The New York Times is displayed on Amazon's Kindle e-book reader. /AP

With its newly unveiled iPad tablet PC, Apple is threatening the dominance of online retailer Amazon in the U.S. e-book market.

Amazon, the world's largest online bookstore, has been leading the e-book market for the past two years, selling 2.5 million units of its Kindle wireless e-reader. But less than a week after the iPad's debut, Amazon has already been forced to revise its pricing policy.

Amazon had been charging US$9.99 for e-book versions of popular titles, but last weekend it was forced to raise its prices when U.S. publishing giant Macmillan demanded it charge $12.99 to $14.99. Amazon initially took a tough stance and halted all sales of Macmillan books, but later retracted the measure and said on Sunday it would accept Macmillan's demand, according to international media reports.

Apple is behind the dispute between Amazon and the publishing industry. When it unveiled the iPad last Wednesday, Apple offered to charge up to $14.99 per e-book, prompting publishers, which have been unhappy with Amazon's monopoly, to revolt against the retailer. Apple also promised to give publishers or copyright holders 70 percent of the revenue from e-book sales, as it does with developers of applications for the iPhone. That gave Macmillan leverage to demand that Amazon raise its prices.

Industry insiders predict that e-book makers including publishers and newspapers will eventually have a bigger say in distribution. They may be helped by the decision of Internet giant Google to enter the market. Google plans to only set certain standards on discount rates and give publishers the right to decide prices. That will enable publishers to choose the retailer that offers the most favorable terms.

Dear Family, Friends, Allies & Future Friends,

Much of the fiction portion of this collection was tapped out on a failing 80386 IBM "clone" during the winter months of 1992 and into early 1993, Salt Lake City, Utah, riding an adrenaline wave from having just completed Wisdom's Maw and still with the majority of a sheet of LSD, which had--to that point--fueled nearly all of my works of fiction and "creative nonfiction."

As then-adjunct Professor of English at Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, I was facing an unpaid stretch of weeks through Christmas and the New Year and had no intention of getting a part-time job, as I knew that I would not see the new semester if I did not get that novel done. Wisdom's Maw had been sitting 1/4 finished since 1990, and it would take a couple of close friends who knew of my needs to supply me with what I needed to finish the bastard thing. Having suddenly come into a parcel of very fine blotter acid, I carved out a schedule and a List of Rules & Regulations for the house that I knew would allow for ample progress; barring a nervous breakdown or an intervention by the good members of the Salt Lake City police department, I was hopeful for the first time in ages.

I would rise with my then-wife in the mornings of that (for me) winter vacation, cook and eat breakfast together, and--as soon as I heard the car start up in the driveway--implant between 500 and 1,000 micrograms of Sandoz' finest between my cheek'n'gum. There would be no more than one phone call to the house during my Writing Day; she would enjoy lunches downtown with office colleagues or church members, and, by 5:15pm--to a heavy awareness of the sliding of the tumblers on our deadbolt lock--I would have completed between four and thirteen pages of a story of which I am still very proud and have come back to Consensus Reality (or, as close to it as I ever am). As a southern California transplant, I had almost no friends in Salt Lake City and, hence, no reason to fear a knocking on the door to jar me from out of my phantasmagoria. I had kicked booze two years earlier, was in complete control of my surroundings and had, during idle time in what was most of my earlier stint as a paralegal for an LA law firm, mapped out every scene, character sketch and venue in which the drama would take place. I simply had to sit in solace--to strains of the Grateful Dead, Van Morrison and Roxy Music--and get the bugger done.

And I did. In a white heat, basically smashed on acid and to endless mugs of herbal tea, and with enough incense and speaker volume to worry the neighbors, wrote 150+ pages in less than eight weeks. And still I had about 60 hits lurking in a filing cabinet. And is when I decided to begin writing the Dogshit Park stories.

