Posting slowdown? Me frowning a shitload and generally hatin'?

Yup.

As PF reminded me, it's September. So this month, you all get to add Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Flood of Ought-Five, and Hurricane Rita to your 9-11 reflections, while I add these two recent seasons of ire to my own, well-aged one. I really thought I would get out of the month without the black time.

Interestingly, the specific catalyst is clearly the house deal. I drive or walk around my neighborhood and wander the hall of my apartment saddened by the anticipation of missing it, which even I find both absurd and appalling.

Bart and Michael returned to New Orleans this week, and took pictures.

As I noted yesterday, I first really became a serious appreciator of Bob Dylan about ten years ago, when I first picked up a cutout copy of Good As I Been to You, the first of two stripped down, scratchy-voice-and-guitar records of mostly old-time songs. The other record, World Gone Wrong, is entirely comparable.

The records were the occasion of much headscratching in the press at the time they were released, 1992 and 1993. For me, they arrived well after their initial release date and just as I had nearly worn out my copy of the great CD re-release of the legendary Smithsonian Folkways Anthology of Folk Music, which I picked up on release in 1997. Whoops, that makes it under ten years ago. Whatever.

On vinyl, I think I had The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde, and one other record, possibly Highway 61 Revisited. Of these, Freewheelin' was my clear favorite, as I largely eschewed the shaggy-dog compositional techniques seen on the other records.

However, Good As I Been To You's spare, affectionate, and utilitarian renditions of old songs both familiar and new to me struck my ears with the weight of an archetype. It was a record I had been wanting to hear since my enthusiasm for Billy Bragg first prompted me to look into Dylan's early work. The record remains my favorite recording by Dylan. Curious where the old man had gone since recording these songs, I picked up Time out of Mind, and loved it. I also really like Love and Theft, but Time out of Mind is something different, like listening to someone's dreams after a night of listening to really old folksongs. Amused by the shambolic bounce of the record, I started looking back at the earlier works, including the late-sixties period so beloved by so many. To my surprise, I found I now understood some of the enthusiasm, as I wrote here a while ago.

This past spring, Greg and Stacey gave me a copy of Chronicles, Dylan's autobio, and to my surprise, devoured it, chuckling. The first section, a generous memoir of Dylan's arrival in Greenwich Village in the early sixties, seemed to me to be based directly on Desolation Row. I recall thinking that he had reused sections of the lyric throughout; I don't recall if I was ever able to establish this as a fact or not. Even if he did not, he engaged with his recollections to tie his experience of the Village to the deep past. When the below-grade Villlage clubs are described as firelit rooms from another era, Dylan deliberately riffs on Martin Scorsese's vision of Old Five Points in Gangs of New York. Dylan recalls the clubs as a kind of magic cave whereupon entering he gained access to the America of all past times and was granted the mystical power to return from that time to our own bearing visions and dreams of souls long gone.

Whether or not Dylan actually believes this is simply not germane. He wants the reader to believe he does, I think, the better to fulfill his role as a performer. In "Masters of War," he wrote " I want you to know that I can see through your masks." As Scorsese seems to be helping his old friend to say in the film I'm watching tonight, for Dylan, there may only be the masks.

I should write a few words on Dylan, I suppose.

I have always been puzzled, and not a little put off, by the hulking, derelict infrastructure of the boomer adoration for Bob Dylan, incarnations 2 (folkie/activist) and 3 (imperial achitect of late-sixties rockism).

However, even as a youngster, i always had an appreciation for the well-crafted song, and in any of Dylan's many manifestations, he has been able to do this. The song that first overcame my punkish rejection of the long-haired flapdoodle whiner was "Masters of War," a song whose sentiments I still embrace. However, the structure and technique of the song impresses me less, today, than Ozzy Osbourne's bastard reinterpretation, "War Pigs." Which song accords the addressed members of society the proper respect? The choice, it seems, is clear.

Nonetheless, Dylan's raw, confrontational energy appealed to me very much. It struck me that it was important to learn about what one finds distasteful, yet holds in ignorance. Why, I wondered, did my elders hold the author of "Leopardskin Pillbox Hat," "Everybody Must Get Stoned," and "Mr Tambourine Man" in such esteem? I could see no distinction between these songs and any other pop--radio AOR pap polluting my eardrum, ten years past its' prime.

