Thursday 5 April 2007
Saturday 31 March 2007
My vote is on Ahnold
That's right, I reckon Schwarzenegger will swing down from a helicopter at the eleventh hour, just as the new president is being sworn in, whereupon he'll kick the shit out of Obama or McCain or whoever, take the office for himself, and thus restore Democracy to America, and win the War on Terror!
Friday 16 March 2007
Thursday 15 March 2007
Quote of the Day
It’s the combination of narcissism and nihilism that really defines postmodernism
- Al Gore
- Al Gore
Star Wars
Episode VII: Dos
Open up Run and type in "telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl". Without the " " brackets, obviously. = )
Open up Run and type in "telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl". Without the " " brackets, obviously. = )
Wednesday 14 March 2007
The Internet is bad, mmmkay?
"Surfing is bad for you," says Yang Yang, a lanky 17-year-old, dolefully, as he describes for the cameras how his obsession with computer games destroyed his relationship with his father, undermined his performance in school examinations, and led to declining social standards among his peers.
"This is our social crisis. I really want to go back to how my family used to be, pure and simple, but there's no going back. Who's going to solve this crisis?"
Read the rest of the article here.
God speed you Yang Yang.
God bless China:
"This is our social crisis. I really want to go back to how my family used to be, pure and simple, but there's no going back. Who's going to solve this crisis?"
Read the rest of the article here.
God speed you Yang Yang.
God bless China:
Monday 12 March 2007
Do the evolution, baby
The Persecution Rests
Dickhead Judge takes aim at fake religion
by Paul Jones
Upstate New York is frequently portrayed as an intellectual hinterland, a cultural backwater. But a local judge has proven the region is really in the vanguard, albeit of judicial overzeal, by doggedly persecuting a religion that doesn’t even exist. On February 17, Orleans County Family Court Judge James P. Punch officially stripped Rachel Bevilacqua of custody of her son, Kohl, which she’d enjoyed since 1997, and barred her from any contact with him. He granted Kohl’s father, Jeff Jary—who refused to return the child to his mother after his Christmas visit—sole custody.
Anyone who’s ever tried to argue a parking ticket or watched daytime television has some notion of fractious, sneering judges. They’re ubiquitous. It’s common too, many lawyers will tell you: the pretense of objectivity notwithstanding, judges inevitably inject their personal biases into the matters they oversee. James Punch, a black-haired, double-chinned and bespectacled larva with a Rovian smile, is exemplary.
What’s so bizarre about this otherwise typical family court drama—a bitter, protracted farce in which a child’s interests appear glaringly subordinate to some parental vendetta—is the motive behind Judge Punch’s decision. Nowhere in the partial court transcript Rachel Bevilacqua provided The BEAST is any evidence presented that her care resulted in any detriment to, or had any deleterious effect on, her son. Stranger still, Punch repeatedly interrupted Bevilacqua’s testimony during the February 3 hearing to question her about her participation in the Church of the SubGenius, a satirical group known for parodying religious beliefs in print, on radio, and in public performances. He did so despite the fact Bevilacqua testified her son had no involvement in or contact with SubGenius activities, in particular a festival featuring irreverent send-ups of religious beliefs that incorporated ribald humor and sometimes involved nudity of the hippie/free-spirit variety.
Rachel’s testimony about her religious affiliation marked a change in Judge Punch’s disposition in this portion of the proceedings. Just before Bevilacqua answered questions from her attorney, Francis Affronti, about the Church of the SubGenius, she corrected Affronti about a fundraising effort for an actual Anglican church, of which she was a member. When Affronti asks Rachel if she had been trying to start her own church, she explains she was merely trying to raise money to construct a new building for an existing Anglican parish. But, Punch poses the same question: “And you were starting up your own Anglican church?” moments later, as though he had missed the entire exchange.
From that point, Punch continued to interject until he was essentially conducting his own examination of Bevilacqua about the Church of the SubGenius.
Judge Punch: Okay, and do you consider the sub-genius thing a church of some kind?
Bevilacqua: Absolutely not. It is a performance art group. It is not a church.
Judge Punch: A performance art group?
Bevilacqua: Yes.
Judge Punch: Oh, okay. Do they have a religious theme in their performances?
Bevilacqua: Yes, the theme of the performances is parody and satire and they satire both politics and religion.
Judge Punch instructs Affronti to continue his questioning, only to resume his own line of inquiry seconds later. Examining photos of Rachel in suggestive costumes or nude at a SubGenius “X Day” festival that have been entered into evidence, Punch focuses on a picture of her wearing a papier mache goat’s head.
Judge Punch: What was the [faith] you were parodying?
Bevilacqua: I was parodying goat worshipers.
Judge Punch: You feel that's fertile area for performance to parody goat worshipers?
Bevilacqua: The intent, Your Honor, was supposed to be funny. All of our things are supposed to be funny.
When he turns to Affronti and asks, “Do you mind if I ask for a couple of questions because this is fascinating? It's a whole new world of performance arts,” Affronti, obviously uncomfortable, objects with meek deference. The judge sustains the objection at his own expense but, his gleeful inquisition thwarted, he quickly turns peevish. Even after Affronti thinks better of eliciting the Judge’s wrath and retracts his objection, Punch, in an obvious passive aggressive sulk, insists, “I'm not going to ask any more questions, not a single one.”
This, it turns out pretty quickly, is a lie. But what’s astounding is that a child’s wellbeing is at stake and what really gets Judge Punch’s goat is—well, goats. Bevilacqua contends he was distracted much earlier, though, when the photos were first offered into evidence. “Judge Punch said he needed some time to compose himself because the images were ‘so disturbing.’ So he took the pictures back with him into his office and shut the door.”
Not being a health professional, I’m unsure what salutary or mollifying effect being alone with the offending material was supposed to have. It’s impossible to say precisely what transpired during that intimate, in-camera examination; Rachel, to her credit, won’t speculate. But it’s the judge thereafter exhibited nothing like post-orgasmic placidity. SubGenius Reverend Ivan Stang, a shrewd, genteel man whose relentless, scathing humor underscores a profound seriousness, thought the material would be dull for a man in Punch’s position. “Judges,” he told me in a lilting Texas timbre, “are famous for cruising high-class S&M joints.”
