My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from Seducing The Demon by Erica Jong.

Why did I hate their suicides with such vehemence? Because it seemed to me that every time a woman transgressed – whether in writing honestly or in embracing her sexuality – she had to punish herself. p. 61

My Soundtrack: Immune To Gravity by Moth on WOXY.

AT&T has quietly announced that effective Friday, 23 June, that it, and not its customers, own all of the personal data generated by those customers. And now that it has completed the resurection of Ma Bell with the reabsorbtion of Bell South, the bitch is back and she’s kickin’ ass and takin’ names. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

AT&T has issued an updated privacy policy that takes effect Friday. The changes are significant because they appear to give the telecom giant more latitude when it comes to sharing customers’ personal data with government officials.

The new policy says that AT&T — not customers — owns customers’ confidential info and can use it “to protect its legitimate business interests, safeguard others, or respond to legal process.”

The policy also indicates that AT&T will track the viewing habits of customers of its new video service — something that cable and satellite providers are prohibited from doing.

Moreover, AT&T (formerly known as SBC) is requiring customers to agree to its updated privacy policy as a condition for service — a new move that legal experts say will reduce customers’ recourse for any future data sharing with government authorities or others.

This scares the livin’ feck out of me. If you want to make a long-distance phone call in this country The Bitch owns you.

My Soundtrack: Carmen by Bridges And Powerlines on WOXY.

…in coach at 35,000 feet.

I really hate it when the rich and comfortable ruin if for the rest of us. They think that just because they’ve got a great cushion to fall on, they don’t have to watch what they say. I’ve had a great thing going writing books. But no more. Now I’m going to have to find another gig. And it’s all that sanctimonious twit Garrison Keillor’s fault.

Here in Minnesota one is surrounded by industrious Swedes and Germans, and so one must invent a cover story for laziness. Here is the perfect one: I am working on a book. A book can take years to write and nobody has to see it, ever. You can work on the book by holding a blank pad in your hand and looking at it. Then you set the pad down and close your eyes.

If people ask how it’s going, you say, “It’s coming along.” This can cover a lot of slow afternoons dozing in the shade. After a few years, if they ask, you say, “I didn’t like it so I tossed it.” They will commiserate: poor you, all that hard work down the drain. You get 10 years of excuses and then you get pity. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Curses.

My Soundtrack: Gold by Klee on WOXY.

Ohio is the only state with more than one city among the top 10 cities with the fastest population losses. (City No. 10 was Salinas, California). No Ohio city is on the fastest growing list. Is the population continuing the flight from urban to suburban life, or is this Ohioans fleeing the wreck of the Republican party? Just asking.

…When this kind of hug is mutual, for a moment the world is perfect the
way it is…

From Hug by Ron Padgett.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from Seducing The Demon by Erica Jong.

Wanting to breath life into their own dead babies

[snip]

They scooped out her eyes to see how she saw
And bit away her tongue in tiny mouthfuls
To speak with her voice.

Wooroloo by Frieda Hughes. p. 58

My Soundtrack: The End Is The Beginning Is The End by Smashing Pumpkins on WOXY.

Something strange, good, but strange is happening. On 24 May I passed the 100,000 visitors mark. About four hours ago, the site meter clicked over 110,000. That’s 10,000 front-page visits in less than a month. And AWstats suggest I could break 9,000 unique visitors this month. Is there a point where readership goes exponential?

There is nothing that I could add to this post from Andrew Sullivan.

Does the Ohio Republican Party have any other tactic besides Gay baiting? Here it is June and the wingnuts are already hurling themselves off the cliff in a Lemmings’ frenzy. Scott Pullins wants Ohioans to know that Ted Strickland is involved in a bizarre personal relationship because, wait for it…

Ted and Frances waited until age 46 to marry and never had children. For a fun fisking of Pullins’ silliness, pop over to Pandagon.

Pullins, executive director of the Ohio Taxpayers Association, seems to be so far into wingnuttery that Republicans are trying to distance themselves. Good luck.

And how long do you think Ryan Fournier will be sticking around Ohio once he graduates? (Hat tip: Daily Dish.)

But I do have to give Pullins a couple of points for posting under his real name. The anonymous whale sludge is getting its licks in too.