I was on fire. Those four months stand as the most sustained stretch of creativity I have ever come into. A pleasant change of pace from the byzantine construction into which I had wrenched myself with Wisdom's Maw, the stories came as almost a cut-and-paste from the Beyond. Fat slabs of dialogue and narrative would simply come to me, and the days were that of joy. Each evening, the old white Honda would pull up behind our flat, and she would be greeted with an exuberance and laughter and a, "...You've got to read this," and I can understand now why she suspected nothing.

It had become routine; and who knows how artists work, anyway? At least I was producing something, which, to her, nearly compensated for the weeks of fiscal non-reward.

Not written in that eight-week stretch are "Family Circle" and "Going Down the Road Feeling Bad: A Report on the Health of the Amerikan Spine"--the latter, again, hammered out to a sustained chemical harvest (dextromethorphan hydrobromide, it was, this time). The former is the only thing I have ever written whilst drinking--a nasty weekend at a condo with my then-wife in Destin, Florida, the key to which her employer was kind enough to lend to us, as an escape from Lafayette, Louisiana, into which we never quite settled after leaving Utah. I had seen enough adjunct Professors clutching their Master's degree diplomas and wondering when they would need to return to the Auto Parts counter at Hanley's Lube & Exhaust, for lack of a Ph.D.

Having run out of drugs and, sadly, back to the bottle; into a doctoral program in American Literature (the last "literature" course I had taken having been probably in high school--my undergraduate degree being in pre-Law; the Master's, in the form of creative writing over which not a book was ever assigned), a depressive wreck, I was left alone in a windy beachside condominium by a frightened wife who let me have it to myself only hours after arrival and who, instead, drove further into Florida to stay with a brother and sister-in-law, such was the fury of mine temper. I remember killing off a lot of wine and a catfish left in the refrigerator for indeterminate days; I remember little else. No sleep had come to me between the time she had jettisoned the loaner home and having reappeared on a Sunday afternoon, to drive us back to Lafayette. When she did, and after finding fully three empty bottles in the kitchen trash and a bathroom in a vomitus state, begged of me was an answer. I shrugged, pushed across the table the handwritten sheaves of "Family Circle," then watched a good-hearted woman nearly crack.

Days later, after recovering from the binge and of salmonella, I reread what I had conjured and laid down the pen.

Divorce papers were served to me in November 1996, by which time I had sacked two quality New York literary agents, set up a small press imprint of my own and published Wisdom's Maw. I would again quit drinking, but, again, by switching my poison. There were the expected phone calls, once review copies had begun making the rounds of magazines both mainstream and underground. I would "go on tour" for Boston's Lollipop magazine--a trainwreck exhibition slated to go 'cross country, to join the Grateful Dead's "Furthur Festival," but got as far as Atlanta, before turning tail. Sometime around Halloween 1997, Smoke magazine--a glossy, expensive affair--sent me to Amsterdam. I thought I had been issued a pardon; a Higher Court (Smoke owner Robert Lockwood) decided otherwise.

Now, in the waning hours of 2009, I've learned enough about the mechanics of The Publishing Industry to know that some writers are destined--largely to a clash of Puritan v. Nonconformist--to never being "accepted." Spending thousands of dollars to fell trees in Indonesia for to get these things to you, the Reader, in Book Form--and what with shipping costs per copy from my station as an expatriate abroad to what will be largely an American audience--makes little sense to me. The format you observe here is both a case of "Necessity being the mother of invention" and a fair guess as to the "future of book publishing."

I feel as if "I am on to something" again. (Whereas, for many years, I was mostly just "on something.")

Don't ever give up.


Todd Brendan Fahey
December 15, 2009

courtesy Newhaus Laboratories

iTunes has a default import setting of 128 kbps. This setting affects tracks ripped from CDs, as well as sound files imported from other sources, such as audio editing programs. It does not affect music purchased from the iTunes store. Downloaded iTunes tracks come in at the resolution they're sold at (currently either 128 kbps, or now they offer higher-quality 256 kbps files).