“Whatever [Punch] was doing in there,” Rachel says, “it took about fifteen minutes.”
What’s worse, according to Bevilacqua, the judge—after fussing with Affronti—actually ignored her remaining testimony.
“After Mr. Affronti objected,” she says, “His Honor made a big show of not listening. He started cleaning his desk, reading a book, checking his e-mail, and all the time with this smug smile like, ‘None of this is going to show up on the transcript.’” Bevilacqua thinks it’s impossible to appreciate his manner just from reading the record, without seeing how he acted, but I think she may be underestimating—Punch is such an inelegant, irrepressible prick that his brazen ignorance fairly leaps off the page. One family law practitioner I spoke to characterized the transcript as “45 pages of drivel.”
All of the photos and the SubGenius issue should have been immaterial, of course, once Bevilacqua and her lawyer demonstrated her son was not a participant at “X Day” or in any other way associated with the Church of the SubGenius, which they did almost immediately following the judge’s interjection. Bevilacqua emphasized that even though her child had internet access, his surfing activity had always been limited by a filter. But the judge remarks later anyway that “any ten year old child cruising the web [who] Googles his mother's name and finds those pictures posted…would be very disturbed.” It’s not clear from this misapprehension whether Punch is a Luddite or merely a recalcitrant dolt; but Bevilacqua, an articulate woman with a frank, deliberate way of speaking, observes interestingly of the Orleans County judiciary: “I think they’re just afraid of the internet.”
Whether or not that’s true, Affronti and Bevilacqua clearly failed to establish the inconsequence of the SubGenius evidence to Punch’s satisfaction. Jary’s attorney, Lance Mark, in what struck me as a pretty half-assed bit of lawyering, led off his cross-examination of Rachel by questioning her based on a Wikipedia.com printout about SubGenii. When he attempted to enter it into evidence—even though Rachel disputed much of its contents—Judge Punch instructed Mark, “You know, it just doesn't matter at this stage. I think it's just one of those things obviously I'm not going to send the child back with her…The proof seems just incredibly overwhelming against her.”
“The way I felt at the moment when I knew he wasn't going to return Kohl to me,” Rachel told me, “Was kind of like stepping on a stair that isn't there. And kind of like having a limb torn off while hot irons are applied to the back of your neck.” Still Punch wasn’t through with the photos. Minutes later, he was at it again.
Judge Punch: Can I interject a question. Could you hand her the exhibits and just show me one thing in those exhibits that's funny to you. Would you just pick one out for me just so I, because the sense of humor is elusive to me I guess and maybe you can help me with that, okay.
Bevilacqua: Okay.
Judge Punch: Why don't you just the first thing you come to that's hilarious, pull it out and explain it to me.
Bevilacqua: As I'm sure you realize it's very difficult to explain humor.
Judge Punch: Why don't you stop talking and just do what I ask you to do, okay?
Bevilacqua: Yes, sir.
Judge Punch: We will keep going until you can find something that's just going to knock my socks off with the humor of it and we'll proceed. Since you have such a big organization devoted totally to humor, I would really like to learn more about it so find the funniest picture and then explain the joke to me. How about the Barbie doll that’s being crucified with the swastika on the nipples, is that a pretty good one?
In the midst of this rigorous badgering, Punch audaciously queries Affronti: “Any objection to my asking my questions?” Practically daring the lawyer to reiterate his earlier exception.
Judge Punch: Would it be funnier if it was a goat as opposed to a pig's head? Is it funny because it’s a goat or just because it's an animal?
Bevilacqua: Well, my creative thinking at the time was I thought goat was a funny word and it would be funny.
Judge Punch: Just to say goat…Isn't this a lot of trouble to go to to dress up in some kind of, I don't know, it looks like some kind of S and M outfit and actually get a goat's head? Is that a real skull?
Bevilacqua: No, no, that's a papier-mache.
Judge Punch: Papier-mache, that's a lot of trouble just because the word goat is funny?
Remarkably, after all of this gratuitous ire, Rachel actually apologized to the judge for upsetting him, but Punch snapped back, “I don't need your sympathy, ma'am. Don't offer me your sympathy again, do you understand?”
“I didn't mean it as sympathy, sir,” she said.
“Stop talking,” Punch ordered. “Go ahead, let's move on. Obviously there's nothing funny in those pictures.”
“We had no idea that any of that was going to happen,” Rachel says now of Judge Punch’s monomania. “My lawyer had said at the very beginning that no performance art can be a factor in child custody, it's irrelevant. So we didn't prepare anything to deal with that. We had no warning that these pictures were going to be entered in evidence or that they would be accepted as a basis for decision-making if they were. We didn't realize that basically all those [neglect] allegations were an excuse to open the case up so Judge Punch could get to the real issue: my butt, and its photographic representation on the internet.”
The “overwhelming” evidence against Bevilacqua amounted, according to her, to testimony from Dr. David Sheffield Bell—who was allowed to testify despite being the judge’s personal physician—that her Kohl may have suffered for years from untreated asthma. (She insists no pediatrician, in years of routine physicals, ever diagnosed her son as asthmatic.) Kohl’s father also testified, although she points out his testimony also focused on photos of her SubGenius activities.
“We thought we had an open-and-shut case,” Bevilacqua says. “The allegation was that I had run away and couldn't be found. Well, [we had] phone records showing that not only was I available, but my ex was talking to me on the very day that he said he couldn't find me.”
I called the Orleans County Courthouse, but I didn’t come within a telephonic mile of Judge Punch. The farthest I got was Chief Clerk of the Family Court, Mary Washak, a woman who, when she said anything at all, spoke in the clipped, hollow tones of a bureaucratic nonentity. Like most misnamed public servants, Washak seemed to regard people with the primitive mistrust and inextirpable savageness of someone who’s been raised by wolves.