Russel Hughlock has this to say: You don’t get much more out of the mainstream and into the gutter than outright slander — this is the kind of person Ken Blackwell attracts. How long should we wait for anyone on the right to call this asshole out ? Or is this how they all think ?

I wouldn’t hold my breath, Russel.

My Soundtrack: Time To Go Home by Michael Franti and Spearhead on WOXY.

Tomorrow evening I’ll be at The Town Fryer early for my monthly allotment of Southern goodness and Blogger MeetUp. Then it will off to The Church at 2681 W. 14th Street to hear our own carnivorous BuJew Steve Goldberg in his debut as a featured poetry reader. Maybe I’ll take along some of Susie’s chicken strips to snack on.

[Update — 1209, 21 June — The New York Times adds its two-cents.]

If you’re a parent and you don’t want your children chatting with strangers, or a business and you don’t want your employees wasting company time surfing porn sites, you install nannyware. But if you’re a news organization, do you want to censor what may be valuable resources from your news gatherers?

If you’re the Los Angeles Times, the answer is yes.

Reporters working in the L.A . Times have informed me that Internet access in their newsrooms is filtered, although we haven’t determined what program they’re using. In the L.A. bureau, reporters can’t access sites like Playboy.com and are also blocked from accessing Peacefire.org, and I had to give a reporter the address of a Circumventor site so that he could get to our home page. In the San Francisco bureau, the filtering is apparently less restrictive, since Peacefire.org and Playboy.com are accessible, but the more hard-core Penthouse.com is not.

I think that all nannyware is a bad idea because it abdicates responsibility. If you’re a parent, put the computer in a common space where anyone walking by can easily see what’s on the screen. If you’re a business, simply tell employees that theft of company time and resources will not be tolerated and that web surfing not directly related to work is theft. Fire one or two employees for stealing and the others will get the idea.

These programs are notoriously unreliable. Have Coffee Will Write was iagoed by SonicWall for violence/hate/racism and by CyberPatrol for hate speech. I find the idea that a major news organization feels it must prevent its reporters from surfing inappropriate websites appalling.

I thought reporters and journalists had standards.

My Soundtrack: Cotton Wool by Lamb on WOXY.

Nothing is changed, except
there was a moment when

the wolf, the mongering wolf
who stands outside the self

lay lightly down, and slept.

From After Love by Maxine Kumin.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from Seducing The Demon by Erica Jong.

Suppose you see a canvas with a red slash across it and nothing more. You look at it and wonder what you think of it. Then suppose someone tells you that the artist cut off his right hand and made that crimson gash – does it change your view? p. 49

My Soundtrack: A Chance Encounter by Mason Proper on WOXY.

The Neo/Theocons make a great deal about how the lefty-controlled media don’t let the good news out of Iraq. Well, courtesy of this morning’s Washington Post comes this sensitive memo that offers a totally non-media-filtered assessment of our progress in Iraq from a man who ought to know: our Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad.

Slate’s Eric Umansky calls it today’s must read. Andrew Sullivan writes that the memo:

…portrays a society in sectarian and security meltdown — with growing Islamist influences. Iraqi employees at the embassy bear witness to theocratic crackdowns worse than exist in neighboring Iran in some areas. In 115 degree heat, much of Baghdad gets one hour of electricity for every four hours without it.

Read that last bit carefully. We invaded Iraq on 20 March 2003. Now, nearly 1,200 days later, we cannot even ensure the Iraqi people electricity 24/7 in their own capital? And the good news coming out of Iraq is what again?

My Soundtrack: The Bachelor And The Bride by The Decemberists on WOXY.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from Seducing The Demon by Erica Jong.

Language matters because whoever controls the words controls the conversation, because whoever controls the conversation controls its outcome, because whoever frames the debate has already won it, because telling truth has become harder and harder to achieve in an America drowning in Orwellian Newspeak. p. 9

My Soundtrack: Do The Whirlwind by Architecture In Helsinki on WOXY.

It seems that I would be a brilliant writer with dozens of books published by now if I had only been blessed with the right kind of father. A successful writer needs a cruel, brutish, unforgiving and alcoholic father. Or at least that is what Garrison Keillor might have us belive as he writes this morning about writers and their fathers.