Even if you get most of your music through iTunes store purchases, changing the default import setting for music from other sources is still a good idea. And it's easy to do.

Just go to the "Preferences" menu (depending on which version of iTunes you're running, it could either be under "Edit" or "File"). Then go to the "General" setting. You'll see a button labeled "Import Settings." In older programs you might have to go the "Advanced" tab, and then chose "Importing."

Either way, you'll soon see a choice of file formats. Some of the formats give you a choice of resolution. Don't worry about remembering numbers — Apple's helpfully labeled the choices with phrases like "Good Quality" and "High Quality." Below, you'll see the format choices you'll be offered, in descending order of sound quality. If you're not sure which format will give you the highest sound quality you can hear, try a simple test. Import the same track with two different settings — listening to them side-by-side can be the best way to determine which format works best for you.

WAV files are the largest in size, because your CD tracks are ripped with no compression. While this is good from a sound quality standpoint, there is a disadvantage — you won't be able to attach album art to these files.

AIFF files are Apple's version of a WAV file, but they allow a little bit of room in the file for metadata. This means you can attach album art to an AIFF file.

Apple Lossless files store data more efficiently than either WAV or AIFF, and have virtually the same sound quality while taking up about half the memory.

AAC is Apple's proprietary file format for audio. Songs purchased from iTunes are AAC files.

MP3 files are similar to AAC, and both compress music about the same amount, while using slightly different algorithms to do so.

Whether to use AAC or MP3 is a personal choice. Some people hear a difference between the two, and both have their supporters. One advantage to the latter format is that you can transfer MP3 files to non-Apple digital music players.

The MP3 and AAC settings also let you select compression rate, conveniently labeled "Good Quality," "High Quality" and "Higher Quality". Or you can use the custom setting to enter in a different sampling rate, including ones that are either higher or lower than the offered settings. Remember that not everyone notices higher sound quality with a larger size file. If you don't hear a difference between a 192kbps (higher quality) and 160kbps (high quality) MP3 file, then by all means go for the lower file size.

From left, Allen Ford and Torrence McCall. Denver Police say they have arrested 32 people, part of a sweep to end a four-month spree of racially motivated assaults and robberies in downtown Denver. (Handout)

The Denver Police Department announced today that they have made 32 arrests during a sweep to end a four-month spree of what police said were racially motivated assaults and robberies in downtown Denver, including the LoDo entertainment district.

A task force comprised of the Denver Police, FBI and the Denver District Attorney's Office investigated 26 incidents in which groups of black males verbally harassed and then assaulted white or Hispanic males, according to Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman.

Many of the victims were robbed after being assaulted.

Three suspects, Allan Ford, Torrance McCall and one juvenile are still at large. Suspects are being held on $1 million bonds for each count.

Jordan Steffen:303-954-1638 or jsteffen@denverpost.com

Timeline and modus operandi of Dogshit Park & other atrocities


Six of the eight stories comprising this collection were tapped out on a failing 80386 IBM "clone" during the winter months of 1992 and into early 1993, Salt Lake City, Utah, riding an adrenaline wave from having just finished Wisdom's Maw and still with the majority of a sheet of LSD, which had--to that point--fueled nearly all of my works of fiction and "creative nonfiction."

As then-adjunct Professor of English at Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, I was facing an unpaid stretch of weeks through Christmas and the New Year and had no intention of getting a part-time job, as I knew that I would not see the new semester if I did not get that novel done. Wisdom's Maw had been sitting 1/4 finished since 1990, and it would take a couple of close friends who knew of my needs to supply me with what I needed to finish the bastard thing. Having suddenly come into a parcel of very fine blotter acid, I carved out a schedule and a List of Rules & Regulations for the house that I knew would allow for ample progress; barring a nervous breakdown or an intervention by the good members of the Salt Lake City police department, I was hopeful for the first time in ages.