When I asked Ms. Washak if I could speak to Judge Punch, I was greeted with a prolonged silence. I imagined her sabotaging her coworkers’ staplers with a reptilian smile.
“What is this about?” she asked with sudden urgency—as if she hadn’t been idling dumbly.
I told her I was calling about the Bevilacqua case. “You know, this woman is alleging the judge has some sort of bias against her. I was wondering if I might ask the judge some questions.” I admit I might have erred. Maybe if I’d said I was calling about goats—or better yet, just bleated into the phone, Washak would’ve patched me through.
Instead, silence.
“I doubt he’d talk to you if the case is still pending,” she said.
“Right, no, I know he can’t talk about the case,” I said, “But I wondered if he might answer some questions about himself.”
More silence.
“Why don’t you give me your number,” Washak said, “And I’ll call you back.” Like every man, I’ve been lied to by countless women; so I’ve become something of an epicure of female mendacity. I savor the peculiar inflections—roll them around on my tongue like a professional taster. Washak’s effort was pretty rancid.
Baa, I thought. Say it. Baa. Too late: she hung up. I never heard from her.
A conversation with Judge Punch might have been moot anyway. After reportedly receiving scads of unflattering emails, Punch admonished Bevilacqua in court for posting information about the case on her blog and issued a gag order, precluding her from publishing again. In imposing this restriction, however, Punch—ever obsessed—inadvertently revealed he’d violated the rules of evidence against viewing material related to a case that has not been entered into the official record—which includes a litigant’s blog. Her lawyers asked Punch to recuse himself, which he did—citing only, in Rachel’s words, “a number of factors”—and has been replaced by the Honorable Eric R. Adams in Genesee County.
Of the support from the online community, Reverend Stang says Rachel—a legal transcriptionist who goes by the SubGenius title “Magdalen,”—is “lucky she’s able to use the internet for something other than entertainment.” But, he says, her case “proves that fundamentalist religious nuts in distant lands are not the only ones who would screw up someone else’s life over something like a cartoon.”
Bevilacqua has new attorneys: Chris Mattingly and Barry Covert, from the Buffalo firm Lipsitz, Green, Fahringer, Roll, Salibsury & Cambria LLP. But the “gag” against Rachel posting to her blog remains until Adams can hear her attorneys’ motion; which means her efforts to raise money for her case are, for the time being, greatly diminished. After living on her parents’ couch for several weeks during the custody proceedings, she moved into an apartment, which she’s renting month-by-month, in Brockport. Her husband is still working in Georgia.
Rachel claims the judge called her a “pervert” in his closing remarks, something I wasn’t able to confirm because the transcripts are incomplete. But it seems utterly in keeping with Punch’s character. When they left court, Rachel says, “I looked over at my mom and she was screwing up her face trying not to cry and I knew that it was real, that she had really just had to watch her daughter be called a ‘pervert’ by a judge. I'm never going to get over that, I don't think. The memory of that word ringing out through the courthouse is going to stay with me forever, but the worst part was that my mom had to hear it.”
Judge James Punch, ladies and gentlemen. He’s a hell of a guy.
http://www.buffalobeast.com/96/subgenius.custody.htm
http://revstang.blogspot.com/
Dickhead Judge takes aim at fake religion
by Paul Jones
Upstate New York is frequently portrayed as an intellectual hinterland, a cultural backwater. But a local judge has proven the region is really in the vanguard, albeit of judicial overzeal, by doggedly persecuting a religion that doesn’t even exist. On February 17, Orleans County Family Court Judge James P. Punch officially stripped Rachel Bevilacqua of custody of her son, Kohl, which she’d enjoyed since 1997, and barred her from any contact with him. He granted Kohl’s father, Jeff Jary—who refused to return the child to his mother after his Christmas visit—sole custody.
Anyone who’s ever tried to argue a parking ticket or watched daytime television has some notion of fractious, sneering judges. They’re ubiquitous. It’s common too, many lawyers will tell you: the pretense of objectivity notwithstanding, judges inevitably inject their personal biases into the matters they oversee. James Punch, a black-haired, double-chinned and bespectacled larva with a Rovian smile, is exemplary.
What’s so bizarre about this otherwise typical family court drama—a bitter, protracted farce in which a child’s interests appear glaringly subordinate to some parental vendetta—is the motive behind Judge Punch’s decision. Nowhere in the partial court transcript Rachel Bevilacqua provided The BEAST is any evidence presented that her care resulted in any detriment to, or had any deleterious effect on, her son. Stranger still, Punch repeatedly interrupted Bevilacqua’s testimony during the February 3 hearing to question her about her participation in the Church of the SubGenius, a satirical group known for parodying religious beliefs in print, on radio, and in public performances. He did so despite the fact Bevilacqua testified her son had no involvement in or contact with SubGenius activities, in particular a festival featuring irreverent send-ups of religious beliefs that incorporated ribald humor and sometimes involved nudity of the hippie/free-spirit variety.
Rachel’s testimony about her religious affiliation marked a change in Judge Punch’s disposition in this portion of the proceedings. Just before Bevilacqua answered questions from her attorney, Francis Affronti, about the Church of the SubGenius, she corrected Affronti about a fundraising effort for an actual Anglican church, of which she was a member. When Affronti asks Rachel if she had been trying to start her own church, she explains she was merely trying to raise money to construct a new building for an existing Anglican parish. But, Punch poses the same question: “And you were starting up your own Anglican church?” moments later, as though he had missed the entire exchange.
From that point, Punch continued to interject until he was essentially conducting his own examination of Bevilacqua about the Church of the SubGenius.
Judge Punch: Okay, and do you consider the sub-genius thing a church of some kind?
Bevilacqua: Absolutely not. It is a performance art group. It is not a church.
Judge Punch: A performance art group?
Bevilacqua: Yes.
Judge Punch: Oh, okay. Do they have a religious theme in their performances?
Bevilacqua: Yes, the theme of the performances is parody and satire and they satire both politics and religion.
