Thankfully…

Amid all the nuclear hype and Cheney driven hysterics: Someone in Brighton is reaching out to Iran:

She has also given away £300,000 of the £1.5m from selling her Brighton house, before she bought her elegant flat, a block from the sea. “It gives me a high like a drug rush to write cheques,” though her accountant says she has to stop. Her first was for £1,500, to a man she read about in the local paper who couldn’t afford to get his dog out of a pound in Iran.

From The Independent: Julie Burchill interview

Great way not to make a living

Sean O’Brien, one of Britain’s most celebrated poets, said last night that he regarded his work more as an “affliction” than a career and would not recommend it to anyone, as he won the prestigious £10,000 Forward Poetry Prize for the third time.

Ra, ra, ra to Mr O’B for disclosing the realities of the moronic times we are living in and how impossible it has become for artists to make a basic living.  The extraordinary thing is how any book ever is written if you consider that it’s so damn difficult a thing to do, even on a technical level, and that’s before you address the matter of your stomach welding to your back like a set of bellows if you don’t feed it.

It’s really a savage process. Being an artist is akin to being devout you need to maintain a certain degree of delusion or suspended disbelief to keep going. 

 Emerging voices are the ones most at risk; there’s so little mentorship and possibility for them to become better writers.  Mr O’B has some advice:

He also urged younger poets to resist the modern- day urge to publish before their work had matured. “I don’t think people necessarily need to rush into print. It might be a good idea to really learn the craft than think about publishing. Because of the way we live, people want instant results but poetry doesn’t perform in that way,” he said.

It’s not just poetry, sometimes people will tell you a story doesn’t quite “work”, but they’ll rarely tell you how you might fix it. The only route to acquire such knowledge these days would appear to be staring at the thing til some kind of divine intervention intercedes with a refusal to budge from it and the damn thing improves. 

 My next question is has it always been this bad? 

 Rest of the newspaper piece on Mr Poet  here

Bouger Maria

A story in William Trevor’s new collection Cheating at Canasta bought me back to the summer of the moving statues. I can remember the discussions “There’s too many has seen it now for it be anything other than truth”.   Anyway, I, 14 at the time, believed in them, but I was fairly misguided on most fronts, including it would now seem basic facts about the shape of the planet and the possibility of marrying Boy George.

 For those who want to relive it here’s a radio documentary 20 years on.

 Here’s a link to the review I wrote of William Trevor’s new short story collection in The Globe and Mail

1=4

This month being Breast Cancer Awareness Month I was asked in the supermarket checkout by a charming, chubby faced male in a pink wig and tutu if I’d like to donate. I agree. He offers a plastic pen or a pin in return. It struck me that whomever had the task of manufacturing the pen or pin was likely exposed to the possibility of four other cancers in the process of making it and likely lives in a country where access to cancer treatment is limited.

Our dust vs leaves friend I hope will be able to dutifully inform us what the various toxins are.

 The pink wig insisted there were 26 pen factories in our Province. I loved his precision and would happily ingest whatever it is he’s taking that creates such worthy delusions esp if it’s available at Safeway. Their stance on fish farms causes a pause for prayer and wonderment also. How exactly are we supposed to get the omega 3 blah blah if the lice are nibbling the bejesus out of the wild salmon we’re supposed to eat to prevent cancer. Suddenly the pink balloon doth not fly so deft.

Here is a great blog on the experience of breast cancer: http://cancerfuckingsucks.blogspot.com/

c’est vous qui decide

An average Ridgways Organic Earl Grey retrieved from the compost on an average windy afternoon, not unfortunately at 4pm when such things should be reflected upon.

Looks a bit bulky to be mere dust.

Generally N America could use a little help on her average grade teabags. Hence the lean for Ridgways. My french could use an equal rescue.

4pm

Things a man could consider doing at 4pm.

Making a cup of tea

Putting more milk into the tea.

Opening a window

Milking a goat

Listening to a language he doesn’t understand. (http://www.rte.ie/rnag/ for starters)

Nothing.

Read a book ideally Guernica and Total War by Ian Patterson

Open a book and pretend to read it.

Close the book and rest his elbows on it.

Break open the old teabag and count the leaves in it.

A man at 4pm

At 4pm today a man, a former US Ambassador to the UN, opened his mouth and suggested bombing a country.

It would make you wonder if a man could not find something far better to think or say at 4pm.

The mighty sock in the cakehole never seemed so promising.

Baghdad doctor and MSF

How does the richest nation in the world allow that there is no anaesthetic and no x-ray for this six year old in the clip from the documentary Baghdad Doctor over on The Guardian

Iraq for sale showed and described trucks travelling the country empty. 

In spite of their unfathomable suffering the Iraqi people still demonstrate spirit and resilience.

If those who can affect change would show some basic regard for this unnecessary human suffering one could be hopeful. What does anaesthetic weigh for God’s sake?

Medincin Sans Frontieres have a piece on the struggles of Iraqi health system to provide to victims of violence.

Amid Petraeus what’s really happening in Iraq

In a week where all we heard about was Petraeus and “working” Nahlah Ayed is one of the few people reporting the truth about the state of things in Iraq, likely because she’s actually looking and being kept awake at night by it.

Why Baghdad doesn’t care (about Petraeus)

 Violence in Iraq takes no holidays. So even over the weekend there were casualties: On Saturday, at least 15 died in a suicide car bombing in the mostly Shia Sadr City, and at least 45 were injured.

There’s only one true Presidential candidate for 2008

I’m supporting the true deserver of the presidential nomination; the glorious Hilton the philosophical horse.

Here’s his first campaign video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=OKsN4sGyVzc

All the videos can be viewed at youtube.com/hiltonphilosophical  Support the campaign to fertilise America.