I would rise with my then-wife in the mornings of that (for me) winter vacation, cook and eat breakfast together, and--as soon as I heard the car start up in the driveway--implant between 500 and 1,000 micrograms of Sandoz' finest between my cheek'n'gum. There would be no more than one phone call to the house during my Writing Day; she would enjoy lunches downtown with office colleagues or church members, and, by 5:15pm--to a heavy awareness of the sliding of the tumblers on our deadbolt lock--I would have completed between four and thirteen pages of a story of which I am still very proud and have come back to Consensus Reality (or, as close to it as I ever am). As a southern California transplant, I had almost no friends in Salt Lake City and, hence, no reason to fear a knocking on the door to jar me from out of my phantasmagoria. I had kicked booze two years earlier, was in complete control of my surroundings and had, during idle time in what was most of my earlier stint as a paralegal for an LA law firm, mapped out every scene, character sketch and venue in which the drama would take place. I simply had to sit in solace--to strains of the Grateful Dead, Van Morrison and Roxy Music--and get the bugger done.

And I did. In a white heat, basically smashed on acid and to endless mugs of herbal tea, and with enough incense and speaker volume to worry the neighbors, wrote 150+ pages in less than eight weeks. And still I had about 60 hits lurking in a filing cabinet. And is when I decided to begin writing the Dogshit Park stories.

I was on fire. Those four months stand as the most sustained stretch of creativity I have ever come into. A pleasant change of pace from the byzantine construction into which I had wrenched myself with Wisdom's Maw, the stories came as almost a cut-and-paste from the Beyond. Fat slabs of dialogue and narrative would simply come to me, and the days were that of joy. Each evening, the old white Honda would pull up behind our flat, and she would be greeted with an exuberance and laughter and a, "...You've got to read this," and I can understand now why she suspected nothing.

It had become routine; and who knows how artists work, anyway? At least I was producing something, which, to her, nearly compensated for the weeks of fiscal non-reward.

Not written in that eight-week stretch are "Family Circle" and "Going Down the Road Feeling Bad: A Report on the Health of the Amerikan Spine"--the latter, again, hammered out to a sustained chemical harvest (dextromethorphan hydrobromide, it was, this time). The former is the only thing I have ever written whilst drinking--a nasty weekend at a condo with my then-wife in Destin, Florida, the key to which her employer was kind enough to lend to us, as an escape from Lafayette, Louisiana, into which we never quite settled after leaving Utah. I had seen enough adjunct Professors clutching their Master's degree diplomas and wondering when they would need to return to the Auto Parts counter at Hanley's Lube & Exhaust, for lack of a Ph.D.

Having run out of drugs and, sadly, back to the bottle; into a doctoral program in American Literature (the last "literature" course I had taken having been probably in high school--my undergraduate degree in pre-Law; the Master's in the form of creative writing, over which not a book was ever assigned), a depressive wreck, I was left alone in a windy beachside condominium by a frightened wife who let me have it to myself only hours after arrival and who, instead, drove further into Florida to stay with a brother and sister-in-law, such was the fury of mine temper. I remember killing off a lot of wine and a catfish left in the refrigerator for indeterminate days; I remember little else. No sleep had come to me between the time she had jettisoned the loaner home and having reappeared on a Sunday afternoon, to drive us back to Lafayette. When she did, and after finding fully three empty bottles in the kitchen trash and a bathroom in a vomitus state, begged of me was an answer. I shrugged, pushed across the table the handwritten sheaves of "Family Circle," then watched a good-hearted woman nearly crack.

Days later, after recovering from the binge and of salmonella, I reread what I had conjured and laid down the pen.

Divorce papers were served to me in November 1996, by which time I had sacked two quality New York literary agents, set up a small press imprint of my own and published Wisdom's Maw. I would again quit drinking, but, again, by switching my poison. There were the expected phone calls, once review copies had begun making the rounds of magazines both mainstream and underground. I would "go on tour" for Boston's Lollipop magazine--a trainwreck exhibition slated to go 'cross country, to join the Grateful Dead's "Furthur Festival," but got as far as Atlanta, before turning tail. Sometime around Halloween 1997, Smoke magazine--a glossy, expensive affair--sent me to Amsterdam. I thought I had been issued a pardon; a Higher Court (Smoke owner Robert Lockwood) decided otherwise.