"Everybody Must Get Stoned," in particular, while not without its' charms, had well overstayed its' welcome in my ears by the time I was, oh, ten. Honestly, this song, still a mainstay of classic rock radio as a consequence of its' ponderous length, simplicity, and frat-boy, groupthink chanting chorus (cf. the title, any Martians reading this note), is charming only insofar as your personal friends, individuals you know and love and forgive their drunken moments, may have recorded it. To wit, not to you, and also not to me.

I found the celebrated works of Dylan's youth occasionally brilliant, but I did not generally locate his brilliance in the same works that persons of his initial consumer base chose to. In fact, his work was really something that primarily appealed to me on a scholarly basis. This changed for me about ten years ago, when I picked up a cutout, clearly used copy of "Good as I Been to You" for about five bucks.

More to come.

I'm gonna be busy Monday and Tuesday night, looks like.

This is old damn news, but dylanchords is not just a useful resource for finding chords to songs that Dylan has performed; looking though the site, I found chords for many traditional songs that I have long been familiar with but not seen in this familiar format.

The Velvet Underground Web Page. Helpful to me today as I began to assemble a list of the Velvets records I have or once had on vinyl in an attempt to plan for obtaining the missing material in digital format. The most challenging aspect will doubtless be locating the initial, un-remastered CD releases of these records. Why do people gotta fuck with a good thing?

For the record, here's what I'm digging for:

I currently have White Light/White Heat, the Loaded 2-disc remastered version, and Another VU on CD. I had thought I had The Velvet Underground and Nico, but I appear to have lost it. On vinyl, I think I have all of these, with the possible exception of the 1969 live record. On CD, I also have the recently-released Quine tapes.

I am, and as far as I know, always have been, a pessimist.

Listening to news reports of the second hurricane-related flooding of New Orleans as gas prices rise are not proving to be conducive to the frame of mind traditionally associated with the experience of buying a new home which may be characterized as "happy," "triumphant," or "pleasant."

Despite this, I do believe that the home we have a bid in on is the home that we will be buying.

You know, it's a beautiful thing when a news editor pitches a news item to a publication's senior editor and the senior editor's response to the pitch is "Holy crap!"

You know, watching Lost tonight after watching a plane land on bum gear at LAX this evening has affected my experience of the show. I'm not sure in what way, exactly.

Big Bosoms and Square Jaws is E. Steven Fried's epic review of a Russ Meyer bio. Word on the street is that Mr. Fried will be making the scene at the too-happenin' NWFF 10th anniversary party tonight.

Meant to post this last night but fell into a black slumber e'en as I reached for keyboard.

What was formerly the Capitol Hill reservoir is about to become Cal Anderson Park. A late night stroll revealed a suspiciously climbable - but still dry - fountain.

A field of cobblestones will accept the outbound flow from the fountain's hill.

The sluice toward the cobblestones includes some interesting details, including this dark and mysterious entrance to what must be considered a sort of barrow.

The fountain's cobblestone-clad hill is too easy to climb, but, I must say, deceptively difficult to descend.

Especially if one has consumed one or two products of the brewer's art.

League brother Manuel posts some underwater movies of his recent snorkeling adventures in unlikely Seattle locales.

A flyer in the newspaper for Small Potatoes Urban Delivery has caught both Viv's and my eye. I'm a bit put off by the "only organic" marketing decision, though. That sounds like code for "only for rich people" to my sensitive ears. The marketing for the delivery service is very carefully crafted, though, including this bit of certainly not accidental copy:

introducing Greater Seattle's newest home grocer

Ah, HomeGrocer, how I miss thee.

Seattle-area MeFite y2karl outdoes himself with a comprehensive dissertation and linkfest concerning Dark Was The Night--Cold Was The Ground as performed by Blind Willie Johnson and later adapted as the main musical theme for the Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas, by Ry Cooder.

Among other things, Karl points to a source who notes that the song is based on a hymn first published in 1792, and that elements of Blind Willie Johnson's singing style are drawn from an ancient praise-song technique known as precenting the line, which apparently remains in use in certain remote areas of Scotland and the American South.

A truly remarkable post.

This is my pal Tenuki, who has been helping me to do some writing this weekend. He is bossy, but very affectionate. His family comes home late tonight and there will be a touching reunion scene. He's been mostly good, but he did let me know I had to scoop his necessaries by peeing on the bathmat. I washed it and scooped and now everything is hunky-dory.

The Cartoonist notes "The Best Screensaver Ever." I concur.

