November 11, 2016
(Poem #339) The Music Crept By Us
I would like to remind
the management
that the drinks are watered
and the hat-check girl
has syphilis
and the band is composed
of former SS monsters
However since it is
New Year’s Eve
and I have lip cancer
I will place my
paper hat on my
concussion and dance.
How to Speak Poetry
by Leonard Cohen
Take the word butterfly. To use this word it is not necessary to make the voice weigh less than an ounce or equip it with small dusty wings.
May 18, 2016
As a white person in Canada, especially one writing about a topic that intersects with Indigenous issues, I have found Métis writer Chelsea Vowel’s blog âpihtawikosisân invaluable. Vowel is a legal researcher who somehow explains complex issues with total clarity without ever being anything less than gripping or undercutting her politics.
January 2, 2016
I can’t get this article out of my mind, more than all the ones I read on terrorism and violence in 2015. I’m not sure why. It’s by Vijay Prashad, educated in the US and working out of New Delhi.
November 12, 2015
Sociologist Harvey Molotch
“A city and, more generally, any locality, is conceived as the areal expression of the interests of some land-based elite.”
Harvey Molotch‘s seminal 1976 article “The City as Growth Machine”—which is equally applicable today—just happened to be published the same year of the UN Habitat Conference on Settlements that took place in Vancouver (and is the subject of my upcoming book).
October 30, 2015
In spite of being completely irreligious and not fond of any of the patriarchal monotheisms with fathery deities, I still love this poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins from 1877. We studied it in high school and for some reason I never forgot it.
November 29, 2014
Reprinted from Parker Higgins of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who transcribed Le Guin’s speech:
Ursula K. Le Guin was honored at the National Book Awards tonight and gave a fantastic speech about the dangers to literature and how they can be stopped.
January 9, 2014
This is merely for those who haven’t seen this video yet. Benjamin Bratton nails what is so wrong with TED. Read Bratton’s article in the Guardian here.
October 30, 2013
Lorem Ipsum text by designer Steph Borel.
At a party last night someone asked what the Lorem Ipsum dummy text passage actually means, and despite studying latin for years (anything to get out of math), and despite seeing this dummy text all the time, I realized I had no idea.
July 17, 2013
Before the stock market crash, London in the 1920s. From Stephen Fry’s film Bright Young Things, based on Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies, 1930
Oh Nina, what a lot of parties… Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Circus parties, parties where you have to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St.
