Today I received the best email ever.
To: jairus@gmail.com
Subject: Jairus, I fear it might be too late for yourself.
From: jairus@gmail.com
Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 16:08:39 -0700 (PDT)
By you I mean me. This is yourself. Jairus Khan of 1502 Clementine Boulevard. That is, before Ottawa was destroyed and our music career failed. The year is 2034. I can’t elaborate now, they’re onto me. We must prevent what is now history from happening in your future.
When I dream, it’s conflict, always conflict.
He seemed genuinely baffled by this, and wrote it off as a case of mistaken identity or a mixed-up file. He pointed out that he’d never been to the country that this kingpin was from, that he doesn’t travel, and that he spends so much present-and-accounted-for time with various school activities that it would be impossible for him to take up a new hobby, let alone mastermind a national distribution network.
The investigators were unconvinced.
Over the course of the day they used bribes, threats, and blackmail. They talked about the indiscriminate brutality of the crime boss, ordering the slaughter of gangsters and innocents alike, murdering his own men if they did not pass bizarre ‘loyalty tests’, and wiping out entire divisions of the organization if they were not meeting expectations. They refused to let him make a phone call. They refused to get him anything to eat. They promised a reduced sentence if he cooperated. They lowered the temperature for an hour, and left him shivering in his t-shirt; then they blasted the heat, sipping on ice-cold water while they interrogated.
The student continued to protest; first with indignation, then with anger, and finally with exhaustion. They had the wrong man, he said, and no amount of threats would change that.
Finally, they put all their cards on the table. They have been watching him for the greater part of a year, they said. They have recordings of calls he made on disposable cell phones. They have surveillance photos of him meeting with dealers and fences in a clubhouse, disguised as a dentist’s office.
They told him that he had a choice to make.
They could charge him with everything, and he would spend the rest of his life in prison — or he could roll over, and help them pin his boss, who they had been trying (and failing) to gain evidence on for years.
After a long silence, he looked up at one of the investigators, and asked “Can you offer me protection?”
The investigator said that he could.
The student said he wanted to be somewhere secure before he talked. The investigator assented, and opened the interrogation room door to lead him out.
He made it half-way across the room before the second investigator slipped the garrotte around his neck.
He had failed the test.
New phone number: 613-421-FLAK
I’m redoing my friends filters, because they’re in a state of disarray that precludes me writing anything of note or worth. So, if you’d like to see any future friends-only entries, let me know. I’m going to have three filters:
– Random personal day-to-day entries (Phone numbers, where I’m going for coffee)
– Private journal/writing/etc (Personal life, ‘real’ entries, bad poetry)
– Ultra-personal (This is the “I did not need to know that about you” TMI filter. Also, overly depressing/angry melodramatic nonsense.)
If you’d like to be on any of them, leave me a comment.
Attention friends and foes:
We are putting together something secret and awesome for Mike’s birthday. If you’d like to be involved, leave me a comment, and I’ll fill you in on the details.
For Leslie, My First Poorly Translated Review:
Group: Ad·.ver·.sary
Album: International Dark Skies
Yr of the output: 2006
Genre: power rhytm noise
Estimation: 8\y0
Ad·.ver·.sary – new and sufficiently progressive name on the Canadian industrial scene. Interest in the debyutnoy plate was heated by the fact that on it be present remiksy to such venerable sound effects technicians as Converter, Iszoloscope, Urusai. This fact, of course, excited my musical consciousness. Well yes, can consider that the commercial bait was me with the ease of proglochena. Well and why not?
Album opens composition Friends of Father. Lazy and a little pressing in the plan of the atmosphere, where as a sonic number goes some very gloomy embiyentnyy figure with the impregnation of all possible near-symphonic effects and tools, superimposed to the very sticky and leisurely bit, which in the more uskorenoy version it would be possible to describe, as it breykbit. To the second composition the matter is turned into the higher-speed river bed, where into the force enter the distortirovannye bits and different stuchashche-skrezhetashchiye elements.