Judge Punch instructs Affronti to continue his questioning, only to resume his own line of inquiry seconds later. Examining photos of Rachel in suggestive costumes or nude at a SubGenius “X Day” festival that have been entered into evidence, Punch focuses on a picture of her wearing a papier mache goat’s head.
Judge Punch: What was the [faith] you were parodying?
Bevilacqua: I was parodying goat worshipers.
Judge Punch: You feel that's fertile area for performance to parody goat worshipers?
Bevilacqua: The intent, Your Honor, was supposed to be funny. All of our things are supposed to be funny.
When he turns to Affronti and asks, “Do you mind if I ask for a couple of questions because this is fascinating? It's a whole new world of performance arts,” Affronti, obviously uncomfortable, objects with meek deference. The judge sustains the objection at his own expense but, his gleeful inquisition thwarted, he quickly turns peevish. Even after Affronti thinks better of eliciting the Judge’s wrath and retracts his objection, Punch, in an obvious passive aggressive sulk, insists, “I'm not going to ask any more questions, not a single one.”
This, it turns out pretty quickly, is a lie. But what’s astounding is that a child’s wellbeing is at stake and what really gets Judge Punch’s goat is—well, goats. Bevilacqua contends he was distracted much earlier, though, when the photos were first offered into evidence. “Judge Punch said he needed some time to compose himself because the images were ‘so disturbing.’ So he took the pictures back with him into his office and shut the door.”
Not being a health professional, I’m unsure what salutary or mollifying effect being alone with the offending material was supposed to have. It’s impossible to say precisely what transpired during that intimate, in-camera examination; Rachel, to her credit, won’t speculate. But it’s the judge thereafter exhibited nothing like post-orgasmic placidity. SubGenius Reverend Ivan Stang, a shrewd, genteel man whose relentless, scathing humor underscores a profound seriousness, thought the material would be dull for a man in Punch’s position. “Judges,” he told me in a lilting Texas timbre, “are famous for cruising high-class S&M joints.”
“Whatever [Punch] was doing in there,” Rachel says, “it took about fifteen minutes.”
What’s worse, according to Bevilacqua, the judge—after fussing with Affronti—actually ignored her remaining testimony.
“After Mr. Affronti objected,” she says, “His Honor made a big show of not listening. He started cleaning his desk, reading a book, checking his e-mail, and all the time with this smug smile like, ‘None of this is going to show up on the transcript.’” Bevilacqua thinks it’s impossible to appreciate his manner just from reading the record, without seeing how he acted, but I think she may be underestimating—Punch is such an inelegant, irrepressible prick that his brazen ignorance fairly leaps off the page. One family law practitioner I spoke to characterized the transcript as “45 pages of drivel.”
All of the photos and the SubGenius issue should have been immaterial, of course, once Bevilacqua and her lawyer demonstrated her son was not a participant at “X Day” or in any other way associated with the Church of the SubGenius, which they did almost immediately following the judge’s interjection. Bevilacqua emphasized that even though her child had internet access, his surfing activity had always been limited by a filter. But the judge remarks later anyway that “any ten year old child cruising the web [who] Googles his mother's name and finds those pictures posted…would be very disturbed.” It’s not clear from this misapprehension whether Punch is a Luddite or merely a recalcitrant dolt; but Bevilacqua, an articulate woman with a frank, deliberate way of speaking, observes interestingly of the Orleans County judiciary: “I think they’re just afraid of the internet.”
Whether or not that’s true, Affronti and Bevilacqua clearly failed to establish the inconsequence of the SubGenius evidence to Punch’s satisfaction. Jary’s attorney, Lance Mark, in what struck me as a pretty half-assed bit of lawyering, led off his cross-examination of Rachel by questioning her based on a Wikipedia.com printout about SubGenii. When he attempted to enter it into evidence—even though Rachel disputed much of its contents—Judge Punch instructed Mark, “You know, it just doesn't matter at this stage. I think it's just one of those things obviously I'm not going to send the child back with her…The proof seems just incredibly overwhelming against her.”
“The way I felt at the moment when I knew he wasn't going to return Kohl to me,” Rachel told me, “Was kind of like stepping on a stair that isn't there. And kind of like having a limb torn off while hot irons are applied to the back of your neck.” Still Punch wasn’t through with the photos. Minutes later, he was at it again.
Judge Punch: Can I interject a question. Could you hand her the exhibits and just show me one thing in those exhibits that's funny to you. Would you just pick one out for me just so I, because the sense of humor is elusive to me I guess and maybe you can help me with that, okay.
Bevilacqua: Okay.
Judge Punch: Why don't you just the first thing you come to that's hilarious, pull it out and explain it to me.
Bevilacqua: As I'm sure you realize it's very difficult to explain humor.
Judge Punch: Why don't you stop talking and just do what I ask you to do, okay?
Bevilacqua: Yes, sir.
Judge Punch: We will keep going until you can find something that's just going to knock my socks off with the humor of it and we'll proceed. Since you have such a big organization devoted totally to humor, I would really like to learn more about it so find the funniest picture and then explain the joke to me. How about the Barbie doll that’s being crucified with the swastika on the nipples, is that a pretty good one?
In the midst of this rigorous badgering, Punch audaciously queries Affronti: “Any objection to my asking my questions?” Practically daring the lawyer to reiterate his earlier exception.
Judge Punch: Would it be funnier if it was a goat as opposed to a pig's head? Is it funny because it’s a goat or just because it's an animal?
Bevilacqua: Well, my creative thinking at the time was I thought goat was a funny word and it would be funny.
Judge Punch: Just to say goat…Isn't this a lot of trouble to go to to dress up in some kind of, I don't know, it looks like some kind of S and M outfit and actually get a goat's head? Is that a real skull?
Bevilacqua: No, no, that's a papier-mache.
Judge Punch: Papier-mache, that's a lot of trouble just because the word goat is funny?
Remarkably, after all of this gratuitous ire, Rachel actually apologized to the judge for upsetting him, but Punch snapped back, “I don't need your sympathy, ma'am. Don't offer me your sympathy again, do you understand?”
“I didn't mean it as sympathy, sir,” she said.