League brother Jim reports a digitally fatal blog disaster.

Airfoil is a $25 piece of software that allows you to redirect any audio source, not simply iTunes' output, to your AirPort Express' audio-out port.

Two via BoingBoing today:

GoogleEarth reveals Roman ruins in back yard, and Greasemonkey script enhances American Memory photo-browser user interface.

This morning we put another bid in on a house. This one is looking pretty promising. We should know by tomorrow morning.

Bart's linktrawl brought me to Jacob Appelbaum’s weblog, who took some pictures of the grave of a marked-for-recovery body today. Something about his pix looked familiar, and he does not appear to be aware that the rough dirt grave and plywood marker in the image looks as though it must be the desecrated remains of Vera Smith's temporary tomb, possibly the most moving and remarkable single image that the New Orleans disaster left the nation.

There lay Vera. God help us. Let's hope she gets home to Texas, as her family have requested.

I mean, really, that is fucking ridiculous! The body WAS MARKED. I suppose I could be wrong, if Jacob's photos were taken a week or more ago - but it certainly appears as if a body recovery team destroyed the tomb and replaced it with the spray-painted sign. Geez, guys, couldn't you have just checked and then leaned the sign up against the bricks or something?

This week Chicagoan Dave Fortney is visiting - what could be more appropriate than the ssurprising and cryptic email in my inbox announcing an ex-Chicago underground scribbler's website to be found at skipwilliamson.com

AskMe on 72-hour survival kits. I just realized we have a perfect place to store a disaster kit, inside the huge old steamer trunk we use as a coffee table.

On September 11, 2005, the Seattle P-I ran a two-sided one-page disaster-preparedness checklist. Alas, I can't find it online.

Tonight we had dinner with Chris and Poupou in the Little Saigon area at the intersection of 12th and Jackson. We were aiming to eat at the Tamarind Tree but found ourselves in a long line of people who had obviously been waiting for some time. I scouted for nearby eateries and found the family-style Thanh Vi right around the corner. Our experience was not at all like that recounted behind the link.

We ate ourselves silly for about $35. Of especial note were Viv's amazing thin-cut charcoal-broiled ribs.

Chris also informed me that I appear to have allowed the domain for the International Organization of Cynics, Ne'er-Do-Wells, and Misanthropes lapse inadvertently. Horrors!

Editor B sends along a link to this essay on Delany's Dhalgren and New Orleans by Bishda Bannerjee at reason.com.

As Americans struggled to grasp what was unfolding in New Orleans, the word "unimaginable" recurred frequently—even though the catastrophe had been imagined, and envisioned, many times. Thirty years ago, science fiction writer Samuel Delany wrote, in high detail, about the unfolding of racially-charged violence, rape, and looting in "Bellona," a major American city struck by an unspecified catastrophe and ignored by the National Guard.

Delany's Dhalgren focuses on a group of people who choose to remain in Bellona despite—and partly, because of—its dystopian qualities (including lack of water and sanitation). This surreal work of science fiction seemed especially apt last week, as fires raged and stories of racism, rape, looting, and murder proliferated...

As I recall, Bellona is explicitly situated in the Southeast in the novel, although the context provided by Delany's autobiography makes it clear that he was actually writing a dream-version of his hometown, New York City, in which only those persons who interact with his main character remain in the city - the athorila invention here was to remove the teeming masses of city life and leave only the personal incidents, allowing his character the freedom of the anonymous drift the metropolis permits.

UPDATE: B. has also posted a roundup of NOLA-X bloggers.

The New Orleans Flood Map reports that the 2800 block of Calhoun Street is currently under 2.1 feet of water, with an estimated maximum depth of 5.6 feet.

TidBITS takes a look at ShowMacster, an add-on for iChat that allows you to add inline video and photos to the outbound video stream, so your conversation partner can see slides or clips directly in the cintext of the iChat videoconference window.

The UK Independent runs a lengthy appreciation of Matin Scorsese's use of scores inhis films, disguised as a preview of the BBC airing of a Scorsese documentary on Bob Dylan originally crafted for HBO.

The September 12 issue of the New Yorker arrived today. The issue features a deal of writing concerning the flood in New Orleans, as may be expected. However, the cover, depicting a sax player on the roofs of the French Quarter, is quite weak by comparison to Speigelman's amazing black-on-black cover of four years ago, depicting the memory of the World Trade Center. I acknowledge that the New Yorker is by design focused on New York. But seriously, couldn't someone have picked up the phone and asked him to come up with something that similarly reflects the shock and pain of the nation in the wake of this year's autumnal catastrophe?