If we judge throughout entire material of album, then as impact Heath I will isolate Dresden. The very rhythmical and rigid composition, where the melody assigns the line boring Basov, plus of kaksha of everyone is sonic and vocal semplov in the background.
At the end of the album were arranged three remiksa to the commands named above, and if to be more precisely, then Converter – Cloud’.s Eye (Creeper The mix by Ad·.ver·.sary), Iszoloscope – -.28c and Falling (Winter is Forever The mix by Ad·.ver·.sary), Urusai – Learned Helplessness (Destroy and Contaminate The mix by Ad·.ver·.sary). Everything is healthy and it is executed according to all laws of industrial- noise genre.
Live at COMA 3
In events which once seemed only slightly less unlikely than Mike Bloomfield, who died in 1981, reuniting with Paul Butterfield, it was reported over the weekend that the legendary Roxy Music have been recording with the legendary Brian Eno for the first time in more than 30 years. The full original lineup of Roxy Music, including Eno, lead singer Bryan Ferry, guitarist Phil Manzanera, saxophonist Andy Mackay, and drummer Paul Thompson are working on a new album with producers Rhett Davies, and Chris Thomas. Preliminary planning is underway for a tour of Europe later this year, though neither times nor places have been confirmed.
Eno, among the most respected innovators in music, first came to prominence as a member of Roxy Music but left the group after their first two albums. He went on to release artistically successful, culturally significant solo albums and produce classic albums like Remain in Light (Talking Heads), The Joshua Tree (U2), and No New York (the quintessential no wave compilation). Though Eno last recorded with Roxy Music as a group in 1973, Manzanera contributed to many of Eno’s solo albums, and Eno appeared on Ferry’s last solo album Frantic in 2002. Roxy Music reunited without Eno in 2001 and played several acclaimed live shows in Europe last summer, including Live 8 Berlin. Their last album was Avalon, released in 1982.
In advance of the new Roxy Music album, an album featuring remixes of Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry classics by DJs and producers will be released.
ROXY MUSIC IS THE DRUG FOR ME!
Well, I’d like to visit the moon
On a rocket ship high in the air
Yes, I’d like to visit the moon
But I don’t think I’d like to live there
Though I’d like to look down at the earth from above
I would miss all the places and people I love
So although I might like it for one afternoon
I don’t want to live on the moon
I’d like to travel under the sea
I could meet all the fish everywhere
Yes, I’d travel under the sea
But I don’t think I’d like to live there
I might stay for a day there if I had my wish
But there’s not much to do when your friends are all fish
And an oyster and clam aren’t real family
So I don’t want to live in the sea
I’d like to visit the jungle, hear the lions roar
Go back in time and meet a dinosaur
There’s so many strange places I’d like to be
But none of them permanently
So if I should visit the moon
Well, I’ll dance on a moonbeam and then
I will make a wish on a star
And I’ll wish I was home once again
Though I’d like to look down at the earth from above
I would miss all the places and people I love
So although I may go I’ll be coming home soon
‘Cause I don’t want to live on the moon
No, I don’t want to live on the moon
Canada’s annual seal hunt pales in comparison to the slaughter of innocent Iraqis at the hands of the U.S., according to a Liberal senator who defended the hunt to an American family.
Anne McLellan told CTV Newsnet in an interview Friday that her family was, in fact, so appalled by the seal hunt that they cancelled plans to vacation in Canada, despite the fact they love the country and have Canadian ancestry.
“We had thought that they had quit (hunting seals) for many years,” said McLellan. “So we thought, well then, we’re going to not give Canada our tourist dollars.”
Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette penned a terse response to the McLellans, suggesting they should be more concerned about their own government’s treatment of Iraqis.
She didn’t limit her comments to the war, however, pointing out that the true crimes being committed in the world are “the daily massacre of innocent people in Iraq, the execution of prisoners — mainly blacks — in American prisons, the massive sale of handguns to Americans, the destabilization of the entire world by the American government’s aggressive foreign policy, etc.”
