:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 6.21.2004 ::
:: So Weird ::
From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird
Scenes of the Surreal
(1) According to an April New York Times dispatch, the quiz show "The Mission," on the satellite TV channel of Lebanese militants Hezbollah, challenges contestants in categories such as naming Arab suicide bombers, with the winner receiving points toward the game's ultimate destination, "Jerusalem" (the retaking of which is a unifying theme of all the channel's programs). (2) Craig Gross, 28, and Mike Foster, 32, run the Christian Internet site "XXXChurch," designed to help the faithful overcome pornography and masturbation, according to a May Wired magazine report. (Recent advice: "Remain calm and tell yourself, 'You don't own me, masturbation!'" Recently, several online "parishioners" commenced a 40-day abstinence, to match the time Satan tempted Jesus in the desert.) [New York Times, 4-19-04] [Wired.com, 5-20-04]
More Things You Didn't Realize Were Art
In April, London's National Portrait Gallery showed an hour-long video of star soccer player David Beckham, sleeping; artist Sam Taylor-Wood said she wanted to do an original of the ubiquitously photographed Beckham and realized there was not much that hadn't already been done. And at a March exhibit at London's Nelson's Column, guest performers took turns reading Japanese artist On Kawara's book that consists only of 271,000 selected dates that occurred between 998,031 B.C. and A.D. 1,001,980. (Said a gallery director, "On Kawara's work speaks simply and directly about a subject relevant to us all, the passage and marking of time.") [Associated Press, 4-26-04] [BBC News, 3-29-04]
Not only does San Francisco's Solid Waste Transfer and Recycling Center (i.e., the city dump) have an "artist in residence," but sculptor Rick Carpenter is actually the 43rd person to hold that position, according to an April San Francisco Chronicle report. Carpenter said his specialty is discarded bulk items, citing, for example, the weaving he made from 40 orange extension cords, and his latest, an object stuffed with the contents of a 5-gallon bucket of wigs someone tossed. [San Francisco Chronicle, 4-22-04]
More Things to Worry About
In April, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of part of the Patriot Act (a public document) but couldn't publicly reveal what its lawsuit claimed because such disclosure without Justice Department permission is forbidden by the Patriot Act. (The Department OK'd a heavily censored press release 22 days later.) [Philadelphia Daily News, 12-9-03] [Washington Post, 5-13-04]
Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net
posted by me
:: 12:47:00 AM [+] ::
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