well rendered in Adam Zdrodowski’s translation. Grzegorz Wróblewski restores one’s faith in the power of lyric poetry to renew itself. — Marjorie Perloff

Grzegorz Wróblewski's poems are ironic and serious, quick and probing, nailed to place and character but soaring in imagination. If you haven't read his poems, it's not too late to start and this new volume is the perfect place to do that. — John Z. Guzlowski

A Marzipan Factory is also available through Amazon.

Now that it's

international rugby season in the southern hemisphere, I should get to see this occasionally in the next few months.



It's the kapa o pango, the special haka of the All Blacks, not always the haka done before their matches, only before those they consider special.

Kapa o pango kia whakawhenua au i ahau!
Hi aue, hi!
Ko Aotearoa e ngunguru nei!
Au, au, aue ha!

Ko Kapa o Pango e ngunguru nei!
Au, au, aue ha!

I ahaha!
Ka tu te ihiihi
Ka tu te wanawana
Ki runga ki te rangi e tu iho nei, tu iho nei, hi!

Ponga ra!
Kapa o Pango, aue hi!
Ponga ra!
Kapa o Pango, aue hi, ha!

*

Let me be one with the land!

New Zealand is rumbling here!

The team in black is rumbling here!


Face up to the fear
Fight the terror
To the sky above
Fight up there,
high up there. Yeah!

Our shadows fall!
Team in Black!
Yeah!

Silver Fern!
Team in Black!
Yeah!
HAHH!

Stirring stuff!

Applied Dialectics

thesis
                     poetry

antithesis
                     war

synthesis
                     woetry

getting lazy, cross-posting

deba±e

Alex Gildzen

recently described President Obama as having lost his mojo.

Like the President, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected a year earlier in similar circumstances—a highly popular left-leaning leader putting an end to a conservative government—had also succumbed to the same affliction.

Unlike the United States, where the President is the Head of State, Rudd was Prime Minister by virtue of his being the leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party which won the majority of seats in the last election. The Head of State in Australia is still the Queen of England.

Unlike the United States, where the President can be replaced during his (or, hopefully, some time in the not too distant future, her) term only through death or incapacity or impeachment, the Prime Minister of Australia can be replaced without an election being called when his (up until now the pronoun held true) party decides they want another leader.

Rudd's popularity has been plunging in the opinion polls, & with it the popularity of the Federal Labor Government. So much so that, almost inconceivable given their resounding win in the 2007 elections, they were in grave danger of being voted out of office in the elections due to be held later on this year.

There were murmurings of discontent about Kevin Rudd's leadership; but the move against him, when it came, was swift & sudden. A breaking news item on the national 7 p.m. ABC news last night reported that there had been discussions between Rudd, his deputy Julia Gillard, & senior figures in the Labor Party; three hours later Rudd called a televised news conference in which he announced that the party leader's post would be thrown open to ballot at a caucus meeting to be held at 9 a.m. the next morning, that he would be restanding for the post, that he had been elected to the post & he considered his work unfinished.

Less than 12 hours later, there was no need for a ballot. Rudd had been convinced that if he stood again for the leadership, his defeat would be humiliating such were the numbers now against him. Julia Gillard became the leader of the parliamentary party.

At noon, the new Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, the first woman to hold the position, was sworn in by the Queen's representative, the Governor General of Australia, Quentin Bryce, who just happens to be the first female G.G. that Australia has ever had.


Julia Gillard (left) watches as Governor-General Quentin Bryce signs her commission as Prime Minister of Australia. (AAP: Alan Porritt)

custom-made in the region

; the development of literacy & semiotics
; pre-dates my becoming an archivist
[or an anarchist]

; was talking
about the possibilities of
the
dates from
; now on in

; being recast
; so as to focus
more on diplomatic
relations with Havana
& ; the literacy of the
officer corps.

[a political & miltary tug of war
on indoor-outdoor spatial relations]

(There are
no universal definitions
though your accountant
may have other
ideas—he spends a lot
of time in his sister's
kindergarten class. )

[sharp gaps in education]
[the ability to use relevant software applications]
[the dispatch as genre]

& other poems?

WHOL

illuminating gothic

from Stephan Schreiber's sketch book, c.1494

Che in Bolivia

I must write & thank Fidel for his parting gift. A book of poetry, that fits comfortably in the pocket of my camouflage fatigues. By a Yanqui yet, who set out every day to write something, even when it was hard to find something to write about. It’s an idea I’ve picked up on, have carried out.

Have kept a diary throughout this campaign, although daily Bolivia is very much the same old same old, unlike the New York I read about each night where there are "so many things in the air!" Here there are only maggots & mosquitoes, & the mutterings of peasants intimidated by our presence. They help us because they are frightened of us, & then send to tell the army because they are more frightened of the soldiers.

The army is in the next valley over. The army is now in the valley behind. We are running out of food, are running out of time. "The only thing to do is simply continue."

I am a man with two hearts. The one that beats still dreams of the revolution. The one that weeps is in my pocket, it is Lunch Poems, by Frank O’Hara.

