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"Almost Successfully" is currently on hiatus.

Today on the Hotplate

"Propaganda is a soft weapon; hold it in your hands too long, and it will move about like a snake, and strike the other way." - Jean Anouilh

• Wanna hear Lincoln? Click here
• Greenpeace raids Khon Kaen lab
• Is that allowed?
• Muslim charity accused of conspiring with terrorists
• US unclear on listed terrorists
• Welcome to Miami
• Jazz comes alive in ghetto
• The ultimate situationist prank
• MPS question 'bizarre' environmental policies
• Can Ice-Man Eriksson Survive the Heat of Scandal?
• Korean literature in the world
• Teens tap power of poetry
• Painting Recreates Park Jogger Murder
• Hailed elsewhere, art show prompts Sask. police probe
• Google and Yahoo! accused of censoring web search
  

Today on the Hotplate

"Crime is a fact of the human species, a fact of that species alone, but it is above all the secret aspect, impenetrable and hidden. Crime hides, and by far the most terrifying things are those which elude us." - Georges Bataille

• Renowned gay art exhibit prompts police investigation
• Deal struck in auto parts strike
• Alaska files environmental complaint against Greenpeace
• Dial C for (Attempted) Murder
• Gangster nabbed after 50 cases of murder, rape
• Court Rules Boy's Violent Poetry Not Criminal
• Murders for black magic
• 15 Uzbeks On Trial for Terrorism, Treason
• Saddam's Prison routine: Plants and poetry
• French GM protesters wreck corn field
• Poetry good for the heart
• Organ scandal baby remains buried
• Controversial opera opens at Wagner festival without boos
• Big rise in pirate murders
• 'We thought we were the centre of the world'
• The Living Theatre takes its act of protest everywhere it goes
• Firefighters Speak Out About 'Porn Star Ball' Scandal
• Beaverbrook art dispute to be settled through arbitration

Today on the Hotplate

"In the United States a man builds a house in which to spend his old age, and he sells it before the roof is on; he plants a garden and lets it just as the trees are coming into bearing; he brings a field into tillage and leaves other men to gather the crops; he embraces a profession and gives it up; he settles in a place, which he soon afterwards leaves to carry his changeable longings elsewhere." - Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

• Enterprise goes sour: Cost overruns, environmental damage...
• Gaza withdrawl protesters form human chain
• Workers hospitalized after inhaling fumes at INEEL
• “WMD” Previews in Boston week of DNC Convention
• Convention protesters demand more visible space
• The Path of Evil
• A new "Re-education-through-Labour " camp established in Tibet
• Gray area around stealing darkens as many people rationalize theft
• China says goodbye to dial telephones
• Red menace behind the scarlet poet
• Murder suspect acquitted
• 9/11 panel points way to combat terrorism
• For Guy Lombardo, a port in a stormy music scene
• Faith in the Postmodern World
• A long way from China
• How electricity gave us a shock

Today on the Hotplate

"We are living in a world today where lemonade is made from artificial flavors and furniture polish is made from real lemons..." - Alfred E. Newman

• Poetry scholar dissects Dylan's lyrics
• GREENPEACE wants whaling ban
• Martin cabinet avoids any whiff of scandal
• US death toll in Iraq reaches 900
• Pollution forces Egypt to move statue of god-king
• Project to protect biodiversity in Mekong Basin launched
• Judge shocked at cruelty as murderers jailed
• Gray wolf cut from endangered species list
• The ''cutting'' truth on beheadings
• Emmanuil And Janet Snitkovsky — Paintings
• A Vesper to a 'Scream'
• Bonfire of the Holocausts
• Some industries want protection from coho Endangered Species listing
• Dateless in Christianville
• Gallery told: Keep naked sculpture under wraps

Happy B-Day to Me

Today I turn 30, so if you see a parade when you look out the window this morning you know why. If anyone has a "surprise party" planned, they are keeping it from me. I'm probably not invited anyway.

