from the archives

Diogenes reborn 

I did not always live in
a barrel, said the famous 
philosopher, adjusting his 
position just a little though 
enough to show his better 
side. I used to live in a 
trailer park. Then someone
told me about reality tv
& webcams & the internet
& how there was this
vast audience out there
fascinated by the trivial 
things of life. Thought
about it for a while; finally 
decided what the fuck! 
Needed a gimmick so 
came up with this. I reach
more people this way. & 
besides, with the artificial
lighting I’ve set up, I no 
longer have to worry 
about someone getting 
between me & the sun.

     11/16/2004

wednesday newstrip

T.®ump-backed lawmaker roasted after apparently mistaking Star Wars prop for captured drone · Madison school shooter pictured on her father’s Facebook page with shotgun at firing range just months before her deadly rampage · 'army of MAGA enforcers' prepares to 'strong-arm' Republicans who resist T.®ump’s agenda · taking acetaminophen, a.k.a. paracetamol, one of the most globally recognized, widely-used painkillers, for a prolonged period, increases the risk of serious complications in older folks, according to a new study · Elongated Muskrat asks ex-T.®ump aides to snitch on federal staff who should be 'blacklisted' · urgent warning issued as new Covid wave hits Western Australia · Chief of Russia’s Radiological, Chemical, & Biological Defence forces killed in Moscow by bomb in electric scooter · Impossible Foods has issued a recall on approximately 552,643 pounds of its plant-based ground sausage products nationwide, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) announced. The recall involves concerns over potential contamination with metal fragments.

Clickbait / should be / — at least — bearlievable

 

wednesday newstrip

Hundreds more jobs are poised to go at Health New Zealand under proposals to be laid out to staff on Friday. The two units facing the latest cuts are the 1000-strong procurement supply unit & 500-strong planning, funding & outcomes unit · Meta outage for Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, & WhatsApp impacting users worldwide · 'USA is a threat': Canadians slam 'bully' T.®ump’s 'arrogant' mockery of 'Governor Trudeau' · a Netherlands-flagged cargo ship has been temporarily banned from entering Australian ports due to safety fears over its storage of ammonium nitrate · in recent months, Israel has bombed Gaza, the West Bank, southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, the southern suburbs of Beirut, central Beirut, & now Syria · energy experts have warned that the cost of building nuclear power plants in Australia could be more than double the figure the CSIRO has suggested, based on international experience · cow suffered for months after New Zealand woman tried DIY cancer removal.

yet another variant

 

wednesday newstrip

'It must stop now: ' Amnesty accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza · Bitcoin soars past $100K as T.®ump nominates pro-crypto Atkin as next SEC chair · South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol now 'a dead man walking' after martial law fiasco · over the next fortnight, two planetary-scale atmospheric waves will run into each other to the north of Australia, increasing the likelihood of heavy rain, thunderstorms, & tropical cyclone activity · Canadian man leaps onto polar bear to defend wife during attack · Australian Federal Government’s support for UN resolution calling for end to Israel’s occupation of Gaza to blame for Melbourne synagogue fire, says BeenJammin' NotJustAnyYahoo · too young for TikTok, old enough for jail — how a meaner Australia treats its kids · uterus transplant recipient's son was bitten by a funnel-web spider in their northern NSW home but survived after anti-venom treatment.

another variant

 

wednesday newstrip

Australian police officer convicted of manslaughter in Taser death of a 95-year-old woman with dementia & a walking frame · woman accidentally threw out hard drive containing ex's access to £618 million Bitcoin fortune · Sydney risks blackouts as heat soars & coal power plants falter · a convicted murderer who stabbed a mother-of-three to death over $50 has been granted release from a Victorian prison to undergo IVF treatment · cryptocurrency entrepreneur who bought banana art for $9.5 million eats the fruit publically in Hong Kong · Carolina Prime Pet, Inc, announced on Friday it is recalling 400 bags of 16-ounce Hollywood Feed Carolina Made Chicken Chips dog food that may contain salmonella · recall for cucumbers as dozens fall sick with salmonella in 26 states · JD Vance depicts himself as 'Trump’s wife' in Thanksgiving post.

A variant to Doom

 

Now out from Otoliths — "peut-être le Messie" by Márton Koppány

Now out from Otoliths.