We will move towards the next valley. That way I at least can choose the manner of my death.

Peaches and Bats

Peaches and Bats #6 is now available! It's a 64-page handsewn chapbook with a letterpressed cover, featuring adventurous writings by:

Taryn Andrews
Aaron Barrell
Bill Berkson
Meredith Blankinship
Norma Cole
Beverly Dahlen
Joel Felix
Kim Hyesoon, translated by Don Mee Choi
Rodney Koeneke
Kimberly Lyons
Joseph Mains
Scott Metz
Hoa Nguyen
Deborah Poe
Dan Raphael
Stacy Szymaszek
Dana Ward
Mark Young
Peaches and Bats #6 is available for $5.00 (including postage in the US). It can be ordered via PayPal at http://peachbats.blogspot.com/2010/06/new-issue.html, or by sending a check, payable to Sam Lohmann, to 4025 SE Taylor St., Portland, OR 97214. Back issues are still available. Thanks for your time, and happy summer,

Sam Lohmann

I'm a bit confused

what century we're living in.....

Execution by firing squad


announced on Twitter?
& later:

"We will be streaming live my press conference as soon as
I'm told Gardner is dead. Watch it at
www.attorneygeneral.Utah.gov/live.html"
he wrote.

pas de deux

Truly radical
social engineers

are thin on
the ground.

river liffey, relived

and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

excursion

                                      In a kind of
                                           reverse Proust—
                              degree of difficulty
                    2.7 on the Hans
                           Richter Scale—I
            am waiting for 
                    the tenth & final 
                                   volume of The 
                        Grand Piano to 
                    appear before
                            ordering the 
                          complete set 
                                            & then taking 
                                         to my bed to
                               spend the rest
                                               of my life 
                                 reading them entire.

Today the
postman brought
me a box of
Girl Scout
tracking cookies.

Truly a corn-
ucopia. Tomorrow
he'll be back
with another box
containing much
the same as
those I've
just consumed.

Brecht, surprisingly

gloves were donned         all streets cleared of

free woman legs & vice versa

then they collected our shoes

these monuments serve as symbolic iconic media

are all about showing off & razzle dazzle

I am contacting you for a secret business transaction

(In the) American Grain

The Australian Federal Labor Government,

which purports to be democratic, whale- & planet-loving, & liberal when it comes to people's freedoms—though it won't allow same sex marriages—has a rather serious hang-up when it comes to the web. It has been preparing legislation to ban internet providors from allowing their customers access to particular sites, a list which will never be officially published but hacked copies of which reveal the content of the proscribed sites ranges from bestiality to euthanasia.

Now, according to ZDNet, they are also moving to acquire everybody's browsing history.

Companies who provide customers with a connection to the internet may soon have to retain subscriber's private web browsing history for law enforcement to examine when requested, a move which has been widely criticised by industry insiders.

The Attorney-General's Department yesterday confirmed to ZDNet Australia that it had been in discussions with industry on implementing a data retention regime in Australia. Such a regime would require companies providing internet access to log and retain customer's private web browsing history for a certain period of time for law enforcement to access when needed.

Currently, companies that provide customers with a connection to the internet don't retain or log subscriber's private web browsing history unless they are given an interception warrant by law enforcement, usually approved by a judge. It is only then that companies can legally begin tapping a customer's internet connection.

One internet service provider (ISP) source told ZDNet Australia that the Australian regime, if implemented, could go as far as recording each URL a customer visited and all emails.

That source said such a regime "would be scary and very expensive".

Another industry source said Australians should "be very fucking afraid".

They said the regime being considered by the Australian Government could see data held for much longer than EU Directive time of 24 months — it would be more like five or ten years.

"They seem quite intent [on implementing the regime] and they keep throwing up the words 'terrorism' and 'paedophiles'," the source said. "We're talking browsing history and emails, way beyond what I would consider to be normal SMS, retaining full browsing history and everything."

Electronic Frontier Australia (EFA) chair Colin Jacobs said the regime was "a step too far".

"At some point data retention laws can be reasonable, but highly-personal information such as browsing history is a step too far," Jacobs said. "You can't treat everybody like a criminal. That would be like tapping people's phones before they are suspected of doing any crime."

He added that browser history could reveal all sorts of personal information. "And furthermore, the way the internet works, it's a huge amount of data to be kept and it requires some snooping on the part of the ISPs into which [web] pages people are looking at."

Seed Money

About 40 kilometers south of Rockhampton, slightly inland & about 240 meters above sea level, is Mount Morgan & the town of the same name that grew up on & around it. Originally it was called Ironstone Mountain, but was renamed after the three Morgan brothers, sons of a man convicted of murder & transported to the colonies, who pegged out a gold-mining lease on it in 1882 & began extracting the metal.

To obtain capital for the work, they formed a syndicate with some Rockhampton businessmen; but the Morgans remained doubtful of the mine's profitability, & sold out their share of the syndicate to the other members in 1886.

