Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Ted Rall: REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL
It's the end of the world as we know it and, while I can't say I exactly feel fine, it's all too easy to dwell on the downward spiral of our job prospects and 401(k)s. Even in the midst of economic collapse (possibly presaging political disintegration and ultimately social chaos), there's cause for optimism.
JOEL STEIN: The economic blame game (latimes.com)
Greenspan, Bush or bankers could be called responsible for our economic problems, but really, it's us -- we got ourselves addicted to debt.
Scott Burns: There Is No One-Size-Fits-All Portfolio (assetbuilder.com)
Q. I just read Suze Orman. She said that you should "put your age" in bonds. I am 53 and have only 10 percent in bond index funds. Everything else is in stock index funds in my IRAs. Fifty percent seems extremely conservative at my age. What do you think of this formula?
Zoe Williams: Let's lay off large eggs! (guardian.co.uk)
If you care about hen welfare, you should be buying medium eggs, not large and definitely, absolutely not, extra large.
Mark Morford: Up Your Fridays (sfgate.com)
A new SF reading event, where all is luminous and inspiring. Would you come?
DREW FORTUNE: We Can't Be Grumpy All the Time: An Interview with Snow Patrol (popmatters.com)
After a hit as big as "Chasing Cars", it would be inevitable that Snow Patrol would face some backlash. But drummer Jonny Quinn and co. don't really care to match that success. Instead, they're writing upbeat love songs, learning from U2, and trying out some fly fishing for good measure ...
Mehan Jayasuriya: "Requiem for a Record Store: An Interview With Atomic Records' Rich Menning"(popmatters.com)
Atomic Records, one of the Midwest's most storied independent record stores, will soon close up shop after nearly 25 years. We sit down with Atomic founder Rich Menning to talk records, rock 'n' roll and the future -- or lack thereof -- of independent record stores in America.
Connie Ogle: After 16 novels, Randy Wayne White still enjoys his best-known character (McClatchy Newspapers)
After writing 16 books in his company, Randy Wayne White has every reason to be weary of Doc Ford. Sure, the Sanibel Island marine biologist - who on occasion performs dangerous hush-hush work for the government - is likable, capable, manly. He knows his way around a marina and the ladies. He's Travis McGee, only smarter. Who wouldn't want to have a beer with him?
Carla Meyer: For 'Lush Life' author Richard Price, the mastery is in the just-right detail (McClatchy Newspapers)
Richard Price's success as novelist and screenwriter lies in an ability to encompass a world in a sentence or two. Cinematic even before they're adapted into movies ("Clockers"), Price's novels contain vivid, sometimes profane dialogue that moves the story along as swiftly as action scenes and offer multiple perspectives via characters who cross age and socioeconomic lines while traversing the same streets.
Chauncey Mabe: Christopher Plummer sounds off in autobiography (Sun Sentinel)
Christopher Plummer, possibly the greatest actor alive, cheerfully acknowledges that he long ago wearied of talking about "The Sound of Music," the 1965 musical that made him a movie star. But he's too gracious to make people stop bringing it up.
John Timpane: Former newsman Leonard Downie Jr. turns from facts to fiction (The Philadelphia Inquirer)
One of America's leading newspapermen steps aside from the captain's chair of the Washington Post. After a life of writing the truth, he turns to fiction, as embodied in his first novel, "The Rules of the Game."
South Park: The Complete Twelfth Season (popmatters.com)
Boy, Trey Parker and Matt Stone have sure come a long way since the days when they hand animated construction paper cut outs of various shapes to create their anarchic look at life in a small Colorado town.
1-800-GOOG-411 (google.com)
The Weekly Poll
New Question
The 'Wars and Rumors of Wars' Edition'...
President Obama, aka 'The Man', certainly has his hands full in the foreign affairs arena at the moment with the belligerent behavior shown by our fellow passengers on Spaceship Earth. Naughty, naughty, I'm sayin'... It's like, don't they realize he's trying to solve a world-wide financial crisis? Or what? Jeesh! That said, which one of these provocations is the most worrisome?
A. Russia's (the Putin Oligarch Soviet Republic) probing Canadian airspace in the Arctic with a long-range bomber coinciding with BHO's first official 'foreign' visit outside the US to Ottawa?
B. China's (Shylock and Landlord) playing 'tag, you're it' with an unarmed US Navy ship in the international waters of the South China Sea?
C. The 'Hive Collective' known as North Korea threatening a 'counter-strike' if their erstwhile 'satellite' long-range ballistic missile launch is interfered with. Yeah, like we want to limit their TV channels from two to their present one...
D. Iran's (R-Theocracy) hell-bent-for-leather pursuit of atomic weapons. Quit lying! Everyone knows you suffer from Israeli penis-envy...