Today on the Hotplate

"Merely to be carried away by anything at all, to have something of their own, compensates for their impoverished and barren existance. The gesture of adolescence, which raves for this or that on one day with the ever-present possibility of damning it as idiocy on the next, is now socialized." - Theodor Adorno

• The mercurial girl throws a costume party
• Hate literature appears in section of Ellicott City
• Tere Irastortza examines Basque literature and censorship
• N. Korea Ready to Negotiate Nuclear Program-Official
• Nuclear cleanup depends on Yucca Mountain site
• Reciting a rhyme can keep your heart just fine!
• Of laughter and hatred
• Man Ray (1890-1976)
• Juarez Murders Produce Few Answers, Much Grief
• Pedophile Scandal Prompts Cross Border Checks Review
• Contemporary Tamil literature
• Greenpeace Renews Allegations
• For Corporate Directors, Scandal Ain't So Bad
• Industry rejects marine reserve idea
• Pope orders sex scandal probe
• 69 Brazilian Intellectuals and Artists Declare Support for ...
• India, Sikkim, China and a vexing Tibetan lama
• IRAN'S link to 9-11 terrorists being probed, Bush says

My Name's Troy...

Sing to me, oh Muse,
The rage of Bradchilles,
Son of Pitt,
That brought countless
Indigestions on the movie-goers,
Send many a good soul
Scurrying down the aisle
When "Homer" recieves
A writing credit, Poseidon causes
This bloated pseudo-epic
To sink like "Das
Boot", a much better
War movie by the same director.
Praise Zeus
that no-one cast Jennifer
Anisteus as Helen.
One hopes that the DVD
Includes a sex-scene with
The two hot chicks we
See well-coiffed tight-bunned
Bradchilles with at the beginning
As a bonus feature, and
That one of them is Xena.

May Two-Four

My first free time off in about ten dayshttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3907547904230750294. Three whole days to do absolutely nada!

Today on the Hotplate

• Chomsky lecture is sold out
• Bush Doctrine
• Experimental, weird and firmly dead, Rodd Keith is hot again
• Nanotechnology: Jobs, Money, Products and the Environment, a SofTECH Event
• Trail of blood
• Puncturing the myths of the ‘New Economy’
• Pioneer of new wave poetry

Found in Fortune Cookie

Man who want free haircut better get used to wearing a hat.

My Extreme Caramel Coating

After having completely FUBAR'd yesterday, the good news is I'm not fired, the bad news is I have to work Monday. May Two-Four weekend was going to be a weekend off, but now, alas, 'tain't so.

My whole "Freedom 35" plan is way behind. I will probably be forty before retiring to some hacienda in Peru with a small army of servants who will serve their master's insane whims.

Today on the Hotplate

• Pedophilia trial fiasco leaves France stunned
• US Deplores Cuba Sentencing Three More Dissidents
• ATCO ready to go on deals

Dilemna

Can a person be a philosopher AND a poet AND an intergalactic time-travelling space adventurer with chrome detailed ray-guns & a spiffy silver suit?

Why It's Better to Have a Pet Die than a Person

• Nobody say's stupid things about Spot looking peaceful
• No worries over estate taxes
• Pie is not required
• If you eat your dead dog, people will think you are weird - but it's technically not a crime
• You can bury it in your backyard in a cardboard box
• No pallbearers
• Nobody ever say's stupid crap like "They had a long and fruitful life and are survived by a litter of seven kittens"
• If it's a dog - dogs suck!
• It's cheaper than spaying or neutering
• You can make Bonsai Kittens
• You can make fun of your sister-in-law who is a PETA-Nazi

Live from Stratford

Well I got dropped off to work in Stratford today. Like a complete & total numbskull I forgot to bring my binder - I left it in the crew manager's car. When I tried to call her I couldn't get through - her cell phone number is considered long distance & won't take collect calls. Needless to say, that puts me in deep doo-doo.

Now I'm at the public library - where else to sit out the rain that is coming? - and trying to think up of good excuses.

If I'm lucky, I will only get fired.

I hope my boss doesn't read my weblog... I doubt it - nobody else does.

Knock Knock

As someone who makes their living knocking on doors, a class of job that seems to fall somewhere between squeegee kid & executioner in terms of social reputation, I am ever amazed at the things people will tell me when I knock on their doors.