When Charles Bukowski was a teenager, his father stumbled upon some of his short stories and read them. Bukowski came home that day to find his clothes, his typewriter, and all the stories he had written lying on the lawn outside his front door.

John Cheever’s father was a hard-drinking shoe salesman and an unpredictable man. One night, while setting the table, Cheever’s mother casually mentioned that she and his father had gotten into a fight, and his father had decided to drown himself at the local beach. Though he didn’t have a driver’s license, Cheever jumped in the family car and drove to the beach as fast as he could. He found his father drunk, riding a roller coaster, and had to coax him down and bring him home.

When Franz Kafka was a young boy, he once shouted for a glass of water in the middle of the night, and his father pulled him out of bed, put him on the courtyard balcony, and locked him out of the house. He later wrote, “For years thereafter, I kept being haunted by fantasies of this giant of a man, my father, the ultimate judge, coming to get me in the middle of the night.”

The poet Hart Crane’s father was the wealthy owner of a candy company, who couldn’t understand why Hart Crane wanted to be a poet. His father constantly threatened to disown Hart Crane unless he got a real job.

Stephen King’s father was a merchant seaman who deserted the family when Stephen was two. He has no memories of the man, but one day he found a boxful of his father’s science fiction and fantasy paperbacks, including an anthology of stories by horror author H. P. Lovecraft. That box of his father’s books inspired him to start writing horror stories.

No, instead I was cursed with a father who loves me, who supported me at every turn, who encouraged me to stretch myself, who has read my writing and said good things. And I wouldn’t give up any of that for all the NewYork Times best sellers in the world.

I love you dad. Happy Father’s Day.

Father’s Day 2005

And more from sons and daughters on Father’s Day from Post Secret.

My Soundtrack: Abigail, Cops and Animals by Joan Of Arc on WOXY.

One of the new tactics that spammers are using seems to be the sending of a comment that appears legitimate and contains no advertising. If that piece of spam slips through the filters, then the spammer has an approved comment on which to piggyback future spam. I got the below comment this morning and I think it fits this category.

Anyone else get this one?

Hello

I am a soldier stationed in Iraq. I wish not to be part of any peace protest if anything should happen to me. Do not represent me as an empty coffin or pair of boots. Do not use my photo or any thing related to me for any peace purposes.

My thinking is that of the horrible history of the American peace movement. After the civil war it was bring the troops out of the south. We had around 80 years of jim crow laws an racism. Vietnam and Korea were two of the three major engagements against communism. The first was in 1919 and 1920 when American troops were fighting against the Bolsheviks in Russia. Thanks to the peace movement American troops were brought home, communism flourished and around 100, 000 American were casualties in Korea and Vietnam that would not have happened if we had stayed in Russia.

During WWII the peace movement was against our involvement. Jews to the camps were a European problem. and bayoneted Chinese were an Asian problem.

The US military saves lives and frees countries, peace movement keeps dictators and hate groups in power by not doing anything. When was the last protest against North Korea ever held.

Peace movement denies rights and freedoms so that live goes on under brutal dictators. What is live without freedom?

Larry Klass
773rd Transportation Company
Iraq

Why do I think this is spam? First, it isn’t a comment about anything found in the post to which it was attached. Second, I did a little check and found that nearly identical copies of the letter have appeared in Stars and Strips, The Village Voice and on longisland.com. This leads me to believe that someone other than Sergeant First Class Klass posted this comment to HCWW. Which also means that Klass is being exploited either by an individual or group for it’s own purposes.

I think that’s wrong.

And for the record, the version of Klass’ letter I recieved included an AOL email address, a snail-mail address and a phone number. I’ve deleted all of those for privacy reasons.

My Soundtrack: Celebrity Sanctum by Dogs Die In Hot Cars on WOXY.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from Bradbury Speaks by Ray Bradbury.

So look in the mirror. Maybe your fear was once mine. Maybe you”re playing Medusa to yourself and are frozen in place with a shriek locked under your tongue and no deicer. p. 198

My Soundtrack: Inside Of Me by Starlight Mints on WOXY.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from Bradbury Speaks by Ray Bradbury.

In sum, we wear our hearts on our sleaze. p. 128

My Soundtrack: Throw It All Away by V on WOXY.