Beef

One day in the early 70s I was walking through the grounds of a mental hospital with my maternal grandfather, Simon.
He had been on the run from the Military Police since 1946. My mother, my two uncles and my aunt all ate well through the conflict.
Simon was a butcher.
We talked about the difference between living [...]

American bankers’ U2 cover

Thought this was an out-take from The Office at first, couldn’t actually believe it. But people who were there say it really happened.

“Kramer” loses it at Laugh Factory — video clip

“The rage did go all over the place. It went to everybody. I’m deeply sorry. I’m not a racist.” — Michael Richards.
Oh yeah?

Hopeless in Gaza video

We live in constant fear.
Why did they break my things, all my toys?
Our children can’t even live.
We don’t know how to live.
[The Israelis] want these people cleansed from this area.
The psychological condition is one of the dimensions of the conflict that is not widely understood.
This is the reality of life in Gaza. Would you be [...]

Sudden fiction

Since I started this blogging thing I haven’t been reading as much as is good for me. I mean proper reading, you know, like books? So the other morning I revisited my shelves and picked up a small volume of stories called Revenge of The Lawn by Richard Brautigan. Inside I found what must be [...]

Edie Sedgwick: “After Hours” video

Edie Sedgwick was born in 1943. She met Andy Warhol in 1965 and became one of the Factory regulars around March of that year. Warhol has often been blamed for Edie’s descent into drug addiction and mental illness but her family has a history of both.
She was first institutionalized in the autumn of 1962 [...]

UCLA tazer attack by campus cops video

Albert Einstein said: 
“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing…”

Death of a tree

It’s her optimism that kills him. Makes him happy and desperate at the same time.
In the morning.
Saying goodbye.
He’s still in bed, waiting for the neighbours’ dogs to start up or someone out back to continue building that fence or begin chain-sawing that tree or kango-drilling that patio.
She breezes in: pink linen jacket. She looks fatter [...]

William Burroughs’ “Thanksgiving Prayer” video

For John Dillinger, in hope he is still alive.

Mirza Tahir Hussain: a long wait for “justice”

Mirza Tahir Hussain is to have his death sentence commuted by President Musharraf (click source). This is great news. However, questions remain.
Why did it take Musharraf so long?
Will Mirza receive any compensation for the eighteen years of his life that were taken from him on the strength of an unsafe conviction under a dubious legal [...]