“Stop talking,” Punch ordered. “Go ahead, let's move on. Obviously there's nothing funny in those pictures.”
“We had no idea that any of that was going to happen,” Rachel says now of Judge Punch’s monomania. “My lawyer had said at the very beginning that no performance art can be a factor in child custody, it's irrelevant. So we didn't prepare anything to deal with that. We had no warning that these pictures were going to be entered in evidence or that they would be accepted as a basis for decision-making if they were. We didn't realize that basically all those [neglect] allegations were an excuse to open the case up so Judge Punch could get to the real issue: my butt, and its photographic representation on the internet.”
The “overwhelming” evidence against Bevilacqua amounted, according to her, to testimony from Dr. David Sheffield Bell—who was allowed to testify despite being the judge’s personal physician—that her Kohl may have suffered for years from untreated asthma. (She insists no pediatrician, in years of routine physicals, ever diagnosed her son as asthmatic.) Kohl’s father also testified, although she points out his testimony also focused on photos of her SubGenius activities.
“We thought we had an open-and-shut case,” Bevilacqua says. “The allegation was that I had run away and couldn't be found. Well, [we had] phone records showing that not only was I available, but my ex was talking to me on the very day that he said he couldn't find me.”
I called the Orleans County Courthouse, but I didn’t come within a telephonic mile of Judge Punch. The farthest I got was Chief Clerk of the Family Court, Mary Washak, a woman who, when she said anything at all, spoke in the clipped, hollow tones of a bureaucratic nonentity. Like most misnamed public servants, Washak seemed to regard people with the primitive mistrust and inextirpable savageness of someone who’s been raised by wolves.
When I asked Ms. Washak if I could speak to Judge Punch, I was greeted with a prolonged silence. I imagined her sabotaging her coworkers’ staplers with a reptilian smile.
“What is this about?” she asked with sudden urgency—as if she hadn’t been idling dumbly.
I told her I was calling about the Bevilacqua case. “You know, this woman is alleging the judge has some sort of bias against her. I was wondering if I might ask the judge some questions.” I admit I might have erred. Maybe if I’d said I was calling about goats—or better yet, just bleated into the phone, Washak would’ve patched me through.
Instead, silence.
“I doubt he’d talk to you if the case is still pending,” she said.
“Right, no, I know he can’t talk about the case,” I said, “But I wondered if he might answer some questions about himself.”
More silence.
“Why don’t you give me your number,” Washak said, “And I’ll call you back.” Like every man, I’ve been lied to by countless women; so I’ve become something of an epicure of female mendacity. I savor the peculiar inflections—roll them around on my tongue like a professional taster. Washak’s effort was pretty rancid.
Baa, I thought. Say it. Baa. Too late: she hung up. I never heard from her.
A conversation with Judge Punch might have been moot anyway. After reportedly receiving scads of unflattering emails, Punch admonished Bevilacqua in court for posting information about the case on her blog and issued a gag order, precluding her from publishing again. In imposing this restriction, however, Punch—ever obsessed—inadvertently revealed he’d violated the rules of evidence against viewing material related to a case that has not been entered into the official record—which includes a litigant’s blog. Her lawyers asked Punch to recuse himself, which he did—citing only, in Rachel’s words, “a number of factors”—and has been replaced by the Honorable Eric R. Adams in Genesee County.
Of the support from the online community, Reverend Stang says Rachel—a legal transcriptionist who goes by the SubGenius title “Magdalen,”—is “lucky she’s able to use the internet for something other than entertainment.” But, he says, her case “proves that fundamentalist religious nuts in distant lands are not the only ones who would screw up someone else’s life over something like a cartoon.”
Bevilacqua has new attorneys: Chris Mattingly and Barry Covert, from the Buffalo firm Lipsitz, Green, Fahringer, Roll, Salibsury & Cambria LLP. But the “gag” against Rachel posting to her blog remains until Adams can hear her attorneys’ motion; which means her efforts to raise money for her case are, for the time being, greatly diminished. After living on her parents’ couch for several weeks during the custody proceedings, she moved into an apartment, which she’s renting month-by-month, in Brockport. Her husband is still working in Georgia.
Rachel claims the judge called her a “pervert” in his closing remarks, something I wasn’t able to confirm because the transcripts are incomplete. But it seems utterly in keeping with Punch’s character. When they left court, Rachel says, “I looked over at my mom and she was screwing up her face trying not to cry and I knew that it was real, that she had really just had to watch her daughter be called a ‘pervert’ by a judge. I'm never going to get over that, I don't think. The memory of that word ringing out through the courthouse is going to stay with me forever, but the worst part was that my mom had to hear it.”
Judge James Punch, ladies and gentlemen. He’s a hell of a guy.
http://www.buffalobeast.com/96/subgenius.custody.htm
http://revstang.blogspot.com/
Sunday 11 March 2007
I'm getting myself an air purifier
And so should you, naughty goose!: http://www.surroundair.com/ionic-air-purifier.htm
Friday 9 March 2007
Thursday 8 March 2007
Wednesday 7 March 2007
Tuesday 6 March 2007
Brian Haw
I posted a video of Brian Haw accepting a "political peace prize" award the other day, it's a few posts down. Today, a freind of mine told me of a BBC news report on it, of which I don't have a copy of, but according to her:
"It was hardly reported. When it was, a BBC reporter marched up to a 12 year old and asked rather condescendingly why this child thought he knew more about international foreign policy than George Bush or Tony Blair and why he thought he was entitled to protest. The answer:
'Well to my mind, if 12 years old is old enough to be blown to bits in Iraq, 12 years old is old enough to protest against it in Edinburgh.'"
Indeed.
"It was hardly reported. When it was, a BBC reporter marched up to a 12 year old and asked rather condescendingly why this child thought he knew more about international foreign policy than George Bush or Tony Blair and why he thought he was entitled to protest. The answer:
'Well to my mind, if 12 years old is old enough to be blown to bits in Iraq, 12 years old is old enough to protest against it in Edinburgh.'"
Indeed.