Now, in the waning hours of 2009, I've learned enough about the mechanics of The Publishing Industry to know that some writers are destined--largely to a clash of Puritan v. Nonconformist--to never being "accepted." Spending thousands of dollars to fell trees in Indonesia for to get these things to you, the Reader, in Book Form--and what with shipping costs per copy from my station as an expatriate abroad to what will be largely an American audience--makes little sense to me. The format you observe here is both a case of "Necessity being the mother of invention" and a fair guess as to the "future of book publishing."

I feel as if "I am on to something" again. (Whereas, for many years, I was mostly just "on something.")

Don't ever give up.


Todd Brendan Fahey
October 25, 2009

by Todd Brendan Fahey
October 18, 2009

“God, someone could drop a bomb on this place and the world would lose so much,” she said, apropos of nothing, and stunning in its timing.  “I feel  so small.”  With a sincerity bone deep and so unexpected, yet fully deserved and of a genius of its own—a critical assessment of set and setting to have made Huxley proud, silencing those around her, leaving only the sneaky coil of Walter Becker’s fretwork to writhe through the clot of her estimation.

Stan could have foretold that it would be Jack Jump who’d be punctuating the still, a: “I think I’ll go outside and have a smoke,” was what he could manage.  And he did so, directly—turned heel and stepped out to the porch and lit a Camel.  He’d begun again, to his own metronome, to which none—Stan, barely—could fathom.  One of the great minds of our generation, but whose liner notes on his campus Web page reads: “Currently serving what feels like a life sentence at University of Lafayette.”  The man could compartmentalize like any among the Top 10 villains of lore—tend graciously to a backyard grill and know to stock up on an extra kilo of ground round and precisely who might be showing up empty handed, but with a good story to rectify much, anyway, of a semblance of shame.  And it would always be Tom, and later on that summer they’d take off in his 4x4 to parts unknown to Stan, paying tribute to others among their ken, small gods of the littles: Baked Adobe and Circumfiction and Cold Mother’s Hubbard, whose makers, likewise, run to their own handwrung wave and flow—and who, upon the first notes of office drama, would take to the far end of the pond, near the clutch of bamboo, where a small green heron had once opened its yaw and let out, as he told it, “A croak, what sounded like from a hinge at the end of the world.”  Stan had given him those ‘shrooms, before they’d started to grow their own, and kept a sort of copyright on anything the mad Doktor would produce that day.

As a practice, Jump tended to not open his notebooks to Stan—not for fear of critique, but for the eidetic memory he had seen of his student and where and in what manner his thoughts and phrases culled were bound to bubble up.  To Stan, the world in-toto was like unto a bowl of candies left on the steps of a home on Halloween, its lights off and no car in the driveway.  That he deigned to leave the house itself alone was a blessing, but Stan considered himself fairly generous.

“This is a good party,” it said, through the din of The Black Saint and The Sinner Lady, which is what Stan had put on, after tiring of Steely Dan.  “You should have us over more often.”

Stan admired Tom for his naivete.  Above the hardwood shone an idiot grin, of handsome--if lately long--tooth, and he knew why Jack Jump rode always with the perpetual dropout, his rig barreling cross country, twin contributions of insomnia and a steady hand to the pavement being the price of the burden’s passage.  A genuine crinkle to the eye, and not for any reason Tom could comprehend, brightened the smile.

“You gonna have anything for me anytime soon, man?  There are three poets in this world I’ll waste my money on,” Stan offered.  “Jim’s already had his handjob,” he said, pointing to Tolan’s clutch, which could be counted on to be bearing a copy of Fresh Fruit and Gravity.  “Jump’s a snob.  And that leaves you.”

