In a Word, #^$%*!

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission, the American version of the Canadian Radio, Telephone and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), while not as dithering, has proven to be just a priggish.

Documentarian Ken Burns has just finished The War, a film about soldiers' experiences in the Second World War. It includes, funnily, some profanities. So, in its infantile wisdom, the FCC has issued a edict on naughty words. In other words, war is (bleep).

The only two ways audience-supported broadcaster PBS can air this show is either 1)bleep out the profanities and digitally obscure the lips (for the benefit of the visually impaired), or 2) air the program after 10pm when Junior is in bed. PBS has chosen option number 2, as reported by the New York Times.

Mr. Burns, perhaps best known for his prize-winning series “The Civil War,” insisted that “The War” would be shown in the preferred time slot of 8 p.m. He said he was “flabbergasted” that FCC policy was being applied to documentaries, particularly when President Bush himself was inadvertently heard using vulgar language, broadcast on some cable newscasts, at the recent Group of Eight summit meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia.

(For those who missed Bush's cuss, it was "shit" as bleeped by the Beeb and revealed by the Ceeb. I, for one, am shocked. Naughty prezzie.)

At first glance, one would think Burns was being unreasonable. Ten o'clock seems like a reasonable hour at which to broadcast The Wars. But it isn't. One audience for documentary is the uninformed, among whom are children. Sure, it's highly unlikely that kids will want to watch this; hell, their parents are more likely to chew their nails over The One than over The National. But the opportunity to watch a program that informs current affairs (i.e., Iraq, Lebanon, Afganistan) is critical.

This also raises the question of why PBS is following FCC guidelines. Well, first it needs a licence. Second, and more important, is funding. While viewers donate money to the station, it must also get funding from the CPB which accounts for 24 per cent of its budget. This is not an insignificant chunk. While there is some foundation and corporate support, PBS relies on what seems to have become a politcally influenced body (See the Washington Post articles and FAIR piece below.)

This leads us to donating. I'll be transparent: while I'd love to give money regularly to my local PBS affliate, WNED, I can't afford to. I have done the equivalent in the past (CKCU, CIUT, WFMU), but those salad days are on hold for now. At some point, I do plan to support the quality programming on PBS...and hope that they will still be there to accept it. I encourage you to watch this great station, and if you can afford to, support it. It serves as a model of what the CBC should be. (More on that later.)


1)Paul Farhi, "PBS Scrutiny Raises Political Antennas," Washington Post, April 22, 2005.

2)Paul Farhi, "Public Broadcasting Targeted by House," Washington Post, June 10, 2005.

3)Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, "CPB Funding Threatened...Again," media advisory, June 8, 2006.

Grow a Brain

So U.S. president George Bush has vetoed a bill for federal support of stem cell research. His rationale?

"This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others," Mr. Bush said at a White House event where he was surrounded by 18 families who "adopted" frozen embryos not used by other couples, and then used those embryos to have children.

But, it's perfectly ok to drop bombs on them, though. Bush is also quoted as saying:

"These boys and girls are not spare parts," he said.

Just cannon fodder.

from the Globe and Mail

Ach, those Crazy Amish!

You can always, without fail, count on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for a laugh. Seems buggy-drivin' Amish, retired flea market goers, and petting zoo school groups are on their hit list.

From the New York Times:

In addition to the petting zoo, in Woodville, Ala., and the Mule Day Parade in Columbia, Tenn., the auditors questioned many entries, including “Nix’s Check Cashing,” “Mall at Sears,” “Ice Cream Parlor,” “Tackle Shop,” “Donut Shop,” “Anti-Cruelty Society” and “Bean Fest.” ...

New York City officials, who have questioned the rationale for the reduction in this year’s antiterrorism grants, were similarly blunt.

“Now we know why the Homeland Security grant formula came out as wacky as it was,” Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said Tuesday. “This report is the smoking gun that thoroughly indicts the system.”

Honestly, don't take my word for it, read the NYT piece, "Come One, Come All, Join the Terror Target List," for yourself.

Meanwhile, take a good, long look at the chicken on the right:

photo by Bill Johnson/Horse Pix Photography

In the Kitchen at Parties

'Tis summer cocktail party season and if your circle of tipplers are anything like mine, you'll appreciate my love for the July 3, 2006 edition of "Tomorrow" from the Village Voice.