On the 1st of October, 1886, The Mount Morgan Gold Mining Company Limited was registered in the Supreme Court of Queensland, with a nominal capital of one million one-pound shares.

The Shareholders were Thomas Skarratt Hall (158,332 shares), William Knox D'Arcy (358,334 shares), William Pattison (125,000 shares), Walter Russell Hall (125,000 shares), John Ferguson (116,667 shares), Charles Carlton Skarratt (58,334 shares) & Alexander William Robertson & John Wagner (together) (58,333 shares).

The Morgans' doubt was misplaced. During the 108-year life of the mine approximately 262 tonnes of gold, 37 tonnes of silver & 387,000 tonnes of copper were mined from Mount Morgan from underground & open cut operations. For a time it was the largest gold mine in the world. Fortunes were made.

Walter Hall died in 1911. His widow Eliza began the process of establishing a trust, part of which went to establishing the Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, situated at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, begun in 1915 & still one of the world’s most prestigious research centers.

William D'Arcy put his money to a different use. He returned to England in 1887 & wanted to establish a place in English upper-class society. But his life-style expenditure & the collapse of some of his investments during the final years of the century meant he had to look for somewhere new to replenish his fortune.

To quote from the Australian Dictionary of Biography:

The opportunity came in 1900 when Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, a former British minister to Teheran, approached him to invest in Persian oil exploration. Early in 1901 D'Arcy sent to Teheran an emissary who in May obtained a concession to search for oil over 480,000 sq. miles (1,243,195 km²). D'Arcy agreed to provide all necessary finance for the search. But at the end of 1903 he had spent £150,000 with no result. His financial position was now desperate. He had to mortgage his Mount Morgan shares at a time when they had dropped to £2 10s. each. By May 1905 he had used £225,000 and could spend no more. He began negotiations with the French branch of the Rothschild family for the sale of the concession. But on 20 May the British owned Burmah Oil Co. stepped in with an offer. D'Arcy agreed to it and made over the rights to his concession in return for 170,000 Burmah Oil shares and a payment to cover expenses he had incurred.

On 26 May 1908 Burmah Oil finally found the biggest oilfield yet known in the world in D'Arcy's old concession. This led in 1909 to the formation of a new company, Anglo-Persian Oil, which later became Anglo-Iranian Oil and ultimately British Petroleum.

& which, of course, is now known simply as BP.

Am in the middle

of a detective story fest, the books bought from a number of places. I'm unused to having such a variety of options for obtaining my reading matter.

Started with Stieg Larsson's Millenium Trilogy a month or so back. Had been reluctant to lay out over $100 to buy the three books, but found them discounted to roughly halfprice at a local department store. Quite liked the first of them, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but found the later two a bit hard to get through.

From Sweden to the U.K., V.L. McDermid, the initials, rather than the better known Val, used for the series featuring journalist/sleuth Lindsay Gordon. A couple of books found in the remainder bin at the local newsagent. Much more the traditional English detective story than her Tony Hill, Wire in the Blood etc., books which I rank as some of the best crime stories ever written.

Put an order in on Amazon for the latest John Sandford & Laurie R. King books, plus the second-latest Graham Hurley novel.

Picked up a first novel by a, to me, unknown author,Theresa Monsour at the annual Bookfest, a secondhand booksale run to raise funds for the local branch of a charity. In the acknowledgements section Monsour thanks her "mentor" John Camp, who just happens to be better known as the John Sandford who provides a recommendation on the back of the book. Enough reason for me to buy the book. Enjoyed it, went searching for more, found she's only written three, one a year from 2003 to 2005. Nothing since. Managed to track down the other two in the new & used section of Amazon.

(A side note. Only bought two books this year at Bookfest—the other was Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night A Traveller—but they benefited by the 1000 or so books I purged from my shelves a couple of months before & donated to them.)

Bought a book by Gregg Hurwitz at the local secondhand bookstore. Had read & enjoyed his two most recent books; discovered, when I purged my shelves, that I also had his The Kill Clause which I'd forgotten about but promptly reread. Same protagonist in that as in the most recent purchase. Found a third in the series at Amazon at the same time I was searching for Monsour. Have also noted Hurwitz' name in the production credits for V which I've been watching lately.

Spent the time post-Larsson/McDermid/Monsour & waiting for the first lot of Amazon books to arrive by rereading Stuart MacBride. Scottish, writes about Aberdeen, good but quite bloody. Had finished the first four, broke off to read the John Sandford which arrived. Then one of the nose-guards (?) on my glasses broke off. So off to the optometrist in the morning which happens to be in the same shopping complex as the main bookshop in these parts. Found on their shelves what would be called a cornucopia of new books hereabouts, exited with the latest Jeffrey Deaver, the latest Michael Koryta, &, in a touch of synchronicity, the latest Stuart MacBride.

Finished the Sandford, read the Deaver, reread the fifth MacBride—continuity is important to me—& then read the new one.

The second Monsour book arrived. Read that. Then moved on to the Graham Hurley. Finished that this afternoon. Started on the second in the Hurwitz series.