Tom ran his fingers through a tussle of blond.  Having recently dismounted a 23 speed Shimano, and enveloped still in black lycra duds, he looked the part of Lance Armstrong's poor relation. And although the $680/monthly teaching stipend kept him a bit malnourished, Stan granted that DNA had fallen generally in his friend’s favor.  From the powder room was whispered, as well, to an impressive yield of trouser trout which had, if rumor is to be counted, navigated the channels of nearly every class of his attendance, and without a kvetch to be heard.  Indeed.  Beyond being a wordsmith, Tom could be counted on to gyrate the gears of the fairest campus- and county wide, leaving Stan wondering if he shouldn’t hold these getstogether more often and offer to Tom a sliding stipend for showing up and staying until he, himself, got some.

By Kenneth Li and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in New York

Published: August 6 2009 03:00 | Last updated: August 6 2009 03:00

Rupert Murdoch has vowed to charge for all the online content of his newspapers and television news channels, going well beyond his prediction in May that the company would test pay models on one of its stronger papers within the year.

The comments by News Corp's chairman came as he predicted a "high single digit" rebound in the group's operating profits next year. The worst of the media sector slump might be behind the company, he said, as he reported "some good signs of life" in advertising.

Newspaper and television revenues would be down "very low double digits" next year, but growth in cable properties such as Fox News would leave advertising revenues flat and total revenue up 4 per cent.

News Corp put the seal on a brutal fiscal year with a fourth- quarter net loss of $203m (£119m), dragged down by $680m in impairment and restructuring charges at Fox Interactive Media, whose MySpace social networking site cut more than 700 jobs in the period.

The latest writedown to boom-era acquisitions masked a 30 per cent fall in quarterly adjusted operating profit to $948m, in line with lowered projections, and adjusted earnings of 19 cents per share, narrowly ahead of Wall Street forecasts of 18 cents.

However, they resulted in a $3.4bn net loss for the full year, down from net income of $5.4bn a year earlier, reflecting $8.9bn in impairment charges.

The sweeping decision by the owner of titles including The News of the World and The Australian to abandon the practice of giving away news in exchange for attracting a large audience for advertisers could embolden other publishers warily examining paid content models.

"We intend to charge for all our news websites," Mr Murdoch said.

"If we're successful, we'll be followed by all media," he added, predicting "significant revenues" from charging for differentiated news online...

by Dan Tencer
RawStory.com

The popular conservative blog Free Republic is facing intensified scrutiny over its reader comments policy -- and its role in the American political debate -- after the blog's moderators allowed vicious attacks on the Obamas' 11-year-old daughter to remain on the site for more than a day.

And the bloggers who submit stories and discussions to Free Republic are fighting back against news outlets that have reported on the controversy, attacking the reporters who brought attention to the issue.

An article that appeared in the Vancouver Sun on Sunday described a thread entitled "To entertain her daughter, Michelle Obama loves to make monkey sounds," in which a discussion arose surrounding a photo of 11-year-old Malia Obama wearing a t-shirt featuring the peace sign.

Among the comments on that thread, according to the Sun, were: "A typical street whore." "A bunch of ghetto thugs." "Ghetto street trash." "Wonder when she will get her first abortion."

The Sun reports:

Moderators of the blog left the comments - and commenters - in place until a complaint was lodged by a writer doing research on the conservative movement, almost a full day later.

Such was the onslaught of derision on the site that the person who originally complained about the slurs, a Kristin N., claims only one comment in the first hundred posted actually criticized the remarks as inappropriate.

After attention from other blogs, the thread was suppressed and placed under review, but before long it was returned to the site intact, and attracted a new series of racial slurs when the original complaint email was posted publicly to the site, with the sender's email address intact.

Free Republic may have decided again to remove the thread in question altogether, as a search of the blog performed Sunday failed to find it.