Online Books

The Wall Street Journal reported Rice University's (Houston, Texas) announcement that the school will revive it's press, which has been defunct for a decade. This time 'round, it will be a cyper-press so to speak:

Rice's program, to be launched later this year or early in 2007, could be even more ambitious. The new press plans to publish all of its books online through Connexions, which will essentially absorb the press's editing and transmission costs, says Chuck Henry, a Rice vice-provost who is also the press's new publisher. Readers can freely view the online works under a special online publishing license, though they may be charged a small fee for downloading them to a computer.

What is even more interesting, to me at least, is the ability of authors to revise their books without having to go into reprint---a costly and risky venture for publishers.

Because all books will be in digital form, authors can amend their tomes online, link to multimedia files elsewhere on the Internet, or even chat with readers. Books would never go out of print, and more might be published because of the press's lower cost structure, Rice officials say. Rice officials are also considering asking authors whether they want to allow "derivatives" of their works to be created online. The Connexions site operates under an "open-source" model, letting readers update online course material.

It appears to solve the "publish or perish" dilema faced by young profs whose work must past academic muster to make a monograph about, say post-modern Welsh grammar, worth the hit to the bottom line.

The university's initiative with Connexions likely have a ripple effect for other academic/scholarly and educational publishing houses, at least the small ones. How Rice's model will effect costs and book prices remains to be seen. And I really doubt this will have any effect with trade pushlishers (electricution being a very real consequence of taking a laptop in the tub, sending revenues down the drain). Nevertheless, the move is refreshing.

This is what you shall do:

Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated personas and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips an face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body....

---Walt Whitman, from the Preface to the 1855 Leaves of Grass

So close and yet...

The writer of Virigin Suicides hasn't given us a third novel, but, well, read what Publisher's Lunch sent me today:

Pulitzer winner for MIDDLESEX Jeffrey Eugenides' GREATEST LOVE STORIES OF ALL TIME, an anthology of classic love stories, to Jonathan Burnham at Harper, with Jill Schwartzman editing, for co-publication with McSweeney's Books in October 2007, with proceeds going to 826 Chicago, by Lynn Nesbit at Janklow & Nesbit.

Book Review: Transmetropolitan

Transmetropolitan: Back on the Street
Written by Warren Ellis
Illustrated by Darick Robertson
Published by Vertigo

Having tentatively foisted the heavy fire door open and exited the rainy night, I mount the rotting stairs through the stinking, smoky, dubious air. The soles of my boots draw themselves from each print left in the…I’m not sure what, nor do I want to know. I’m up and face another door that meets with my jacket-clad forearm. Each chance taken is something else willingly given up.

I arrived at the party late, but people are still lying about with smiles of conversion and lights of redemption gleaming from their countenance. Thus I associate myself with the world of Spider Jerusalem.

Fashioned after Hunter S. Thompson, Jerusalem is a nasty bastard who hates the world, which hates him back. In fact, the distopian world is pretty hateful. And cynical. And selfish. And expensive. And invasive: bodily, spiritually, and psychically. Turn on CNN and think of a Bush dynasty lasting another decade. Get the picture? Yup. Pretty fucking bleak.

Which is why Ellis and Robertson’s collaboration remains so timely. Originally published in 1997, the Transmetropolitan series has been collected and reissued as a perfect-bound edition. As seemingly miserable Jerusalem is, even his cleverly half-shaded-half-rose-coloured glasses see a glimmer of light. It reminds us that we lunatics aren’t insane, we just haven’t taken over the asylum. But it is possible. And we can, if we want. Just turn on your brain and open your eyes.

These are the end times. It rained cheese last night. The Black Squirrel has been seen has been seen as far afield as Luton…And behold a pale horse, and his name that sat on him was Death…. If anyone in this shithole city gave two tugs of a dead dog’s cock about Truth, this wouldn’t be happening.
---Warren Ellis, from the introduction.