As an aside, New Yorker, will you puh-leeze get with the twenty-first century and at the very least offer Google-based searchability or a consistent linking protocol? I had to hack the 9/11 essay link out of a 404 from a four-year old link on a non-Conde Nast website.

TidBITS covers FreeConference.com, a free conference-call service.

Chris Dent reflects on Glacial Erratics: One Year in this rainy clime.

Sometime between 1970 and 1972, I think, my mom drove my sister and I to the nearest grocery store, a Marsh's, in West Lafayette, Indiana. I think she was driving the family car, a 1967 Pontiac Tempest in flake sky blue. The top was up, and Mom left my sister and I in the car. The store was located on a slight rise above the parking lot, and Mom wheeled the car into the spot nose first, the car's front angled up by the rise, facing the store's front doors. She must have been intending to run in and pick up just one thing, because she decided to leave us in the car.

No sooner had she closed the driver-side door and started to cross in front of the car when the car began to roll backwards. My sister and I immediately began to yell in fear at the top of our lungs. Mom must have heard us because she ran top the car and got the door open in time to grab and set the parking brake.

I don't know why, exactly, but that memory has been rattling around in my head for the past couple of weeks.

On September 2, Rocketboom posted 10 minutes of semi-raw footage from a helicopter flying over the deeply-flooded neighborhoods of New Orleans. The footage includes radio chatter, and the longest segment captures a military Huey picking up a group of survivors from a rooftop. The pilots of the various helicopters struggle to establish radio contact and when people on the roofs are spotted find themselves relaying GPS coordinates to ground control in Baton Rouge.

...one more Katrina thing: a French Quarter resident had the presence of mind to shot his entire Katrina experience, and the resulting photoset is very much worth your while.

MeFi calls my attention to a first-hand account of Katrina and aftermath in New Orleans written by a former Indiana Daily Student editor and published in the same paper.

Meanwhile, Bart and Matt appear to be moving into the rest of their lives.

New Orleans was the original capitol of the American imagination, before this country owned Louisiana. The port at the end of the great midwestern river system that provided the economic engine which begat this nation, its' place in the country's heart - and mine - is as central as that of New York or San Francisco. A tad reduced in circumstances, there's no question in my mind that the city was the center of the Midwestern imagination for more generations than America has owned Minnesota.

I was raised in the upper midwest, mostly. New Orleans was the place you went on a whim and a dare. Since moving to Washington, it was the place one old friend and two new had chosen as home, and one of the choices left by the wayside in my own life. My only work of fiction concerns an encounter between William S. Burroughs and Elvis Presley beneath a portrait of Baudelaire in a New Orleans bar, instigated by Walter Matthau during the filming of King Creole.

I can't imagine, can only imagine, what my friends are going though. They took that road, cobblestone and sinking brick, and in their various ways made the place their town, stepping into the stream of memory and creation that the city has ever-generously rained upon this nation, upon us, on me.

Released or spewed forth upon us in a great arc across the country, what will the diaspora bring? What news of the Quarter? What fresh mix of fertile muck do they carry on their boots? The Mississippi Delta shines, yes, like a National guitar. It's the place where everything good about a huge country filters into the swamps. The cargo of alluvial deposits drops, concentrating the finest silt and ensuring the region's polyglot fertility. It's no accident that New Orleans sits on the same river as a town called Memphis. The Mississippi is our Nile, and New Orleans the domain of its' ancient kings, whose ways and troubles we have adopted until we cannot see them for what they are, for good and for ill.

Here lies Vera. God help us.

Vera Smith's makeshift tomb strikes me as a symbol not only of the devastation and foolishness that have killed uncounted numbers in the past week. It also strikes me as an expression of the character of New Orleans and the nation, the organic character of this country - improvisatory, interim, sensible, creative, adaptable, tragic, flawed.

I read yesterday that Vera's full name was Elvira Smith. "Elvira" is said to mean impartial judgement, while "Vera" has connotations of truth and faith. Vera's body lies beneath the earth of a rock garden and a spray-painted sheet. In time, I trust, we will duplicate her makeshift burial palace in bronze and marble, lest we forget. Do her honor, citizens.

As expected, today's Apple fooraw generated a big yawn from me. Another iPod! Imagine that! Whoop-de-doo!