Hervieux-Payette told Montreal’s La Presse that Americans should worry about their own country’s behaviour before pointing fingers at other nations.
She sent a copy of her blunt response to other senators, and told La Presse: “all senators received the letter from the McLellans and I was the only one to respond.”
Opposition Leader Bill Graham issued a statement on Friday saying those words “reflect her personal opinions and not those of the Liberal Party of Canada.”
Graham added the Liberals value the friendship and commitment to democratic principles that Canada shares with the U.S.
There is no suggestion that Hervieux-Payette’s comments might bring disciplinary action from her caucus.
McLellan, meanwhile, says her family isn’t about to get involved in the politics behind the debate.
“Our focus is on the inhumane treatment of seals. That’s what our main focus is, so we didn’t want to make it political at all,” she told Newsnet.
Sir Paul McCartney’s recent high-profile protest of the seal hunt brought international media attention to the issue. McCartney and his wife, Heather Mills McCartney, led an entourage of media and animal rights activists onto a Newfoundland ice floe earlier this month, where they posed with harp seal pups.
That led to a debate on CNN’s Larry King Live between Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams and the McCartneys. Williams later said the couple was badly misinformed about the hunt.
In her letter, Hervieux-Payette told the McLellans the centuries-old seal hunt is an important part of the economy for eastern workers and native hunters who rely on the proceeds from the harvest.
“This activity allows the livelihoods of our people in a region where they have been living for centuries,” she wrote.
The Liberal caucus has not issued an official response to the senator’s letter.
Former MP Carolyn Parrish was kicked out of caucus by former prime minister Paul Martin for her comments against U.S. President George Bush. Parrish also stomped on a doll of the U.S. president.
Hervieux-Payette was appointed to the senate in 1995 by former prime minister Jean Chretien.
In 2004 she introduced a private member’s bill to outlaw spanking of children.
A Canadian aid worker kidnapped in the Gaza Strip told CBC News he was treated roughly…
Budzanowski was kidnapped Tuesday morning from the Gaza office of JumpStart, the U.S.-based aid organization he works for. At least 11 foreigners were kidnapped in Gaza and the West Bank in response to Tuesday’s Israeli raid on a Palestinian-run Jericho prison.
The Toronto native said armed men burst into the JumpStart office and aimed their guns at him because they thought he was American. They didn’t believe he was Canadian, even when he showed them his passport.
“It’s not very pleasant to be recognized as an American. They give special treatment to people of American origin,” he said.
Budzanowski said four men surrounded him in the backseat of a vehicle as he was driven to a building.
“It was a rough ride at high speeds,” he said.
With a mask over his head, Budzanowski said he was taken to a building with cement floors, shoved against a wall, a door and pushed down a staircase.
“I was sure they were going to physically harm me,” he said.
Budzanowski said he was moved at least four times overnight and prevented from sleeping.
But he said his captors treated him “nicely” when they realized he was Canadian.
“Later at night when they realized, they changed from extreme rough to lightly rough. Today they changed and treated me nicely,” he said.
It is with great regret and a heavy heart that I bring you this news.
Phucky, my computer of twelve years, has finally left us. The magic smoke has been released, and the smell of flaming motherboard still fills the room.
In happier times, Phucky was a survivor. A warrior. A veteran.
A hero.
I wish you well, dear friend, in your next life. May you have the fortune to come back as an AMD.
RIP PHUCKY
1994 - 2006
All my stitches itch, my prescription’s low.
I wish you were queen, just for today.
Leslie’s birthday is on Saturday, so this is the last call for anyone who would like to leave birthday wishes to be included on the big birthday card I’m giving her. (I’ll be printing out everyone’s comments, and gluing them to the card.)
If you want to be included, leave a message. All comments are screened.
News that makes my head hurt, first in a series: Schrödinger’s Computer.
The wind is blowing like it’s the end of the world, and it’s so cold it’s like the cold if you were dead.