Indi-no-go

The June 2006 edition of Harper's is only available at fine independent bookstores and magazines shops in Toronto. So there's no need to enter the giant-purple-people-eater megashop to find it. Heather, it seems, would prefer you to spend your hard-earned bucks elsewhere. This is fine with me. Who needs smelly candles with their freedom of speech? Makes me sneeze.

What caused this tempest in a java-cup? Art Spiegelman's article "The Art of Outrage," which reproduces and discusses the infamous Danish cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.

This from Quill & Quire:

Chapters/Indigo hearts censorship
If you’re looking for the new issue of Harper’s, don’t head to Indigo or Chapters, ‘cause it ain’t there. The Globe and Mail reported on Saturday that the mega-chain has pulled each and every copy from its 260 stores Canada-wide. The reason? Those pesky Mohammed cartoons again!Indigo is crying foul over an Art Spiegelman article that contains all 12 of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten's infamous cartoons, along with some new comix, including one penned by Spiegelman and, according to the Globe, “two by Israelis, ‘inspired’ by an Iranian newspaper's call in February for an international Holocaust cartoon contest ‘to test the limits of Western tolerance of free speech’.”The Globe also boasts a leaked e-mail that was sent to Indigo execs, instructing them on how to respond to customer complaints of censorship, which includes the ever-so-natural and spontaneous-sounding "the decision was made based on the fact that the content about to be published has been known to ignite demonstrations around the world. Indigo [and its subsidiaries] Chapters and Coles will not carry this particular issue of the magazine but will continue to carry other issues of this publication in the future.”And the final dash of salt to this wound in free speech's side? Harper’s publisher John MacArthur
chided, “I'd expect an American company to do this, not a Canadian.” Ouch.

The article also links with the Globe and Mail article

And while you're browsing in Pages or Book City or This Ain't the Rosedale, take a gander at the other titles that may not be available in the chain store.

Movie Review: V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta
Director: James McTeigue
Writers: Andy and Larry Wachowski
**Possible spoilers**


V for Vendetta is stylistically executed but is simplistic and flawed. While I don’t expect the answers to life’s big questions to be resolved by a comic book-based movie, when the movie in question purports to provide them, then I do want something. Alas, I left with a steak-less belly and sizzle-speckled specs.

Lead character V (Hugo Weaving) has suffered at the hands of an oppressive government and is out to secure freedom for the masses. The State’s draconian laws have suppressed art, speech, association, and sexuality under the linked guises of security and religion. “Heroine” Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman) is the asker of questions and the executor of answers. The setting is near-future London where we hear about the civil wars in the United States (still the colonies, it seems). Old story, I know.

There were a number of forgivable problems that are given up to willing suspension of disbelief. The eventual posthumous success of Guy Fawkes’ blowing up of Parliament isn’t it. It has been argued that even if the historical saboteur/freedom fighter/terrorist had been successful, nothing would have changed; indeed, things might have gone much worse. The tragedy of 9/11 proves it. What V suggests (the destruction of a symbol to give revolution meaning) is what many terrorists claim; that the World Trade Towers were the symbol, the epitome of selfish, capitalist, Western arrogant hubris. While that may be true, what rose from the ashes was (and is) far more oppressive to far more people and dangerous to all bystanders—innocent or otherwise. The metaphor of “blowing up old institutions” is all very well and good, but what do you replace it with? What has the solidity and the foundation? One must build on something.

In the world of V for Vendetta, somehow a villain gained power. And meanwhile, people sat back and let it happen. Then someone told them it was wrong and they got up and followed the next person. What if both leaders they’re both wrong? Certainly the State was evil in the movie and ought to be overthrown. (Think a mix of Huxley’s Brave New World, Orwell’s 1984, Burgess'/Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange, and Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Ah, but the Brits do authoritarianism so well.) Then what?

There were hints of grey throughout; that perhaps there were a multitude of options other than the two put forth (authoritarianism versus anarchy). Perhaps we were to leave thinking about a third, forth, fifth answer. I’m just not convinced that it was put across successfully.

So is it worth a watch? Sure, I guess. This is James McTeigue’s directorial debut. He’s worked with the Wachowski brothers before, and this is their type of fare (see the Matrix series). There are some nice visual effects about three-quarters in, but don’t expect a lot. And we could have done with out the stupid love scene. V for Vendetta had a lot of potential, but predictably, failed to act on it.