Still have Koryta & Laurie R. King to read. Plus the third Hurwitz. & then there's the third & final book by Theresa Monsour which still has to arrive. Plus I think I'll order in the latest Graham Hurley book in hardback since the paperback isn't due out until January of next year.

The amazing thing is I've enjoyed nearly everything I've read. As I said earlier, I was a bit disappointed with the later Larsson, & the McDermid books were workmanlike rather than inspired, but, overall, a good solid bloc of good solid detective stories.

Now to go hunting for the latest James Lee Burke which I'm sure isn't far away.

Don't they ever fucking learn?

"The Israeli government has apologised after its press office emailed to journalists a spoof video about the flotilla which tried to dock in Gaza."

BBC News

It seems like an oxymoron,

but, in my meanderings not too far out of town this morning, I came across an area signed as "dry rainforest".

First time I'd heard of it, Googled it when I got home, found on the NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change & Water website, the following:

Not all rainforests grow in areas receiving evenly distributed, abundant supplies of rainfall. Lesser known are the tiny remnants of Dry Rainforests scattered across the Kimberley, Top End, Cape York and down the east coast of Australia. Since they occur in regions with a distinct wet and dry season, the more northerly monsoonal forests survive in sheltered gullies and along the banks of rivers. Under moister, past climatic conditions, their ancestors were widespread across the continent. As the climate became less suitable for rainforests, those species best fitted for the arid conditions survived. They replaced species less able to survive in the new conditions and evolved to deal with the changing environment.

Along the east coast, marginal rainfalls or poorer soils support Dry Rainforests in sheltered locations. They often grow on rocky sites that are rarely subject to fire. Because some Dry Rainforest trees have a greater tolerance of arid conditions, communities can be found up to 300 km inland where suitable shelter exists.

The ability of some species to shed leaves in dry conditions is an advantage for Dry Rainforest trees, enabling them to survive temporary water shortage. Common species include Lacebark (Brachychiton discolour), Australian Teak (Flindersia australis), Hoop Pine (Araucaria cunninghamii), and figs (Ficus species).

life imitating art?

from iTunes...

Armchair Commandos is a new reality-based scenario paintball TV show. Each episode features two naturally opposing forces that will compete for a cash prize. The members of the winning team will then donate the prize to a charity of their choice. Some examples of opposing forces may include: cops vs. skaters, bull riders vs. p.e.t.a, or even doctors vs. malpractice attorneys. The stage for this competition will be the scenario paintball field. These scenarios will range from the wildest childhood imaginations to the re-enactment of famous military battles. With clever team selections and complex, creative scenarios, each episode will keep viewers riveted in their seats with a potent cocktail of intriguing conflict, imagination, and stunning visuals. Players and non-players alike will love this show!

"Earlier, the Israeli military admitted it had made mistakes during the raid, saying some of the commandos had been issued with paintball guns...."

a pwoermd a day

still going at won des laits.

More pix from the nzepc's Home & Away Symposium

Michael Farrell


Jill Jones


Michele Leggott (MC on the night)


Nigel Roberts


Mark Young

The above were all taken at the Lounge reading, part of the proceedings of the nzepc's Home & Away Symposium, held March 30 & 31 at Auckland University.

I also must admit to liking this photo of myself & Martin Edmond, taken during the talks that occured across the two days.



A fairly full record is available at the Symposium website. It contains poems, photos, audios of the talks given, & a video of a group event called Archipelago that I didn't take part in, finding the ground rules & explanations so convoluted & long-winded that I walked out in disgust.

Pirates w/out penance

(1)

Israel is yet to explain why, on a supposedly peaceful interception, its commandos chose to board the ship by rappelling from a military helicopter, in the dark, in international waters.

(2)

The White House has warned that BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could continue until August.

Everything is a
struggle, these
days.

Xcue-sets, encore

get / thee behind / me, Arthur Rimbaud

A photo from a reading at Auckland University, March 31.

His
future was
fast becoming finite.

Before Gil Scott-Heron

wrote & sang a song called "Winter in America", an Australian singer/ songwriter called Doug Ashdown had also written & recorded a song called "Winter in America".



It still occupies a prominent place on my emotional jukebox.

some takes on Genji Monogatari

Thomas Fink at Galatea Resurrects #14

Eileen Tabios, also at Galatea Resurrects #14

Bill Allegrezza at p-ramblings

Paul Siegell at goodreads

Sheila Murphy at Jacket

Lulu URL

Amazon URL

intertwine

She chose the
double bass
as

the
invisible part
of herself. Now,

her intimate, low
register, haunting
songs

that
emphasize the
androgyny of emotion

are recognized as
a personal
trademark.

Now out from Otoliths — Crag Hill's 7 x 7

It's pure serendipity that the 49^th book to bear the Otoliths imprint just happens to have the title that it does.....