And a phone with iTunes but no other Apple-designed user-interface features, except, I guess, the ability to synch contacts with Outlook. Which, one supposes, bemuses the Mac-owning folks out there that have been using Address Book over Outlook lo, these many years. The most interesting thing about this announcement is the fact that Apple bent enough to let Cingular advertise iTunes with the Cingular font in that orange box:

Which, I suppose, lends credence to the rumors that the phones release was delayed because Apple was fighting with the labels about licensing and pricing - Cingular would be in a better negotiating position regarding branding issues the longer Apple had to delay launching, I would think.

Ah, what do I know?

J. G. Ballard's The Drowned World and Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren seem to offer some twentieth-century perspectives on the events of the past week. I have been thinking of Dhalgren in particular all week. This NYT sketch of the evacuated city certainly echoes it. I certainly hope Delany takes the time to write about what we've just watched.

Here lies Vera. God help us.

Someone highlighted a long list of the MetFilter threads on Katrina, and someone else added the comprehensive, longer list (ninety-three and counting) to the MeFi wiki.

Meanwhile, AZ links to two interesting New York Observer pieces on, respectively, how the Times-Picayune managed to do such a gripping job of covering the disaster (apparently, the blog post on the NOLA blog concerning the broken levee was in fact the T-P breaking the news) and on the remarkable media meltdowns that have marked the televised coverage.

In light of recent developments, I can reveal this about tomorrow's Apple hoopla: if it's the iPhone, i'm iNterested. If it's what it probably will be, a sub-gig iTunes phone with no embedded PDA or OS, I won't even look at it. The only bright spot in the rumor mill to date have been the tales of ramped-up production on 2GB mindrives.

It has come to my attention that I have a blinding headache.

It has also come to my attention that KG, friend of my yoot, is now a Manhattanite, abiding deep in darkest Bleecker Street. Lucky bastidge.

Josh has run a Seattle-specific disaster-simulation (Oh, okay, actually, he 'shopped a couple maps together, okay?) and shares his results.

I wonder if Google will add a GIS-based damage reporting layer to the app eventually? ;)

Bart has linked to his neighbor Michael Homan's blog post about his experiences getting out of New Orleans over the past few days.

They promised they would take us to Baton Rouge, and from there it would be relatively easy for me to get a cab or bus and meet the family in Jackson.

But then everything went to hell. They instead locked up the truck and drove us to the refugee camp on I-10 and Causeway and dropped us off. Many refused to get out of the van but they were forced. The van drove away as quickly as it could, as the drivers appeared to be terrified, and we were suddenly in the middle of 20,000 people.

He goes on to detail how it is that he "escaped" this refugee collection point; his account implies that the people on the freeway were being guarded, just as in the 1927 flood.

Last night I had the deep pleasure of reading Alice Munro's recent New Yorker piece, The View from Castle Rock, to Viv aloud. Man, such fine writing! It's so precise and finely crafted, pivoting from scene to scene with the grace of a dancing master. (My reading order for the mag got scrambled as I had picked up the more-recent food issue while on a trip out of town and just turned to the issue last night).

The story is a sketch of a Scots family's passage from Edinburgh to Quebec in 1818, and there are no improbable crises or supernatural eruptions to color he tale, only the rolling passage of the ship over waves, echoed in Munro's rythmic, stately prose. I found the story compelling formally. I was fascinated at the economy and mythic brevity with which Munro introduces and signals the role and character of each play on her pitching stage. Moreover, though, I found the tale moving, falling headfirst into the hoary bit of stage management - a jump cut to the present (seeTitanic and ST:TNG's The Inner Light) and, friends, weeping like a baby as I read the last few paragraphs.

In the Irish, and other, emigrant songs I have learned over the past ten years, the stunning sadness and permanency of the nineteenth-century experience of that long, final boat journey is well-captured. But these songs are songs crafted to provide a broad audience with a formal, social mechanism to express the sense of loss and sadness, and a means for their descendants to touch that as well. As such, the songs are usually quite generalized and do not dwell on the images and experiences of the trip itself so much as the dramatic moment of boarding the ship or the last glimpse of the homeland.

Munro's story includes these moments, but her novelistic skill has permitted her to stitch these revenants from the cloth of history and with a puff of her breath send them dancing into our minds, inviting us to complete the act of resurrection and, for a few moments, bring these dead Scots to life one more.

A few folks have corresponded with me via email about this, but I feel like I should address it here as well.