Monday 5 March 2007
Joke of the Day
How does a man with 5 penises (a god-gifted man, I might add) fit into a pair of trousers discreetly? Like a glove!
I said, like a glove!
Ok, that's the last time I post jokes I that get passed on to me through email.
I said, like a glove!
Ok, that's the last time I post jokes I that get passed on to me through email.
Sunday 4 March 2007
Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq
A documentery by John Pilger.
"During the Cold War, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by their hosts for their impressions. ‘I have to tell you,’ said their spokesman, ‘that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV, that all the opinions on all the vital issues were by and large, the same. To get that result in our country, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here, you don’t have that. What’s the secret? How do you do it?'"
- John Pilger
Thursday 1 March 2007
Quote of the Day
"Every man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in a river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over God's depths into an infinite sea.
This talent and this call depend on his organisation, or the mode in which a general soul incarnates in him. He inclines to do something which is easy to him, and good when it is done, but which no other man can do. He has no rival. For the more truly he consults his own powers, the more difference will his work exhibit from the work of any other. When he is true and faithful, his ambition is exactly proportional to his powers.
By doing his work he makes the need felt which only he can supply."
- Ralph Waldo Emmerson.
This talent and this call depend on his organisation, or the mode in which a general soul incarnates in him. He inclines to do something which is easy to him, and good when it is done, but which no other man can do. He has no rival. For the more truly he consults his own powers, the more difference will his work exhibit from the work of any other. When he is true and faithful, his ambition is exactly proportional to his powers.
By doing his work he makes the need felt which only he can supply."
- Ralph Waldo Emmerson.
Quote of the Day
"Another one I like a lot [conspiracy theory] is one from Birmingham, Alabama, that claims that the United States has been run by Freemasons ever since the beginning, but they added that the Freemasons are really a gay secret society. Even George Washington was gay. Everybody knows he was a Freemason, right? George Washington was gay, and all the Freemasons are gay, we've been run by gays for two hundred years, and that's why Jesus created AIDS, to punish this country. I think that's the craziest conspiracy theory I ever heard! Its one of my favorites, because it is so incredibly absurd, and yet there are people quite capable of believing it."
- Robert anton Wilson.
- Robert anton Wilson.
Wednesday 28 February 2007
Quote of the Day
Not to mention the whole "make love, not war", "peace for peace", "fuck for peace" motif. :D
Tuesday 27 February 2007
It's a mad mad mad mad mad world
Article from Wikipedia
"Warner Bros., the film's copyright holder (New Line Cinema, a division of Time Warner, distributed it), objected to the title Dark City early in the film's production. They felt the title would confuse audiences with Mad City, Warner's soon-to-be-released film starring John Travolta and Dustin Hoffman, which they predicted would be a commercial hit. The filmmakers changed the title to Dark World, but Steven Spielberg's production company threatened legal action, feeling the title was too similar to their film Jurassic Park: The Lost World. The title was then changed to Dark Empire, but legal action was again threatened, this time by Lucasfilm, who felt the title was too similar to their own well-known sci-fi film The Empire Strikes Back (and was an exact match for the Dark Empire comics that had been made about Star Wars) However, by the time the film was completed and ready for release, Warner's Mad City had come and gone from theatres and was not the hit they hoped it would be, and the filmmakers were allowed to use their original title, on the condition that Warner could use the original set of Dark City for The Matrix."
"Warner Bros., the film's copyright holder (New Line Cinema, a division of Time Warner, distributed it), objected to the title Dark City early in the film's production. They felt the title would confuse audiences with Mad City, Warner's soon-to-be-released film starring John Travolta and Dustin Hoffman, which they predicted would be a commercial hit. The filmmakers changed the title to Dark World, but Steven Spielberg's production company threatened legal action, feeling the title was too similar to their film Jurassic Park: The Lost World. The title was then changed to Dark Empire, but legal action was again threatened, this time by Lucasfilm, who felt the title was too similar to their own well-known sci-fi film The Empire Strikes Back (and was an exact match for the Dark Empire comics that had been made about Star Wars) However, by the time the film was completed and ready for release, Warner's Mad City had come and gone from theatres and was not the hit they hoped it would be, and the filmmakers were allowed to use their original title, on the condition that Warner could use the original set of Dark City for The Matrix."
Monday 26 February 2007
A lesson in Discord
- THE BIRTH OF THE ERISIAN MOVEMENT -
THE REVELATION
10. The Earth quakes and the heavens rattle;
the beasts of nature flock together and the
nations of men flock apart; volcanoes usher up
heat while elsewhere water becomes ice and
melts; and then on other days it just rains.
11. Indeed do many things come to pass.
HBT; The Book of Predictions, Chap. 19
Just prior to the decade of the nineteen-sixties, when Sputnik was alone and new, and about the time that Ken Kesey took his first acid trip as a medical volunteer; before underground newspapers, Viet Nam, and talk of a second American Revolution; in the comparative quiet of the late nineteen-fifties, just before the idea of RENAISSANCE became relevant....
Two young Californians, known later as Omar Ravenhurst and Malaclypse the Younger, were indulging in their habit of sipping coffee at an allnight bowling alley and generally solving the world's problems. This particular evening the main subject of discussion was discord and they were complaining to each other of the personal confusion they felt in their respective lives. "Solve the problem of discord," said one, "and all other problems will vanish." "Indeed," said the other, "chaos and strife are the roots of all confusion."
FIRST I MUST SPRINKLE YOU
WITH FAIRY DUST
Suddenly the place became devoid of light. Then an utter silence enveloped them, and a great stillness was felt. Then came a blinding flash of intense light, as though their very psyches had gone nova. Then vision returned.
The two were dazed and neither moved nor spoke for several minutes. They looked around and saw that the bowlers were frozen like statues in a variety of comic positions, and that a bowling ball was steadfastly anchored to the floor only inches from the pins that it had been sent to scatter. The two looked at each other, totally unable to account for the phenomenon. The condition was one of suspension, and one noticed that the clock had stopped.
There walked into the room a chimpanzee, shaggy and grey about the muzzle, yet upright to his full five feet, and poised with natural majesty. He carried a scroll and walked to the young men.