7 x 7
Crag Hill
56 pages,
Page size 8½" x 8½"
Cover image by Nico Vassilakis
Otoliths 2010
ISBN: 978-0-9806025-7-9
$13.45 + p&h
URL: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/7-x-7/10899413

Implicitly comparing a book to a deck of cards, and that deck of cards in turn to the world of social violence we’re dealt, Crag Hill stakes his ante on the power of poetry to witness and document the multiply-layered, self-inflicted insanity of US daily life in the Bush years. As readers we become participants and are thus empowered to say no to the game of death. —Maria Damon

One of the most important things I look for in poetry is something I can believe—something without posturing or postmodern cynicism or post-anything for that matter: something that stands outside of facile labels, something (disorientingly/ seemingly) simple that makes me see and hear and feel—and more importantly, makes me believe—in the world, in poetry, in the process of poesis. Crag Hill’s poems make me believe and listen—and more importantly—make me want to listen. And best of all, they are far from simple and believe in a chance-laden process. They make our world. These are poems fiercely engaged with/in our current and tragic socio/ political/ecological moment and I am deeply grateful for them, because gratitude is the beginning of understanding. These poems remind me that rage and discontent is the genesis of change, that "death is death"—such a necessary reminder in times of such alienation from it. Let us now go make and change, listening to this poet’s example. —Christopher Arigo

"Scattered parts/now lie about what happened." 7 X 7 parses the dizzying bomb crater sized duplicities of the thoroughly mediated, mediatized and militarized zeitgeist which we have collectively dealt ourselves into. Crag Hill is looking to see where the proverbial chips are falling. And he's playing with a full deck. —Tom Beckett

Sometimes
the question
is a tur(n)key.

Sometimes
the answer
is cranberry sauce.

channeling Eco

The speaker was a monk bent under the weight of his years, an old man white as snow, not only his skin, but also his face and his pupils. I saw he was blind. The voice was still majestic and the limbs powerful, even if the body was withered by age. He stared at us as if he could see us, and always thereafter I saw him move and speak as if he still possessed the gift of sight. But the tone of his voice was that of one possessing only the gift of prophesy.

"The man whom you see, venerable in age and wisdom," Malachi said to William, pointing out the newcomer, "is Jorge of Burgos."

from William Weaver's translation of Il nome della rosa.

sleep deprivation

IЖon

Late Spring. The ghosts of the Tsars have melted away everywhere except inside the churches.

Soon he will be totally alone on Nevsky Prospekt.

The aesthetic possibilities of Tokyo

                         The architecture was 
          once spectacular; now
                   sounds terrifically 
                       Johnny Cash. New 
                media & social soft-
           ware are catalysts for 
                atmospheric change. 
                      No point being a 
           pedant when innocuous 
                         classicism & memorable 
                kitsch are both written 
         on the verso of a papyrus
            & promoted as a cure 
                for writer's block by 

           the person who loved 
                        Tzara because she was 
                  destined to love a poet.

a 2004 collab. with Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

The Temptation of St Anthony

Every five days
young boys would 
make the four-hour
journey to bring him 
food — locusts &
honey, a skin of water,
occasionally a small block 
of goats’-milk cheese 
wrapped in a palmleaf. On the 
days in between
he would be offered
wine & fruit, a choice of
lamb or venison, sherbet
to refresh the mouth.

*

                    The demons
               come down
          the steps
     in a line
towards 
him. Dressed in 
the uniform of 
the Army of the 
Tsar. Fixed
bayonets. He is
transfixed by
the one third
from the right, blond
hair gleaming in
the uninterrupted
starlight. Offers
himself up as
sacrifice, expends
his semen as he
is entered. His last
sighting is of scorpions
flowing from an
old woman’s eye. The
demons
     go down
          the steps
               in a line
                    away from him.

*

He thinks

tranquility is a sea of torment
the mountains are moving away
he can hear the sea
s  or er    og horn        use    e t
he is taking milk from his mother’s breast
the stars are the eyes of succubi 
     waiting for him to fall asleep
of living as a lacuna in life
ived   ro in   ter          ium  nd d
lost opportunities
a koan is a trick question whose answer 
     can only be found in the mouths of wild dogs
perhaps a pillar would have been more preferable
p  obj     s a s q   ue nap n abo
how when an apple is dropped whilst someone is watching 
     there is an instant when it is poised precisely 
     in front of the face
end r   a in   bo   s o p ds    b
demons are often real people when Christ is far away
  on n           faith enter   en            p
his plate is full of emptiness
if there was a city here it would be in flames
he is being dropped like an apple
         e  a  er hymn p  k       urts  
         p rt  d  a   "re  rn"  o  t  wa
        ived  ro in  ter       ium  nd d
torment is a sea of tranquility

he dreams.

*
 
He had left
instructions 
that he was to 
be buried in a
secret location
so his body could not
be venerated. On
being told of his
death by the young
food-bearers the
elders came to find
that wild dogs had
torn apart & taken 
his body away,
tempted by
the rotting flesh.

from poles apart by Mark Young & Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

every so often,

a bit of Bosch is what the brain needs....


center panel, The Temptation of St Anthony

ca♪ence

from The Light-Breaker

History is. Typhoon.
The Bay of Bengal.

