Frank Black: Black Rider
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The Bottle Castle of Duncan, British Columbia
George Plumb . . . bought a site measuring just over an acre in 1962; a
year later, he set to work with 5 000 bottles. A former carpenter, he built
his little five-roomed house out of every conceivable type of bottle,
collected from local industries and donated by neighbors and visitors. Over
the years, he used a total of 200 000 bottles. The structures around the
main building included a Leaning Tower of Pisa, a Taj Mahal, a well, and a
giant bottle of Coke, all constructed of bottles and cement. Plumb
surrounded his buildings with animals, some of them sculpted inn the
gardens, paths between low walls led past flower beds to a small waterfall,
water-lily and fish ponds, a totem pole, and a small studio. After his
death the complex was run as a low-grade tourist attraction, but it has
since fallen into disrepair.
-- Angelika Taschen, ed., Fantasy Worlds (Cologne: Taschen,
2007), p. 138.
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Republicans
Planetary distances of policy and world-view divide these men, and the Republican debates have the air of cocktail parties whose guests have been selected by random telephone dialling. The candidates deliver monologues: Romney talks chalk, Huckabee cheese, Giuliani cabbages, McCain kings. Here and there a familiar term spoken by one contender - "Iraq", "abortion", "tax code", "illegals" - will trigger a sudden animated reflex from another, but the prevailing mood is one of bemused civility, as at the cocktail party where the plumber's mate stares gloomily into his glass, waiting for the plant geneticist to stop maundering on about rice genomes so that he can get back to the important topic of stopcocks.
Rove's coalition, even more than Reagan's before it, entailed the yoking together of single-issue constituencies that have little in common and are often philosophically incompatible - free marketeers, right-to-lifers, fence-'em-out border zealots, flat-taxers, terror warriors. As many evangelicals have come to deplore the Bush administration's dismal stewardship of the environment, so business owners employing cheap Hispanic labour fear a crackdown on "undocumented" immigrants, and Goldwater-style libertarians recoil from the theocratic tendencies of the fundamentalist base. When Huckabee calls for a "human life amendment" to bring the constitution into line with "God's law", or McCain takes a measured and humane position on immigration, they enrage one sector of the GOP while burnishing their credentials with another.
-- Jonathan Raban, "Divided They Stand," The Guardian, January 31, 2008.
Fire in the Brody Building
A fire broke out in a building in downtown Minneapolis Wednesday, destroying a popular downtown bar and the historic building it was in.
Firefighters were called to a commercial building near 12th and Washington Avenue South around 10:45 a.m. The building is behind Maxwell's Bar.
The fire started on the first floor and quickly spread through the building to the roof of the building.
Firefighters had to fight the fire from the outside because the roof started to collapse.
Authorities evacuated a business adjacent to the building on fire. About an hour after the fire started, the fire spread to the roof of the building that houses Maxwell's Bar.
A ladder was brought in for firefighters to try to help fight the fire from the roof of Maxwell's Bar, but the bar was destroyed.
Metro Transit buses were brought in to help keep civilians and firefighters warm. No injuries have been reported.
With the wind chill, it was 15 below when firefighters arrived at a fast moving fire at Maxwell's in Downtown Minneapolis Wednesday morning. "Are you comfortable?" Deputy Chief Alex Jackson asked reporters. "It's absolutely miserable, because first of all it's flat out cold," he added. "When it gets this cold, I guess what it does, it makes your gear not work right," Captain Staffan Swanson said.
Firefighters believe the fast-moving fire started in the third floor of the 3 story building just north of the Metrodome. There are a dozen apartments above Maxwell's bar and restaurant. When crews first arrived, they entered the building but were soon forced out after part of the roof collapsed.
"We're concerned about the collapse because it's got that billboard on top," Jackson said. The massive billboard never fell, but the rest of the building was basically gutted.
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Census of Antarctic Marine Life
As they customarily do for crossing the equator, the crew of the Aurora Australis gets ready for a ceremony to mark crossing the Antarctic Circle. The Antarctic Circle is located at 66°33’ south, where our work will be in full swing. The initiation ceremony, like Christmas, will take place early while we are underway. Martin Riddle first carefully went to each cabin and made a list of those who did not yet hold certificate of passage of the line.
Preparations are made in secret and involve the crew, who readily take on this new role. The ceremony follows ancient traditions. The initiates, dubbed ‘neophytes,’ pass under the forked trident of the god Neptune (diabolically interpreted by Roger).
Edi, for the occasion, assists the crew, dressed up as Neptune’s daughter.
Nearly every member of the expedition bows gracefully to custom. Among the French team, only Catherine Ozouf, making the trip to the Antarctic for at least the tenth time, is exempt from this infamous ordeal. It’s thanks to her that you can enjoy these novel photos!
After painting our faces with black marker, the organizers assemble us in the dining room to subject us to tests. On our knees, five in a row, at Neptune’s feet, we have to kiss the king’s salmon, incurring a number of blows from its teeth. Bertrand’s lip will remember the occasion: even a dead salmon can bite!
Special treatment is reserved for the French. We must eat a huge vegemite ‘lollipop.’ People who have never tasted this blackish-brown paste don’t know how lucky they are. Could it taste worse than cod-liver oil?! It may be rich in vitamin B and a staple for Australian children, but the French palate finds it very difficult to appreciate this concentrate of yeast extract. Fortunately, a liquid of salty tasting, fluoride blue stuff helped almost all of us swallow valiantly in the end.
Finally, Neptune’s assistants capped the ritual by energetically shampooing our heads with chocolate and corn.
Collateral damage: dining room laid waste, toilets stopped up, grains of corn in the showers.
Our courage will be rewarded with a certificate delivered by the captain, Ian Moodie, after we actually cross the Antarctic Circle.
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It Is the End of Postum
The drink had a small but loyal following among some Seventh-day Adventists who believe that caffeine negatively affects health and some members of the Church of Latter day Saints who don't drink hot caffeinated beverages. Kraft Foods spokeswoman Laurie Guzzinati said the company stopped making Postum last fall because the demand for it was so low that manufacturing it no longer made sense.
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