"Gentlemen," he said, "why does Pickering's Moon go about in reverse orbit? Gentlemen, there are nipples on your chests; do you give milk? And what, pray tell, Gentlemen, is to be done about Heisenberg's Law?" He paused. "SOMEBODY HAD TO PUT ALL OF THIS CONFUSION HERE!"
And with that he revealed his scroll. It was a diagram, like a yin- yang with a pentagon on one side and an apple on the other. And then he exploded and the two lost consciousness.
ERIS - Goddess of Chaos, Discord & Confusion
They awoke to the sound of pins clattering, and found the bowlers engaged in their game and the waitress busy with making coffee. It was apparant that their experience had been private.
They discussed their strange encounter and reconstructed from memory the chimpanzee's diagram. Over the next five days they searched libraries to find the significance of it, but were disappointed to uncover only references to Taoism, the Korean flag, and Technocracy. It was not until they traced the Greek writing on the apple that they discovered the ancient Goddess known to the Greeks as Eris and to the Romans as Discordia. This was on the fifth night, and when they slept that night each had a vivid dream of a splendid woman whose eyes were as soft as feather and as deep as eternity itself, and whose body was the spectacular dance of atoms and universes. Pyrotechnics of pure energy formed her flowing hair, and rainbows manifested and dissolved as she spoke in a warm and gentle voice:
I have come to tell you that you are free. Many ages ago, My consciousness left man, that he might develop himself. I return to find this development approaching completion, but hindered by fear and by misunderstanding.
You have built for yourselves psychic suits of armor, and clad in them, your vision is restricted, your movements are clumsy and painful, your skin is bruised, and your spirit is broiled in the sun.
I am chaos. I am the substance from which your artists and scientists build rhythms. I am the spirit with which your children and clowns laugh in happy anarchy. I am chaos. I am alive, and I tell you that you are free.
During the next months they studied philosophies and theologies, and learned that Eris or Discordia was primarily feared by the ancients as being disruptive. Indeed, the very concept of chaos was still considered equivalent to strife and treated as a negative. "No wonder things are all screwed up," they concluded, "they have got it all backwards." They found that the principle of disorder was every much as significant as the principle of order.
With this in mind, they studied the strange yin-yang. During a meditation one afternoon, a voice came to them:
It is called the Sacred Chao. I appoint you Keepers of It. Therein you will find anything you like. Speak of Me as Discord, to show contrast to the pentagon. Tell constricted mankind that there are no rules, unless they choose to invent rules. Keep close the words of Syadasti: 'TIS AN ILL WIND THAT BLOWS NO MINDS. And remember that there is no tyranny in the State of Confusion. For further information, consult your pineal gland.
"What is this?" mumbled one to the other, "A religion based on The Goddess of Confusion? It is utter madness!"
And with those words, each looked at the other in absolute awe. Omar began to giggle. Mal began to laugh. Omar began to jump up and down. Mal was hooting and hollering to beat all hell. And amid squeals of mirth and with tears on their cheeks, each appointed the other to be high priest of his own madness, and together they declared themselves to be a society of Discordia, for what ever that may turn out to be.
Sunday 25 February 2007
More technical gremlins, uy!
Note to Iro or whoever gets this: my Illusions account has been suspended or hacked or whatever too. Fuck.
Saturday 24 February 2007
Note
Some of my website hyperlinks on the right panel there don't seem to be working for me. I get the old "404 error" screen. The URL's are all present and correct, but with some of them they simply won't load. Now, this seems to be because of the http/: thingy in front of some of the links, as when I remove that and hit Go on my browser, they bloody well work! So, why not remove that bit of coding from my links? I can't. I mean, I can go and change it, but it doesn't stick. Hmm. Sorry. HTML isn't my strong point.
Friday 23 February 2007
"There's three kinds of people: dicks, pussies and assholes!"
Hehehe, Team America, love that film.
And in a similar vein:
And in a similar vein:
Thursday 22 February 2007
Are you watching Closely?
Empire's reveiw of the film:
"Celebrated Victorian stage magician Alfred Borden (Bale) stands accused of the murder of professional rival Rupert Angier (Jackman). The Prestige traces the course of their bitter feud, as their respective acts of sabotage become ever more deadly.
You always know where you are with Christopher Nolan, in that it’s often hard to know where you are. Or rather when. He’s a filmmaker who clearly believes that every story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, only not necessarily in that order. (Unless the usual order isn’t what you’re expecting; after all, he was the first director to begin the Batman story at the beginning.) So it’s no surprise that the man who brought us a modern noir about a man with short-term memory loss through a brain-straining reverse-chronological structure should present a Victorian murder-mystery tale of such beautiful convolutions that the dizzying struggle to follow it provides half the entertainment.
For, despite the return of Batman Begins’ Christian Bale and Michael Caine, and the big-name face-off promise that Nolan used to sell Insomnia, the film The Prestige most closely resembles is Memento. Hardly a shock when you note that his adaptation of Christopher Priest’s novel was penned with his sibling and Memento co-creator Jonathan, and that they optioned the book around the same time as Memento was released. But it is perhaps more of an eyebrow-raiser when you consider that The Prestige is situated in an entirely different genre. Or two.
Nolan’s already been vocal about how he didn’t want The Prestige to feel or look like a period movie, and it’s certainly steadfastly unconventional. The camera is predominantly handheld, rarely static, situated in interior locations with most exterior shots either blurred, out of focus or shrouded in freezing mist. Nolan is unconcerned with spreading out historical vistas or dazzling us with period detail; instead he wants us to focus on the detail of the characters. Like a street-illusionist making coins dance across his knuckles, he draws his audience in as close as possible. The harder we’re looking, the more we’re concentrating, the more effective his ultimate misdirection will prove.