Ship washed up. Large.
Left there. Broken down

by locals. Scrap, metal,
parts to use. Such

plenitude never seen
before. New industry.

Now stretches for many
kilometers along the

beaches of Bangladesh.
Pollution prevails. Most

things done by hand or
not much more advanced.

Small men or children
in narrow passageways.

What air there is is
full of toxins. Is death.

Is dangerous. Is life.
Is nothing else to do.

The countryside destroyed.

I just love this photo

of Michael Rothenberg & David Meltzer by Terri Carrión that graces the cover of the latest Otoliths.

Otoliths #17 is now live

Issue #17 of Otoliths, the southern autumn, 2010 issue, has just gone live. Four years old today!

&, since it's also May Day, I was going to have Billy Bragg singing "The Internationale" as background—you can still have it: just click on the link—but there's enough in this issue to allow an unaccompanied announcement. As befits a 4th birthday issue, it's a bit more packed than normal. In addition to the usual broad selection of paintings, prose, photographs, sermons, assemblages, poetry of all shapes, sizes, & styles, &, as always, a large offering of vizpo, the issue also includes two special features; one of which, since it was to have been a complete issue of another journal which has, unfortunately, gone into hiatus, is actually magazine-sized.

In the standard part of the issue you'll find work by Michael Farrell, Marilyn R. Rosenberg , Eric Arnold, Jim McCrary, Reed Altemus, Adam Fieled, Bob Heman, Tim Wright, Samit Roy, Caleb Puckett, Charles Freeland, gustave morin, dan raphael, Philip Byron Oakes, Dorothee Lang & Karyn Eisler & Susan Gibb, Sam Langer, Geof Huth, Esa Mäkijärvi, Scott Metz, Andrew McEwan, Felino Soriano, Travis Macdonald, Paul Siegell, Alan Davies, Kirsten Kaschock, Raymond Farr, John M. Bennett, John M. Bennett & Sheila E. Murphy, Jeff Harrison, Letitia Trent, Michelle Cahill, Valery Oisteanu, Irving Weiss, Martin Edmond, Carlos Soto Román, Jim Meirose, SJ Fowler, Felipe Cussen, Grzegorz Wróblewski, James Mc Laughlin, Michael Steven, Arkava Das, Michael Caylo-Baradi, J. D. Nelson, Jal Nicholl, Jenny Enochsson, Joe Balaz, Glenn R. Frantz, Michael Brandonisio, Jon Curley & Gg Re, sean burn, Bobbi Lurie, Jeff Klooger, Richard Kostelanetz, Silvio De Gracia, David-Baptiste Chirot, Alexander Jorgensen, Anne Gorrick, John Moore Williams, Marcia Arrieta, Mara Patricia Hernandez, Bill Drennan, nick-e melville, Corey Wakeling, John Martone, Jessie Janeshek, Thomas Fink (reviewing David Lehman's Yeshiva Boys), & Emma Smith.

The first special feature is ROCKPILE on the road, with poems by Michael Rothenberg & David Meltzer, photos by Terri Carrión, & an introduction by Larry Sawyer.

The second special feature is Poet-Editors, curated & introduced by Eileen R. Tabios. 43 poet-editors respond to the question: "What is (or has been) your favorite editing project and why?" The respondees, who also provide—sometimes quite extensive—samples of their work, are: William Allegrezza, Ivy Alvarez, Anny Ballardini, Joi Barrios, John Bloomberg-Rissman, Ana Božičević, Garrett Caples, Brian Clements, Bruce Covey, Del Ray Cross, Patrick James Dunagan, Elaine Equi, Adam Fieled, Thomas Fink, Luis H. Francia, Geoffrey Gatza, Tim Gaze, Crg Hill, Aileen Ibardaloza, Vincent Katz, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, Burt Kimmelman, Mark Lamoureux, Amanda Laughtland, Timothy Liu, Dana Teen Lomax, Joey Madia, Sandy McIntosh, Didi Menendez, Lars Palm, Guillermo Parra, Ernesto Priego, Sam Rasnake, Barbara Jane Reyes, Christopher Rizzo, Patrick Rosal, Sarah Rosenthal, Susan M. Schultz, Logan Ryan Smith, Jill Stengel, Fiona Sze-Lorrain, Jean Vengua, & Mark Young.

& if that isn't enough, the print parts of the previous issue of Otoliths, the southern summer 2010 issue, are now available from The Otoliths Storefront.

unpolished

polleneyes

Could someone

please explain the logic in Amazon's associative processes.

Busy week

doing things editorial. 16 hour days hunched in front of a hot monitor. Smoking far too much, as I tend to do when I'm engaged in such pursuits. (&, as a side issue, I see that the Federal Government is going to increase duty on cigarets, which will increase the price by about 20%, which will mean I'll be paying an extra $20 per week for the privilege of killing myself by harmful inhalation. &, they're going to insist the tobacco companies start producing their wares in packaging with nil branding; just a huge photo of something like gangrene, a huge warning as to how smoking is a health hazard or causes cancer or..., & in small letters, the brand varietal.)

