Christine McAvoy Photography: The Grassy Knoll Under The Wooden Sky...

Christine McAvoy Photography: The Grassy Knoll Under The Wooden Sky...

What a cool impromptu little show! Wish I'd been there! Good gravy, Vancouver rocks my socks!

There's no such thing as "clean" coal

Academy Award-Winning Filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen Direct New Ad taking on the Coal Industry

Teo Hernandez, Mexican experimental filmmaker from '70-80s Paris

Check out this film from Teo Hernandez available on LightCone.org. When I was in film school I loved Hernandez's visually stimulating super-8 films--their abstraction and sensuality appealed to me.

Here's a blurb about the late filmmaker's influence on the underground film movement from the Montreal Image + Nation Festival website:

Mexican-born filmmaker Téo Hernandez settled in Paris in 1976, where he lived and worked until his death from AIDS in 1993. It was also in 1976 that he conjured his beautiful Salomé, a dream-like re-vision of the religious content, Orientalist iconography, and gender politics of the Biblical legend. The film heralded the emergence of a new movement in French experimental filmmaking, dubbed “l’École du corps” (“the School of the Body”). Comprised largely of gay and lesbian filmmakers working in Super 8, this movement approached themes of the body and desire in lush and original ways. Salomé exemplifies the powerfully operatic quality of many of the films, a quality seldom associated with Super 8 before or since. The importance of Hernandez’s body of work to France’s cultural heritage is now well established, yet his films are seldom exhibited outside of the country. This special screening of Salomé, in a 16-mm blow-up print of the Super 8 original, is a rare opportunity for audiences west of the Atlantic to experience the poetic vision of this eminent filmmaker. Programmer Greg Youmans will be on hand to discuss the film’s history, l’École du corps, and challenges now facing queer work in Super 8.

Candy Mountain, Charlieeeee! Candy Mountain!

Hoedown Throwdown from PEVZ

From the Positive Energy Vibe Zone.

This is not okay...

Why does she deserve this?

Gaza...

By NYTimes Op-Ed contributor RASHID KHALIDI:
NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.

THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.

THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

THE BLOCKADE Israel’s blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.

The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment — with the tacit support of the United States — of a civilian population for exercising its democratic rights.

THE CEASE-FIRE Lifting the blockade, along with a cessation of rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction in rockets fired from Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures). The cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and ground attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported killed.

WAR CRIMES The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious. But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed, many of them soldiers. Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip.

This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia, is the author of the forthcoming “Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East."

Money J Skeets on Bernard Madoff

I like this guy's fire! (Found on Vancity Buzz.)

grafitti blog

Contradictions

From artist Filippo Minelli's "Contradictions" series juxtaposing Web 2.0-associated images with images of slums.

Oddly enough, colourful cellphone ads are ubiquitous in African slums:

Slick back your hair with used condom hair bands!

Recycling is great and all, but how far can we take it? The Chinese, being the inventive little production gnomes they are, are testing the boundaries: turning used condoms into fashionable hair accessories...

Yeah, that's right. Putting spermy latex on your hair just got a little more mainstream.

Watch my porno!

Chocolate Rain

Boo-yah!!

Tasertastic cop

Most Insane Post-Election Comment Nominees

From some douche in a Wall Street Journal article called "The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace":

The treatment President Bush has received from this country is nothing less than a disgrace. The attacks launched against him have been cruel and slanderous, proving to the world what little character and resolve we have. The president is not to blame for all these problems. He never lost faith in America or her people, and has tried his hardest to continue leading our nation during a very difficult time.

Giving him a run for his money is Michael Ledeen, who blogged about Sarah Palin at the National Review:

...the most qualified and by far the most exciting candidate of the four...

Green Financing

A good idea in Berkley - paying for green home improvements by issuing municipal bonds secured with a lien on the property, and paid off over the long term through a new line item on the owner's property tax bill.

A new day!

Who would have ever dreamed a Democrat, a black man, someone on the right side of wrong would be win in Indiana?!

My whole life, with every election, I've watched Indiana pop up on the big map first, before any other state, as RED. Last night, from a sofa in Vancouver, BC, I watched the "twisting and the turning," as my grandmother would say, of the electorate who couldn't decide whether it was backing Obama or McCain. Yes we can. By the time I went to bed, they hadn't called it, but Obama was up. This morning, I woke up to learn he'd won the state by 23,000 votes. YES! We can.

I am so proud. I've never in my life felt more proud to be an American, a Hoosier, a citizen of the world. This is a great day.

Let's count 'em!

We're counting down the minute to the big announcement for Obama by cutesy catch phrases.

6:25pm PT
CNN - Katy Couric to Bob Shieffer: "The cake is baked, you're saying?"