E. Israel's (R-Rethug) trying to bully the US into letting them remake Iran into a glass covered nuclear iridescent parking lot?
This bullshit is getting tiresome, don't ya think?
Send your response, and a (short) reason why, to
wrote:
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Still sunny and cool.
National Pell Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts
Kevin Spacey
Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey is getting another honour.
Spacey will receive the National Pell Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Arts at a gala event in June. The award is named for Claiborne Pell, a former Rhode Island senator who died Jan. 1.
The Trinity Repertory Company said Thursday that it had selected Spacey for the award because of his dedication to live theatre and film as well as his humanitarian work.
Pell championed the arts and education during his 36 years in the Senate.
Kevin Spacey
Won't Release Tapes
CBS News
CBS News has won a legal battle with Marine Corps prosecutors who wanted unaired footage of a "60 Minutes" interview with an officer charged for his role in the killing of 24 Iraqis in 2005.
The North County Times reports on its Web site that a Camp Pendleton military judge on Thursday denied a subpoena seeking the footage from an interview with Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich.
Lt. Col. Jeffrey Meeks ruled that forcing the network to hand over that material would place CBS in the role of being a government tool.
The Marine from Meriden, Conn., faces nine counts of voluntary manslaughter and other allegations stemming from his role leading an assault after a bombing in the Iraqi city of Haditha killed one of his men.
CBS News
Network Cries Poormouth
Matt Lauer
Where in the world is Matt Lauer? Staying in the USA this year.
In a nod to the economy, the "Today" show is putting off its annual mystery trip where Lauer is sent to exotic spots from Monte Carlo to Mount Everest. Instead, NBC's morning team will be spending a week in May exploring affordable vacation spots in the United States.
"Today" Executive Producer Jim Bell said he had solicited suggestions from viewers for this year's "Where in the World Is Matt Lauer" trip. Instead, many told him that in bad economic times, the extravagant trip sent the wrong message.
Matt Lauer
Selling House Next Door
Hugh Hefner
Playboy empire founder Hugh Hefner has put his family home for sale in California for nearly 28 million dollars, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.
A cool 27,995,000 dollars could get you living right next door to the Playboy Mansion, known for the sex king's extravagant parties.
The two-story, 7,300-square-foot (700 square meters) English manor-style personal residence was built in 1929 and purchased by Hefner in 1998.
It has five bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a library and commons for staff. Some of the walls are hand-painted, and there is a hand-carved staircase.
Hugh Hefner
Enablers Charged
Anna Nicole Smith
California Attorney General Jerry Brown says Anna Nicole Smith's boyfriend Howard K. Stern was the principal enabler of a conspiracy to provide her thousands of prescription pills.
Stern and two doctors were charged with supplying prescribed pills to Smith before her fatal overdose in 2007.
Asked Friday about possible motives, Brown said, "There's a certain psychic gain here, part of the glitz the celebrity and the power." He added, "There's a lot of money floating around."
Anna Nicole Smith
Road Trip
Northwest Passage
Scientists preparing for the exploration of Mars are planning history's first car drive through the fabled Northwest Passage, a trip they said on Friday will provide data on global warming and man's potential impact on other planets.
The trip using a modified armoured Humvee vehicle will provide comprehensive data about the thickness of winter ice in the waterway through Canada's high Arctic, said Pascal Lee, chairman of Mars Institute and leader of the expedition.
The scientists also hope to learn more about what happens to the microbes left behind by humans as they explore remote areas, amid concerns from some scientists about the detrimental impact of such journeys in space.
Long sought as a faster route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Northwest Passage was first traversed by ship in 1906 by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, a trip that took three years to complete.
Northwest Passage
Self-Healing Coating
Scratches
Scientists have developed a polyurethane coating that heals its own scratches when exposed to sunlight, offering the promise of scratch-free cars and other products, researchers said on Thursday.
"We developed a polymeric material that is able to repair itself by exposure to the sun," said Marek Urban of the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, whose study appears in the journal Science.
The self-healing coating uses chitosan, a substance found in the shells of crabs and shrimp. This is incorporated into traditional polymer materials, such as those used in coatings on cars to protect paint.
When a scratch damages the chemical structure, the chitosan responds to ultraviolet light by forming chemical chains that begin bonding with other materials in the substance, eventually smoothing the scratch. The process can take less than an hour.
Scratches
Workers Abducted In Darfur
Doctors Without Borders
Armed men abducted three international aid workers and two Sudanese guards in Darfur, a week after the government in Khartoum ordered aid groups expelled in response to an international arrest warrant for the Sudanese president, officials said Thursday.