But I've caught up on getting Otoliths ready for going live. Only two more things to do, one fiddly, one very easy (putting a new front page in place in just over 24 hours!).

& I've even managed to get the next book in the Otoliths catalog to the stage where I've just ordered a proof copy for the author.

Wheeee!

anchovies & elephants & Thelonious Monk

"It begins to tell
round midnight, round midnight..."

still burning the

Midnight Oil

Issue #17 of Otoliths

is, in terms of putting it together, well into the final straight. A horse-racing analogy, something I never thought I'd use.

Now make that is was. Received a request last night from a dear friend. The journal she was guest-editing an issue for has "lost their web person" & apparently they won't be publishing it any more. Could I possibly help by doing it as a feature in Otoliths?

Being a generous soul, & knowing how much work said dear friend had put into getting the issue together, how could I refuse? So, I'm burning the midnight oil—I don't think that's a horse-racing term, though you never know—&, in relative terms, am starting from scratch—a human-racing term—to put an entire issue of a magazine together to go into an issue of the big O.

Which means, peeps, that you'll be getting a great bonus issue inside issue #17 of Otoliths which is was already shaping up to be a great issue. Double the doohickies! Doohickie the doubloons! Spring has sprung / the grass has riz / I wonder where the birdies is. / The birds is on the wing. / But that's absurd / because the wings is on the bird.

The Second Amendment, purportedly,

gives U.S. citizens the right to


bare arms


bear charms


beer farms


bury harm


or be fuckwits

Several dozen 2nd Amendment advocates — many with loaded handguns on their hips and rifles dangling from their shoulders — gathered in a Virginia park within view of the U.S. Capitol on Monday, marking a day of protest against what activists called dangerous breaches of the U.S. Constitution.

Organisers of the Restore the Constitution rally chose to stage it on the anniversary of the 1775 uprising in Lexington that started the War of Independence. It was also the date of the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City by the Right-wing extremist Timothy McVeigh.

The number of active anti-government Right-wing “patriot” groups nearly tripled last year to 512 from 149 in 2008, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks the activities of hate groups.

Today the
postman brought
me a calliope. He
was all steamed
up about it. So,
too, the calliope.
Instant (re)play.

&, on the subject of volcanoes,

is
a cigaret
a fumer roll?

But / what causes / volcanoes to erupt?

Promiscuous women are responsible for earthquakes, a senior Iranian cleric has said.

Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi told worshippers in Tehran last Friday that they had to stick to strict codes of modesty to protect themselves.

"Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray and spread adultery in society which increases earthquakes," he said.

Okavango Delta, Botswana

The Promised Land

Short-range ordered
nanoholes can
improve the health
of rice farmers &
consumers or even,
with the addition
of the new bad-boy
vibe, form a picture of
a dying Michael Jackson
that's part solid, part
liquid. Such prototyping,
with its specially de-
signed cells & the use
of heat sinks, would
seem to be an inbuilt
aspect of our human
software; but the only
constant factor in
natural phenomena
is universal change—
a life-size figurative
re-enactment of da
Vinci's Last Supper
made from wax just
doesn't cut it as a
wonder of the world.

halfway civilized

An oops

At least, I hope it's an oops, & not South Africa reverting to its pre-President Mandela days.

As it appeared on Google News South Africa:

Entertainment »

Times LIVE
NUM: Miners shot at
iAfrica.com - ‎4 hours ago‎
Police and guards fired live ammunition at striking Gold One workers at the Modder East mine near Springs on Thursday afternoon, the National Union of Mineworkers claimed.

Ah, Queensland. Bigoted one day, biggeroted the next

"But then, things are tough all over. Even as Abbott pumped his mighty legs up hill and down dale, debate was raging out of control in Queensland, as the prospect of splitting the state in two to accommodate daylight savings for the south-east was raised. Howls of protest ensued from Queenslanders, who objected strongly to the confusion this would cause, the disorienting effect it would have on cows, the necessity of waking up an hour earlier to accommodate their inability to reset a clock, and the reckless tampering of the state government with the space-time continuum. Premier Anna Bligh was reported to welcome the debate, inasmuch as it distracted regional and rural Queenslanders from the government's ongoing attempts to kill them with lethal doses of fluoride."

Ben Popjie: Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The Queensland Liberal National Party (LNP) has promptly expelled a member who called Barack Obama a "monkey" on Twitter during the US president's interview on ABC television.

The tweets, from an account belonging to Griffith University medical student Nick Sowden, began just after 7.30pm (AEST) on Thursday, during ABC TV's 7.30 Report with Kerry O'Brien.

"I'm not sure why they paid kerry to fly to america (sic), if they wanted an interview with a monkey surely a ferry to Taronga would have sufficed," one tweet said, referring to Taronga Zoo on Sydney Harbour.

"If I wanted to see a monkey on TV I'd watch Wildlife Rescue," said another.

Mr Sowden appears on a list of Liberals on Twitter. In 2009 he was UQ's student council representative on the National Union of Students.