Márton Koppány
"peut-être le Messie"
full color
56 pages
ISBN: 978-0-6455483-4-1
$US26.75
URL: https://www.lulu.com/shop/m%C3%A1rton-kopp%C3%A1ny/peut-%C3%AAtre-le-messie/paperback/product-rmvdnmm.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Lulu have a 30% Black Friday – Cyber Monday discount running until midnight on Monday. Discount code is HOLIDAY30.

*

Márton Koppány notes in his introduction: "Lately I've been playing with putting together pieces from distant periods. Some recurring topics are: question marks, clouds, ellipses. They overlap, but ellipses outnumber everything else. Any triad can be considered an ellipsis, and occasionally different (or seemingly different) numbers like 1, 2 and 4 serve the same idea even better, because they are elliptical only elliptically."

His ellipses take many forms — buttons, stones, letters, fish, et al — though I profess my favorite among his ellipses is actually invisible.

I am writing this in a room which used to be a verandah until, before our time here, a cyclone blew the wooden louvers & their surrounds in — out? — & that once open space has since been replaced by windows & fiberboard — three windows, three pieces of fiberboard. Perched at the intersection of the dado rail that runs along two of the walls of the room, there is a signed postcard-sized print of a singular piece of vispo, a lounge chair with only one leg but still remaining perfectly upright.

It is called Ellipsis No. 5, & is, coincidentally, the first piece in "peut-être le Messie." "Perhaps the Messiah" is a wide-ranging title, an ellipsis incorporating the millennia between the canonical gospel of St. Luke & the work of Isidore Isou, a Romanian-born French poet, founder of Lettrisme, author of L'Agrégation d'un nom et d'un messie.

Márton Koppány's book is also wide-ranging — perhaps not temporally, but rather attitudinally. I have previously remarked on the ". . . humor, minimalism, satire, genius, art, politics, its multi-faceted et ceteras" of Koppány's work. This selection of his ellipses evidences every one of those individual characteristics as well as the incredible gestalt when they are combined.

   —   Mark Young

wednesday newstrip

SpaceX's Starship will fly Lunar Outpost's rover to the moon · after DoNuts T.®ump’s Project 2025 denials, he is tapping its authors & influencers for key roles · clinical tests confirm DermaAngel as the top choice for pimple patches with Australia set to take on the T-Beauty trend · Fox hosts, cable news regulars, & entertainment pros: T.®ump is casting a made-for-TV Cabinet · more than 150 people have been arrested in Newcastle for allegedly defying directions by New South Wales Police during an anti-fossil fuel protest at the world's largest coal port · President-elect T.®ump is encouraging a Florida legislator who celebrated the killing of an American citizen by the Israeli military to run for Congress · Kiwi workers lose jobs as billion-dollar firm quietly shifts production to USA. Celebrity-backed supplement AG1 is marketed online as ‘made in New Zealand’, but a podcast investigation reveals it’s mostly made at a super-factory in Utah.

Recently sold at Christies for $US121 million

René Magritte's L’empire des lumières.

Noisy birds silence 
the trees. Someone 
is reading as they 
sleep. Against the blue 
the house has braced 
for night. Entrance is 
gained through a door 
in the roof. The pond 
is full of stars. A street- 
lamp echoes. The sky 
is empty. Only clouds.

Instead / of the / usual wednesday newstrip

a theory, that

DoNuts Tr(I)umphant has no intention of following through on his MAGA claim. Instead, it would appear as if, incensed by the fact that he didn't win re-election in 2020, he's embarked on an opposite campaign, to turn the country into a dystopian wilderness.

Take a look at his proposed cabinet picks. Start with the best-known names, Elongated Muskrat & RooFracK. The Muskrat will co-chair a new newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an entity DoNuts Tramp has indicated will operate outside the confines of government. His co-chair, Vivisection Ravasmarmy, has made it known that the dismantling of the Department of Education will be the initial priority. RooFracK has accepted an appointment to be secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services, a perfect fit for one of the nation’s most prominent anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists, who has frequently spread false conspiracy theories about the safety & efficacy of vaccines.

Amongst other nominees: Tulsi Gabbard who "has a consistent habit of trusting 'foreign propaganda' over the very people she would lead as America's spymaster, making her wholly unqualified to be director of national intelligence" as Josh Rogin, foreign policy columnist for The Washington Post wrote; Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who, purportedly, had sex with an underage girl, but was never charged, for attorney general; & the day after DoNuts Tromp selected Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, who does not have senior military or national security experience, to oversee the Pentagon & the U.S. military command, it was revealed that Hegseth was investigated for sexual assault in California in 2017.