The kidnappings - believed to be the first of Westerners in Darfur - took place late Wednesday in a rural area known as Saraf Umra about 125 miles west of the city of El Fasher, said Noureddine Mezni, a spokesman for U.N. peacekeepers in Khartoum.
The area is government controlled, and pro-government Arab militias known as janjaweed live and are based nearby.
The attackers stormed into the compound of the Belgian branch of the aid group Doctors Without Borders in the evening and abducted the staffers, said Susan Sandars, a Nairobi, Kenya-based spokeswoman for the group, which is also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF.
The two Sudanese guards were later released, but a Canadian nurse, an Italian doctor and a French coordinator were still being held, she said, adding there was no information on the motive or the whereabouts of the kidnapped. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the abduction.
Doctors Without Borders
Dig Unearths
Venice 'Vampire'
An archaeological dig near Venice has unearthed the 16th-century remains of a woman with a brick stuck between her jaws - evidence, experts say, that she was believed to be a vampire.
The unusual burial is thought to be the result of an ancient vampire-slaying ritual. It suggests the legend of the mythical bloodsucking creatures was tied to medieval ignorance of how diseases spread and what happens to bodies after death, experts said.
The well-preserved skeleton was found in 2006 on the Lazzaretto Nuovo island, north of the lagoon city, amid other corpses buried in a mass grave during an epidemic of plague that hit Venice in 1576.
"Vampires don't exist, but studies show people at the time believed they did," said Matteo Borrini, a forensic archaeologist and anthropologist at Florence University who studied the case over the last two years. "For the first time we have found evidence of an exorcism against a vampire."
Venice 'Vampire'
In Memory
James Purdy
Author James Purdy, a shocking realist and surprising romantic who in underground classics such as "Cabot Wright Begins" and "Eustace Chisholm and the Works" inspired censorious outrage and lasting admiration, has died.
Spokesman Walter Vatter of Ivan Dee Publishers said Purdy had been in poor health and died Friday morning at Englewood Hospital in New Jersey. Reports of his age have differed, but according to his literary agency, Harold Ober Associates, he was 94.
Purdy published poetry, drawings, the plays "Children Is All" and "Enduring Zeal," the novels "Mourners Below" and "Narrow Rooms," and the collection "Moe's Villa and Other Stories." Much of his work fell out of print; several books were reissued in recent years. In the spring, Ivan Dee will issue a collection of his plays.
Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams and Dorothy Parker were among his fans, but Purdy won few awards and was little known to the general public. He spent most of his latter years in a one-room Brooklyn walk-up apartment, bitterly outside what he called "the anesthetic, hypocritical, preppy and stagnant New York literary establishment."
He was attacked for his "adolescent and distraught mind," accused of writing "fifth-rate, avant-garde soap opera" and left out of the country's official literary establishment - the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He was also called a comic genius worthy of Voltaire and an outlaw, in the best sense, among his compromised peers.
Purdy was born in Fremont, Ohio. His parents split up when he was young, forcing Purdy to alternate among the homes of his mother, father and grandmother. His formal education was essentially a waste, although Sunday school did impart an appreciation of the King James Bible. An early muse was a landlady to whom he wrote hate letters.
He wrote stories from an early age and in his 20s submitted some to what he called "the New York slick magazines," which duly rejected them in "rage." A break came in his early 30s when through a mutual acquaintance he was introduced to Chicago businessman and literary critic, Osborn Andreas, who agreed to privately publish a story collection, "Don't Call Me by My Right Name."
Others soon learned about him, including British writers Dame Edith Sitwell and Angus Wilson, and his official debut, "63: Dream Palace," came out in 1956. He followed with such novels as "The Nephew," "Malcolm" and "Cabot Wright Begins," stories of innocent young men, needy older women and, in the case of "Cabot Wright," literary elitism, sexual violence and indiscreet bodily noises.
His most influential novel, "Eustace Chisholm and the Works," was published in 1967 to knee-jerk repulsion and eventual acclaim as a landmark of gay fiction. Set in Depression-era Chicago, "Chisholm" is a 20th-century "Satyricon," an explicit, matter-of-fact portrait of abortion, disembowelment and "diurnal coitus." But it's also, through the passion of two men, a quest for "that rare thing: the authentic, naked, unconcealed voice of love."
Reviewing the book in 1967 for The New York Times, Wilfrid Sheed called "Eustace Chisholm" a "form of charade or peepshow" and placed it in "that line of homosexual fiction which announces itself not by subject matter but by tone." By 2005, the novel was respected, and respectable enough to receive the Clifton Fadiman Medal for Excellence in Fiction, presented to an ailing Purdy by "The Corrections" novelist Jonathan Franzen.
James Purdy
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