Book Review: A Dirty Job

Title: A Dirty Job
By Christopher Moore
Published by William Morrow
Hardcover: $32.95
(Reviewed from an advanced reading copy)

Have a box of Kleenex near you for A Dirty Job. Again, Christopher Moore engages your brain, your heart, and your funny bone. His research bolsters all this writing (Lamb, Fluke) and this is no exception. Employing myth in its traditional way, he attempts to understand one of the great mysteries. Moore’s life has also informed A Dirty Job, which makes reading his latest such a satisfying experience.

Book Review: Adverbs

Adverbs
By Daniel Handler
Published by HarperCollins
Hardcover $29.95
(Reviewed from an advanced reading copy)

Adverbs is Daniel Handler’s third book for adults. Under his better-known pen name, Lemony Snicket, he fooled me into thinking he was an English author. Adverbs changes that presumption. Handler’s style reminds one of Dave Eggers; its quirky and slightly off-putting. He forces you to pay attention to the moment, to understand the characters as they exist in each short story. Meanwhile, your brain recognizes them from a previous scenario. Engaging and neat for fans of words and structure.

Artists Are Sayin' It for Themselves

This popped into my mailbox this week via a digital-copyright email list I'm on. The likes of Broken Social Scene, Barenaked Ladies, and Avril Lavigne have banded together to form the Canadian Music Creators Coalition.

From their press release:

Suing Our Fans is Destructive and Hypocritical
Artists do not want to sue music fans. The labels have been suing our fans against artists’ will, and laws enabling these suits cannot be justified in artists’ names

For more info, visit the CMCC

Dusted

Just poking my head up from the boxes that remain unpacked. Yes, I moved three weeks ago and I'm still settling in. It's been nearly a month of finding old stuff I need, buying new stuff I need, and realizing I don't have everything I need. Twenty-one days of catching up with missed deadlines, hooking up new phone lines, and figuring out impromptu washing lines. But now that March's lion is succombing to April's lamb, I will find time to spout off on books, movies, and most appropriately, this bullshit that Toronto's going wireless. Till then, I have one more missive to draft, and one more draught to miss.

Freedom of ...

I've been wondering how to address the issue of freedom of speech as it's being terrorized this week. To be honest, I worry. Zealots know no bounds. Zealots have no respect. Zealots have thin skins. And bullets and bombs and rocks render skin shattered, effectively shutting down any speach of the individuals. However, braver souls and publications than I have taken this issue on. I encourage you to visit the following sites:

Get Religion (a very balanced religion journal)
International PEN (an organization defening freedom of expression)

Out of the Frey-ing pan...

...and into rehab. Apparently being a loud-mouth junkie will get you a sweet book deal. From my e-mail inbox from Publisher's Lunch:

Velvet Revolver front man Scott Weiland's memoir of his rise to the
pinnacle of rock stardom, first with Stone Temple Pilots and later recreating himself as the sober lead singer of Velvet Revolver, to Brant Rumble at
Scribner, by David Vigliano of Vigliano Associates.

Courtney Love's Dirty Blond, journals including never-before-seen intimate
photos and revealing writings about her career, family, and rehab, to Denise
Oswald at Farrar, Straus, for the Faber imprint, by David Vigliano of Vigliano
Associates.

Márquez Puts Down His Pen

From The Guardian:

The Nobel Prize-winning novelist, Gabriel García Márquez, has announced that he has given up writing.

Mr. Bean Goes to the Museum

...or life reflects art in many tiny pieces.

via bluno.org

1 Year, 12 Months, 365 days...

Yup, it's Muse Ink's first anniversay this month. My, it just seems like yesterday...In the words of Fred Flintstone and the gang, Happy Anniversary! Thanks for visiting.

Condos, Shmondos

Sadly I must post that Ottawa independent record shop Record Runner is shuttering to make room for condos. Should you reside or visit the nation's capital and need to relieve yourself of much money on worthy CDs, visit the handful of shops mentioned on the link OR drop by Birdman Sound on Bank Street. Owner John Westhaver is one of the most enthusiastic and encylopedic music people I've ever met; taught me everything I love about freeform radio at CKCU.

via PWI