When I ask for the person responsible for the utility bills, invariably the wife will tell me the husband takes care of that, and the wife will tell me that is the husband's domain. Statistically this is about as likely as flipping heads on a coin about fifty times in a row. People will not hesitate to tell you any sort of BS to avoid doing anything. Including spending five minutes explaining to you why they could not find the bill. I could walk into a complete stranger's house and probably find it.

One time I was canvassing for Crimestoppers, a good & worthy cause if there ever was one. One jamoche answered the door, beer in one hand cigarette in the other, ripped track pants & stained T-Shirt, in a building whose tenants were certainly all on some sort of government handout. I told him what we were doing there, and, of course, he wasn't interested.

After he closed the door I heard him say "I can't believe what some people do for a living."

Yeah, I make about $14 an hour talking to people, and you can't afford to do laundry. I laughed my ass off.

I was born in the wrong era. In the 50's door-to-door marketing was common and no big thing. There was no stigma attached. People did not wrinkle their nose when you told them you sold things door-to-door.

I've never lied to anyone, pressured anyone, or pissed anyone off (well - nobody that didn't deserve it) and am more honest than your average mechanic. Yet when people find out what you do they see you as some sort of leech.

Next time someone comes to your door, invite them in, give them what they want, say thank you and have a nice day. They've heard all the excuses, so if you have an excuse (Like my boss once said to me "Must be an early spring - I can hear the birdies going CHEAP! CHEAP! CHEAP!) at least make it an original one.

Today on the Hotplate

• A parade of 'bizarre' toys
• Colombia asks world for cash to disarm militias
• Abu Ghraib: the rule, not the exception
• Emerging writers try oratory
• BOUTROS Boutros-Ghali to be invested into the Order of Canada
• 'New and Selected Poems, 1974-2004': Poet on Main Street
• There followed other evidently language-using apes, including Nim Chimpsky (named after linguist Noam Chomsky)
• War criminals' poems uncovered
• Poets discover a rhythm method
• Democracy far off in dissidents' eyes
• Birth Rights
• The Misery Index is Rising
• Poster poems from EU's new members
• US soldier pleads guilty to abuse in Abu Ghraib prison scandal
• Environment row as Jakarta fish die
• Group: Three dissidents sentenced in Cuba
• Many artists live in survival mode, reports agency head
• The Cruelest (and Coolest) Month
• 'The libertarian experiment has failed; abstinence is the way forward'

Today on the Hotplate

• Online dissident goes on trial
• Sensualtreat: Chocolate mousse, poetry
• Cynthia Rowley Designs T-Shirt to Benefit Poetry
• The passion for poetry
• Money management stressed
• European operation disrupts Turkish Marxist group
• Abu Ghraib detainee families await hearing
• Armenian dissidents go on hunger strike in Baku
• This is supposed to be a police state?

Off to see the Wizard

Just a last note before work. Get up. Eat. Work. Sleep. The circumscribed quaternity of an abysmal existence. Sometimes a person imagines that there might be some other way than to slog one's self through the miasma of daily life, but, like hiccups, the feeling passes.

Blame Blogger

Once again Blogger is being pissy - not allowing me to post, not allowing me to view my own Blog. I can see everyone else's just fine - just not mine.

What new problems Blogger is cooking up to make my life miserable is beyond me, but I am certain their teams are hard at work at it.

Today on the Hotplate

• Putting Poetry Behind Bars
• Man pleads guilty to hate crime
• Canadian Political Poets: Milton Acorn and Robin Mathews
• Michael Moore stirs it up in Cannes
• Abu Ghraib: just like U.S. prisons
• Lessons of Abu Ghraib

Today on the Hotplate

• Dylan Critic Tipped to Land Top Poetry Post
• Supporting State Terror in Uruguay and Chile and the Movement to Stop It: A Look Back
• Spike in price of natural gas focus of probe
• IT'S not Natural Gas prices continue to climb in off-season
• Govt to impose heavy fines on environment pollution
• Terror distracts from the poor and the environment

Vacuum Sealed Freshnessness

When I think about all the people in the world who are actively involved in making me miserable, indeed whose entire existence appears to be bent upon annhilating my own, and whose every thought is of just how they can go about not only denying me, but in point of fact, intentionally and willfully seeking nothing less than my complete extinction with their insane demands, I am forced to ask "Am I being paranoid?". I get over it, though. What other choice do I have?

