blarney/rubble

Milk Cameo:

Techniques for producing organic materials enable the fabrication of plastics made from human or animal milk by solidifying their casein content. The `Perle de lait' range of jewellery imagines a new set of personalized post-natal objects. The breast-feeding mother sends a feeding bottle full of her milk to a laboratory where it is transformed into a gem-like substance that can be mounted on a neck-piece or any other form of jewellery.

• Fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? (and goes downhill from there..........). 

• I do not hesitate to declare with all my soul that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future

• What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham

• There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour.

• Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms- of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

http://susiemadrak.com/2008/07/04/12/44/4th-of-july/

http://susiemadrak.com/?p=25567

Aimee Mann live on Jools Holland:

Today’s the fourth of July
another June has gone by
and when they light up our town I just think
what a waste of gunpowder and sky
I’m certain that I am alone
in harboring thoughts of our home
it’s one of my faults that I can’t quell my past
I ought to have gotten it gone

Oh baby
I wonder
if when you are older
someday
You’ll wake up
and say, ‘My God, I should have told her
What would it take?
But now here I am and the world’s gotten colder
and she’s got the river down which I sold her.’

So that’s today’s memory lane
with all the pathos and pain
another chapter in a book where the chapters are endless
and they’re always the same
a verse, then a verse and refrain

Oh baby I wonder
if when you are older
someday
you’ll wake up
and say, ‘My God, I should have told her
what would it take?
But now here I am and the world’s gotten colder
and she’s got the river down which I sold her.’

And here is the complete updated list. Let's go!

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2008/07/the-films-of-ri.html

PENDANT PRODUCTIONS PROUDLY PRESENTS:

Original artwork by Kristen Bays for Pendant Productions

Episode 24 - "The Lamentable Eventuality"

It's Brassy Battalion vs. SCAR, Robot vs. robot and more of Dixie vs. Geist in all-out war, the results of which may be something none of them expected! Or it could be what everyone expected! Just listen already and find out!

"Umket Industries Presents: The Dixie Stenberg and Brassy Battalion Adventure Theater" is a serialized, full-cast audio adventure with one new episode every month. Available for free download in .mp3 format, or as a Podcast!

Also featuring an audio commentary track with the director and writer!

iTunes link:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=163997482

Podcast feed:
http://www.pendantaudio.com/dixie-podcast.xml

Download link:
http://www.pendantaudio.com/dixie.php

http://susiemadrak.com/2008/07/04/10/34/the-wind-that-shakes-the-barley/

http://susiemadrak.com/?p=25565

I watched this Ken Loach film again this morning and man, who says that politics and art don’t mix? If you’ve never seen any of his work, check it out. (Start with “Riff-Raff.”) Loach, a socialist, does some compelling work and is one of the few directors who is not afraid to address class issues in his films.

Pick your "4th" movie (actual or longed for):

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2008/07/cant-make-it-to.html

http://www.juancole.com/2008/07/your-fourth-of-july-and-my-fourth-of.html

Your Fourth of July is blood for oil.

My Fourth of July is the pure sunbeam of peace.


Yours is the imperial presidency and "so what?" to public opinion.

Mine is "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed"


Yours is profiling and discrimination.

Mine is "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."


Yours is "My country right or wrong."

Mine is avoiding "Offences against the Law of Nations"


Yours is the veto of child health care and rejection of Kyoto,

Mine is an America that cares about the wellbeing of our children.


Yours is a monarchical presidency above the law.

Mine is, with Tom Paine, "in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other."


Yours is aggressive invasions of countries that did not attack us first.

Mine is "and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends."


Yours is water-boarding and electrocution.

Mine is the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.


Yours is the stench of a million moldering corpses, military rule over 27 million, and the creation of oceans of misery.

Mine is "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."


Yours is off-shore drilling, coddling polluters, 'heckuva job Brownie.'

Mine is a stewardship of America the beautiful for succeeding generations.


Yours is the privatization of war and the deployment of whole divisions of "contractors. . ."

Mine is an America where privates do not risk their lives for a tenth of what a mercenary is paid by the Pentagon.


Yours is the erection of protest zones as zoos for citizens.

Mine is, "or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."


Yours is the swagger of the flight jacket and the bombs raining down.

Mine is the schooling of the next global generation.


Mine is America, the pure sunbeam of peace.


-----
With apologies to Kahlil Gibran.

http://www.juancole.com/2008/07/quotations-on-patriotism.html