We begin with Michael Caine carefully handling a twitchy yellow canary as he explains the three acts of a magic trick — the set-up, the performance and the effect, or prestige — to a young girl. He makes the bird disappear, seemingly crushing it to death in the process. As he does so, we cut to a grave-looking Hugh Jackman, as Rupert Angier (aka The Great Danton), performing a spectacular trick that features blue crackles of electricity writhing around a towering array of machinery that wouldn’t look out of place in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. The audience gasps in half-fearful anticipation; Angier invites members of the crowd on stage. One of them is Christian Bale, as Alfred Borden (aka The Professor), in disguise, face swathed in shadow. Borden ducks into the wings, barging into a stagehand who tries to block his way. “I’m part of the trick, you idiot!” he bellows, whipping off his fake beard. Soon after, something terrible has happened and Borden is charged with murder. While gaoled, he’s given Angier’s diary. He begins reading it, triggering a flashback in which we see Angier reading Borden’s memoirs, which triggers yet another flashback. Framing device frames framing device, flashbacks switch to flashforwards, and quickly we’re entangled in a murky conundrum.
Nolan keeps the mood eerie and unsettling, and with all its Gothic trimmings The Prestige comes to feel a little like a slowburn horror picture. Of course, it’s never that simple, and the director requires his leads to deliver a pair of carefully complex performances, like stage assistants for whom a single wrong move or missed mark can spell disaster for the unfurling illusion.
Hugh Jackman, revealing the acting depths that the likes of X-Men and Van Helsing have denied him, is at first glance an obvious fit for Angier. The Great Danton is a consummate showman, all smooth moves and glistening repertoire. Yet beneath the sheen simmers an increasingly sour man who, while initially armed with a hatred of Borden, becomes fixated on stealing the secret of his key trick and bettering it, wringing the morality out of his soul in the process. The closest we’ve come to seeing Jackman exploring such dark places was in X-Men 2, but here we are truly seeing a new side to him — Jackman for adults, if you like.
At this point, it’d be nice to shove in an easy reference to ‘sparks flying’ between Jackman and his co-star Christian Bale. Yet they share surprisingly little screentime. Angier and Borden’s relationship predominantly involves watching each other from the stalls, peeping through disguises and stalking in the darkness, with a blast of violence every now and again. Much of their conflict throughout the film is via proxies: Olivia, the glamorous assistant who becomes a shared love (Scarlett Johansson, struggling so hard with an English accent she forgets to engage her audience, trilling the film’s only bum note); Cutter, the sagacious mentor who believes it’s pointless getting into magic unless you’re prepared to get your hands dirty (a superb Michael Caine); and Tesla, the reclusive electrical pioneer who possibly holds the key to the mystery (David Bowie — the quirky casting only just paying off thanks to his discomfitingly glassy delivery).
It’s Bale, though, who has the toughest job of the cast. Borden is the unsung genius, an awkward, brusque man who isn’t interested in embellishing the usual set of conjurations but in crafting something entirely new. His crowd-pleasing instincts initially stink, but his devotion to his art is powerfully all-consuming, much to the detriment of his marriage. Both his character and many of his actions suggest he’s the bad guy of the piece, but Bale, sensitively tempering Borden’s gloomy intensity, ensures our sympathies are maintained throughout — at times he comes dangerously close to snatching them fully away from Jackman.
The true nature of The Prestige, the themes it explores in its own, strange, fractured manner, can’t, won’t and shouldn’t be discussed here. This movie isn’t just some stylish analogy for the pitfalls of celebrity, and there’s far more to it than its dissection of the corrupting effects of obsession and retribution. Certainly, some of its many sharp turns could confound to the point of exasperation. Some will angrily decry it as cheating. And indeed, the problem with movie-making as sleight-of-hand is you have to reveal the secret at some point; you have to show where that dove went. That’s a problem no magician has to deal with. Yet Nolan, pulling off a masterful adaptation of a difficult novel, performs his big reveal — which, you may be surprised to read, does come at the end — with faultless precision. But that’s all we’ll say, and that’s where we’ll leave it. You wouldn’t want us to spoil the prestige now, would you?
Verdict
Odd, but brilliantly so. It's a small film that feels big, a period drama that looks modern, defying comparison to anything but Nolan himself."
But who was Nikola Tesla, you might never care to ask?
Well, it might surprise you.
Jack White, take it away!
Tuesday 20 February 2007
My musical tastes
Some of them, anyway...
I'll be putting links to posts like this in my profile page, rather than filling out the lists, should you care for future reference. Which you prolly don't...
Willy Mason - Save Myself
Groove Armada - At the River
NIN - Beside You in Time
Future Sound of London - Papue New Guinea
I F - Space Invaders are Smoking Grass
Adam Freeland - We Want Your Soul
Sissy - So Long
Mum - Will the Summer Make Good for our Sins?
Gorillaz - Tomorow Comes Today
POE - Walk the Walk
A Perfect Circle - Magdalena
Muse - Take a Bow
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKonP2IUgxE
Eels - Souljacker
Polly Jean HArvey and Josh Homme - Crawl Home
Bob Dylan- Rolling Stone
RATM - Testify
Otep - Warhead
Eminem - Public Enemy #1
Tom Waits - It's Allright With Me
Martina Topley-Bird - Anything
Tricky - Aftermath
Miles Davis and John Coltrane - Jazz, bitch!
Fiona Apple - Fast as You Can
Massive Attack - Angel
The Distillers - The Hunger
Michael Nyman - The Heart Asks Pleasure First
Radiohead - Pyramid Song
Bjork - Dancer in the Dark
Bjork - Dancer in the Dark
UNKLE - The Enemy
Royksop - What Else Is There
Portishead - Mourning Air
Johny Cash - Hurt
Kidney Theives - Before I Die
Doves - There Goes the Fear
Space Cowboy - Egyptian Lover
New Young Pony Club - The Bomb
Garbage - Sex Is Not the Enemy
Queen Adreena - Medicine Jar
The Pixies - Hey
The Beta Band - Assesment
I'll be putting links to posts like this in my profile page, rather than filling out the lists, should you care for future reference. Which you prolly don't...
Royksop - What Else Is There
Monday 19 February 2007
Why can't we all just... get along?
Good question Jack.
In the meantime, check this:
Don't be caught unawares. ;)
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