Alex Dickinson: News.com.au

Some names

are, in context, almost too good to be true.

A item on tv news tonight to do with the world premiere in Townsville of an Australian film, Beneath Hill 60, about a miner from North Queensland who led the tunneling under German lines in WWI so that explosive mines could be placed, included interviews with some of the locals who were extras in the film. Amongst them, a gentleman by the name of Bert Part.

I am toying—

a heading that would indicate a totally (or maybe not) set of activities if this was a pornsite—with the idea of doing another Allegrezza ficcione.

This one would be roughly contemporary with the history of Giovanni Allegrezza, the ancestor whose traces Umberto set out to seek for in the allegrezza. It would mean another relative, a brother or son perhaps, would have to be found; & this time it would take place in Africa, would be centered on Timbuktu, in Mali, during the time of the Mali & Songhay empires.

Djinguereber Mosque, Timbuktu, built in 1327
Timbuktu was a city of great Islamic scholarship in those days, with libraries, Quranic schools, & mosques. It was also a commercial center, situated on trade routes that linked it to the major North African cities, &, from them, on into Europe & Asia. Today it's an improverished place, with just over 30,000 people. But there are also 100,000 manuscripts, some dating back a millenium, kept in private libraries by some of the families there.

trade routes of Northern Africa
I have always believed—ironic though it may seem given today's global tensions—that Western civilization & culture exists only because Islamic scholars kept alive & built upon the great ideas of Greek & Roman & Egyptian philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, art, etc., with all its writings. Without that preservation, that curatorship by enquiring & active minds, there might never have been a Renaissance.

We might all still be savages, totally ignorant & with no nobility.

geographies: Kandahar

The focus of a
failing strategy
in Afghanistan

has changed in
recent decades
from a patho-

genic underpin-
ning of a piece
of fruit—which,

put simply, is
just an entity
containing seeds—

to the use of a
super-size cup-
cake as an object

for semiotic
deconstruction.

Lac Faguibine, Mali

a NASA photo from space

The upper speed limit

on most Australian highways, with the exception of some in the Northern Territory which are 20 kph higher, is 110 kilometers per hour.

So why the fuck would you have as the major selling point of a car advertisement the fact that it can do 305 kph? Already 46% of NSW road deaths are a result of speed, 34% of South Australia's, 30% of Western Australia's.

It just doesn't make sense to me.

Crying 4 Kafka @ the House of Blues

l-r: Joe Dean bass, Brandon Thibeault drums, Paul Abramson vocals, Steve Stewart (aka harry k stammer) guitar
harry writes: "incredible... we played to about 1000 people. What a fucking rush."

geographies: Cusco

                  Machu Picchu 
               is nearby. It 
                     is a lever to 
               motivate adaptive 
           changes. History 
               happens back-
           wards for a reason.

At almost

the same time as I was disembarking off the connecting flight from Brisbane, after my earlier flight from New Zealand, 100 kilometers away a bulk carrier fully-laden with 65,000 tonnes of coal & just under 1000 tonnes of heavy oil fuel for the journey to China, turned north about 12 kilometers too early, & ploughed into the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef at full speed.


The vessel had arrived at Gladstone from China late on Friday night and loaded coal overnight before departing at 10.54 on Saturday morning with a pilot who took the ship to open seas before disembarking at 12.59. But, despite a number of similar accidents & something like 20 years of bickering, it is still not mandated to have pilots guide ships through the passage to the northern end of the reef.

Fortunately, this time not too much oil—about two tonnes—has leaked from the rupture in the ship's hull; the problem is to unload the fuel oil that is left, & then decide if the complete cargo needs to be unloaded onto another ship. Peparations for the salvage operation are underway; & all this week, heavy helicopters have been shaking the house, tracking down the path of the lagoons, away from built-up areas, long steel hawsers underneath them to which are attached the equipment necessary to carry out the salvage operation.

After a year of floods, bushfires & cyclones, it's a bit of a change to have a man-made disaster happening on the doorstep.

A souvenir of my trip to N.Z.

I am a supporter

of open source code, free trade, international communities, etc., etc., but, horror upon horrors, I was somewhat disturbed on my trip to New Zealand to find in the local supermarket kiwifruit labelled as "Product of Italy".

Turns out Italy is the largest producer of kiwifruit in the world.....

Quality fossils for sale at low prices

harry k stammer's

band, Crying 4 Kafka,

is opening for Bad Religion at the House of Blues on Sunset Boulevard tonight, California time.

I have joined

what was once the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Collective Pwoermdists, but is now the International etc., &, since this is International Pwoermd Writing Month, have started a short-term blog, won des laits, so called because I missed the first day of the month.

You can find out more about this collective venture at—who else but?—Geof Huth's InterNaPwoWriMo blog.

One of the delightful

discoveries I've made on this trip to New Zealand is the video below. It's about a very rare species of parrot, with something like just over 100 left in existence, but seeing its choice of fuckmate, it's not surprising that its numbers are diminishing.