Today on the Hotplate

• How can America get out of Iraq?
• Eastern Shriners oppose London hospital
• Revenge for Abu Ghraib?
• Abu Ghraib: This Is Us, Too
• Poetry in a Bottle
• Inside poetry
• Quebec gas facility up in air
• Intelligence Innovations Could Stop Future Terror Attacks

If Not Voting Changed Things

would it be illegal?

Writing Poetry May Be Hazardous to Your Health

The average age for a poet to die is sixty-two. That nearly makes me middle aged. Depressing thought. I should be allowed to apply for old-age benefits at 35. I hadn't even really planned to be a good poet until I was in my seventies.

Sunshine on My Squirrel Makes Me Happy

The air is sitting at the sweet spot of twenty-five degrees celsius. Yet, I, your ever faithful blogger, am inside on this day of perfection, far far from any window, not doing what most comes naturally on a day such as this - walking in the park, reading a trashy novel in a hammock, or ogling women who display the good sense to wear short skirts as they bounce their merry way through the field of my vision. Non, nein, nyet! I am here typing happily away so as to insure that you, my adoring masses of Almostonians (the new catch-phrase for devoted readers of my wisdom) are not forced to settle for cheap, decaffeinated substitutes of my high octane perceptions. Too bad I don't really have anything to say today. It is a good day to be alive.

Today on the Hotplate

• Did Saudi Investors Pressure Disney To Drop Michael Moore's New Film on 9/11?
• Battelle: Anti-terror technology keeps evolving
• Breakthrough technology: Paper from green jute: Cheap, environment friendly, better
• Zimbabwe rejects international food aid
• Cuba's cruel prisons
• Cesare Beccaria on Torture

Today on the Hotplate

* The Crimes at Abu Ghraib Are Not the Worst
* Senate grills abuse report author
* Cuba Mother's Day March Seeks Dissidents' Release
* The peaks and valleys of Guité's testimony

I don't think he's talkin' 'bout "Calvin & Hobbes"

Anyone who puts the word "neo-Calvinism" on the header of their weblog probably has something interesting to say.

Hey, did she put in for the pizza?

A Former U.S. Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky, Showcases Poetry

Forever the rebel, Kaifi continues to live in his poetry

"DEAR Kaifi, I love you. Nothing, not even God, can come between our love..."

That impassioned letter, penned in smitten moments half a century ago, finds its way into Kaifi Azmi’s comrade-cum-wife Shaukat’s memoirs, Yaad Ki Rahguzar (Down Memory Lane).

Google News Alert

The new Google News Alert is a handy new feature on Google. I doubt I will be using G-Mail - I'm none to crazy about the idea of targeted ads in my private email - but I will be using the news alert feature. A handy tool for bloggers.

Need a Mercenary?

Better not call "Greenpeace".

New Look For Blogger

Verily, Blogger has a new look. Spiffy!

Son of Former Dictator Elected Panama President

Martin Torrijos, the son of former Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijios, has won the country's presidential election.

Electoral officials in Panama declared Mr. Torrijos the winner late Sunday, as still incomplete results showed he had a commanding over his main challenger, former President Guillermo Endara.


Son of a former dictator winning an election? That could never happed in a free country.

Farewell

Almost Successfully is on hiatus. If you wish to contact me please do so at my email address. Thanks to all the people who supported my weblog. Au revoir.

It's Official

The most kick-ass movie of the year - and the one I least expected to like - is Dawn of the Dead. It did what a remake of a classic movie should do - taking the original as a point of departure while staking out its own territory. A much better effort than 28 Days Later. I'm still looking forward to seeing Kill Bill Vol 2 for even more decapitations.