This was originally posted to Siffblog; I try to crosspost here as well.

Tablet has announced that the current issue, #103, will be the final edition of the magazine. While Siffblog has been affiliated with Tablet, I have used only my own resources to create and host the blog; therefore, I see no reason that Siffblog should cease operations.

However, I have been thinking about what the best route forward for the blog is. An informal relationship with one or more paper-based local publications would be mutually beneficial to all parties, I believe, publishers, publicists, film freaks, and film writers included.

I also would like to strengthen or formalize this blog's ties to existing local film arts organizations. In an ideal world, this site would publish updated schedules and times for all of these organizations at no cost to them in order to expand online information resources about small-audience film.

In short, I have some thinking to do, which will produce some work for me. Sometime in the next month, I probably will do a site redesign - as simple as possible, mind you, as we're currently househunting and that is really time consuming. After that, I will probably have a decent plan in place for the blog. For now, though, dear contributors, please do not fret: the Siffblog abides, man, the Siffblog abides.

Please continue doing what you've done to the place. It really helps to pull it all together.

P. S. Perhaps now it's time to have a Siffblog party - slash - wake for Tablet?

Who knows if this will pan out, but NOLA.com is reporting that the 17th St. Canal breach is closed. Earlier today I flashed on how to get a satellite view of Editor B's house, post flood, and, as expected, it's clearly in a flood zone.

Amusingly, I also found Detroit-bound Mike Hurtt quoted in this pre-storm AP / CNN piece about Dr. John.

Finally, poking around that old BKB songlist site, I noticed that we at least took a running stab at The Lakes of the Ponchartrain, although we did a weird, downstream cowboy version that eroded the melodic charm of the original.

Happily, I found this decent Irish version with some liner notes to check out. Unsurprisingly, it also touches on themes that will have a bit of resonance in the coming days.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,

--That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

-- The Declaration of Independence, 1776.

You know what? I'm pissed. I mean, really! Not like insurrectionist-type pissed, but the situation on the Gulf Coast can't possibly be seen as anything less than a failure to meet the responsibilities assigned above under the very most basic covenants of our country.

Taking a break from doing laundry, I noticed that one P. J. Murhpy of Wexford, Ireland had posted his chord transcription for Lousiana, 1927. I can finally scratch an itch I have had for several days.

I wonder if Mr. Murphy is any relation to celebrated Father Murphy of song and story?

At New Orleans as the storm was passing
Oe'r drying streets of an emptied town
Fed'ral neglect sent the waters crashing
and brought the choppers from far and near

Then Mayor Nagin of the Old Ninth Ward
Broke down in tears with a warning cry
"Goddamn I'm pissed" came the raging curses
And stunned the nation from shore to shore.

Huh, that was too damn easy. I suppose I should point out that the link above is to Boulavogue, a song which celebrates the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and that the doggerel immediately preceding this paragraph is, I suppose, a filk version. Here are some lines from the traditional version that are of interest:

Look out for hirelings, King George of England,
Search ev'ry kingdom where breathes a slave,
For Father Murphy of the County Wexford
Sweeps o'er the land like a mighty wave.

...

Ah, Father Murphy, had aid come over
The green flag floated from shore to shore!

I've played Boulavogue for six or seven years, and to my embarrassment have never really looked into the history of the events recounted. Reading through the Wikipedia link, I note with interest that the heart of the rebellion's threat to the Crown was the "unprecedented 'unholy union'" of Irish Presbyterians and Catholics, common cause across cultural and class barriers to resist and roll back the power of King George. Of further interest is the record of two landings in Ireland by French forces. In the United States, the primary locale where French and Irish culture have rubbed up against one another for generations is clearly New Orleans.

Rhenquist dead.

Alejandro Jodorowsky on his unmade 1970's adaptation of Dune. [Big ups to Dr. Alice Dee for this 'un!]

Five years ago, helicopters hovered over my neighborhood for a week, night and day. At first, they were a novelty, of interest to me because of my love of flying and flight technology.

Then, they became a signpost in the sky - I could find whatever absurd police/protester/neighborhood interaction was taking place by looking for the choppers.

Finally, after, oh, about five or so days of the increasingly oppressive noise, I began to wish that the whirlybirds would just go away.

I took to raising my arm, sighting down it, and pretending that I was firing a gun at the damnable things. I joked about it, but in my secret heart, I wished that my arm was a firearm.