The Emptiness

5/11

Remember, remember the 5:th of november.

Lies about the climate

Mr. Monbiot notes that the current targets for preventing a global mean temperature rise in excess of 2°C are optimistic - that is, they are a bunch of lies.
Policies are too far behind the science, and the actual reductions in greenhouse gases are too far behind policy for anything less than 2°, basically.

To give ourselves a high chance of preventing dangerous climate change, we will need a programme so drastic that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere end up below the current concentrations. The sooner this happens, the greater the chance of preventing two degrees of warming.
But no government has set itself this task. The European Union and the Swedish government have established the world’s most stringent target. It is 550ppm, which gives us a near certainty of an extra 2°C.

Journler

Try Journler if you need an application for notes, text, things, video even. It's donationware and pretty sleek.

The Blood Puddle pillow

Almost too amusing:

http://www.fromkeetra.com/posts.php?post=012

33?

33 dead on a campus in the US? Ok.
20 dead in Rio De Janeiro.
37 dead in Baghdad.

Just so you know that the killing never stops, and a campus shooting on a given day is nothing special, nothing to get worked up about.

Try and fail, please

Link: Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More - Into the Maze: OULIPO.
I have to agree with Brion Gysin that the development of literature, in general, is 50 years behind painting. There are infinite possibilities, and if we/I/someone will fuck up once in a while we shouldn't be too distressed. Please feel free to experiment.

Where can poetry go when the language of emotions has been taken over by the media and the corporate world, and a catchy phrase like "Your life is waiting" can appear on a TV commercial for antidepressants?

Bury me as a pencil

OK, when I die, please make pencils out of me. What could be more fitting for a person obsessed with all things paper and ways to mark it?

"Carbon Copies
Pencils made from the carbon of human cremains. 240 pencils can be made from an average body of ash - a lifetime supply of pencils for those left behind."

It's probably an April Fools, but a nice idea all the same.
You are also allowed to grind the ashes to make ink. :)

Get tattoo, go to prison for two years

Link: Marines face tattoo ban, Guardian Unlimited.

Outstanding.

Art, the kind that lasts

Scythian tattoo (front),
originally uploaded by Niklas Dahlin.

Gunnar Foley (http://www.gunnarfoley.com/) did an excellent job on my arm the other day. The design is old, Scythian. More in the same style will follow. The back is here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dahlin/425538301/

In praise of the slacker-hipsters

Too true: Salon's Cary Tennis wants to know when we lost the troubled slacker as cultural icon.

Give yourself a break, my man. If you are depressed and have a drug problem or have a metabolic imbalance, then that's some serious stuff and you need medical care. But if you simply lack ambition, I take my hat off to you. The world is way too full already of overly ambitious fucks elbowing us out of the way on the streetcar.