The litany goes on. To quote ex-RNC chair Michael Steele: "DoNuts T.®ump is leveling up a menagerie of misfits, people that he knows are not competent, capable, or intelligent enough to do the jobs that he is giving them."

As someone recently noted, DoNuts T.®ump might finally achieve his lifelong dream of actually being the smartest person in the room.

God Bless Save America.

wednesday newstrip

Forty-three monkeys escape from research facility in South Carolina · "tar balls" found recently on Sydney beaches show traces of human faeces, methamphetamine, & PFAS: new analysis · tears, joy, & fear on the streets of DC after T.®amp's victory · lost emperor penguin lands in Australian town thousands of miles away from icy Antarctica home, the farthest north the bird has ever been found · Texas campus in uproar after protesters hold signs declaring ‘women are property’ on quad after T.®emp victory · experts urge people to stay indoors & hydrated as heatwave rolls across much of Australia · Zach Bryan’s ex, Brianna "Chickenfry" LaPaglia, claims the singer offered her $18 million to stay silent on break-up · men charged in foiled Iranian plot to assassinate T.®imp.

Is the world about to plunge to its

?

Scheherazade at the speed of light

The two plays
one novel
&

five
chapters of
autobiography that I

wrote overnight wouldn't
fit in
this

space
so I'm
leaving it empty.

wednesday newstrip

Climate crisis: October saw record floods & rains across the globe · "She's a radical war hawk," said DoNits T.®amp of Liz Cheney. "Let's put her with a rifle standing there, with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let's see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face" · Ms Cheney's riposte: "This is how dictators destroy free nations," she wrote on X. "They threaten those who speak against them with death. We cannot entrust our country & our freedom to a petty, vindictive, cruel, unstable man who wants to be a tyrant" · Queensland's Truth-Telling & Healing inquiry to pause its work plan as new right-wing State Premier David Crisafuilli stands by plan to stop process · on the eve of New Zealand’s Māori language celebration week, the country’s right-wing political leaders ordered public agencies to stop affirmative action policies for Māori people, who are disadvantaged on almost every metric · Cassius, the world's largest crocodile in captivity, dies in Far North Queensland.

wednesday newstrip

Western Australia man diagnosed with scurvy · at least 3,000 North Korean soldiers now inside Russia on the way to Ukraine, US says · DoNuts T.®ump prefers the "dictator approach" to running a country, & openly wished he had "Hitler's generals" when he was US president, his former White House chief of staff says · Türkiye's interior minister says five people have been killed & 22 others injured in what he describes as a "terrorist attack" in central Türkiye · Iran recruiting Israeli citizens to spy against their government, with social media the key to luring them in · gas industry in damage control as landmark study finds LNG 'worse than coal' for the climate · New Zealand still complicit in global shark fin trade.

wednesday newstrip

Republican nominee DoNuts T.®ump has requested a military plane to use during the final weeks of the campaign, citing concerns that Iran is trying to kill him · a 65-year-old female sergeant is under investigation by Victoria Police, following allegations she performed a Nazi salute in front of police recruits · British woman who killed her parents & lived with their bodies for four years is sentenced to life · Sydney’s Coogee beach closed after mysterious black 'tar balls' wash ashore · Northern Territory's new conservative government passes legislation to lower the age of criminal responsibility from 12 to 10, in first week of parliament · Police say babies in Indonesia are being sold for as little as $AU1,450 · man falls into sewage tank in rural Ōtaki: 20 minutes later, Vivian St in Wellington flooded.

wednesday newstrip

Australian Opposition leader Putrid Dustbin attacks Prime Minister for including calls for ceasefire & de-escalation in motion reflecting on 7 October · Bunnings Australia shoppers go wild over $15 item for transforming dirty grout: 'Holy grail' · T.®ump spoke with Putain at least seven times since leaving White House, Bob Woodward reports · McDonald's Australia brings back beloved $2.50 menu item after three years · Evangelicals for Harris claim Franklin Graham is threatening to sue them · classic Aussie phrase — 'mate' — offending people in 2024 · Notjustanyahoo says Israel has killed late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's successors · T.®ump stuns social media as he dances along to YMCA at the end of speech about October 7 attacks.