What has appeared, instead, is a series of new comment threads, such as one entitled "Hate Speech Against Malia Obama On Conservative Blogs Reported By Hate Speech Planting Journalist," in which the "Freepers" fight back.

That thread read in part:

Chris Parry [author of the Vancouver Sun article], it appears, has advocated on his Daily Kos blog any number of egregious offenses, among them: posting hate speech on sites like Free Republic and blaming it on conservatives. Parry posted under the name "hollywoodoz" on Daily Kos, where his signature was "Fool me once, I'll punch you in the fucking head." Parry outed himself as hollywoodoz here, where he discloses the company he helped start. In essence: Parry, the journalist, found his story right where he'd been circling it for a very long time, and reported it as news. Sigh.

Another thread issues a "call to action" to get Parry fired as a Vancouver Sun writer. It features a long list of contact information to major North American media outlets, and lists a litany of alleged journalistic transgressions by the reporter and blogger.

Some of the quotes in Free Republic's original thread, as reported by the Sun:

"Could you imagine what world leaders must be thinking seeing this kind of street trash and that we paid for this kind of street ghetto trash to go over there?"

"They make me sick .... The whole family... mammy, pappy, the free loadin' mammy-in-law, the misguided chillin', and especially 'lil cuz... This is not the America I want representin' my peeps."

-- Daniel Tencer

from the artist formerly-known as Michael Jagoff
[from his upcoming bootleg album: Off-The-Record; recorded on microcassette; distributed anonymously]

[Introductory lyrics excised; no reason to revise bad rubbish]

[HisFamily/Advisors]: "Just plead it! Puh-leead it!"

[Mr. Jagoff]: "Shhhove it up your ass, then eat it! [trademark: Yip!]
Sony got lucky, knows I'm not 'right,'
Hymie's so hungry...y'all's so uptight

Delete it...de-lete it...

Wipe it from your slate
'n clean it!
Take a big write-off,
y'all do alright;
Got a new boy-toy
be here tonight

Delete...de-lete it

[Yip!] I's just white enough to beat it.
Sony's all hungry,
dun know wrong from right;
gots Beatles albums,
I can sleep tight

Delete it...de-lete it.

Johnny Cochrane's gone,
and I need it!

Taken my passport,
can't take a flight;
Who's gonna scrub me
in lockup tonight?"

...De-lete It

[abrupt stop, no echo; or the sound of prison-gates shutting or a toilet-bowl flushing. Your pick.]

[copyright: Quincy Germs 2005]

by Todd Brendan Fahey

"Jesus Christ, what happened?"

"It's awful," he said. And I could tell that he was crying real, anguished tears. Suddenly and with unnerving clarity, he whispered, "I feel so awful. I thought about tying off a bed sheet...", but then his voice trailed away.

"I'll be there in forty minutes. Are you good for that long?"

He said he thought so. By the exhausted resignation in his voice I felt reasonably certain that the suicidal impulses had passed and that he was now rounding the bend into that stage of dread that accompanies savage transgressions against a loved one. I knew before I'd even hung up the phone that Jurgen had beaten his wife, though I don't know precisely how I knew -- I had no reason to convict my good friend of such an offense.

As fellow English instructors at a local college, Jurgen had become one of my closest friends. I had met him at a critical juncture in his life, weighing heavily, as he was, the costs of separating from Patrice. In the ensuing weeks we talked frequently about his feelings of guilt and inadequacy, both as a lover to his wife and an apostatized member of the Mormon church.

"I'm glad I went on that mission before I left the church," he often said. "I learned Dutch and got the hell out of Ogden. I'd be managing the spark plug counter at some auto parts store if I hadn't gone. I swear to God I would."

He came back to the States with the hunger of a defrocked monk, moved out of his parents' home, painting houses to settle his undergraduate tuition; after work, he'd scatter most of his paycheck at one of the few drinking holes in Ogden, Utah. That is when he met Patrice.

"She couldn't have dealt with the eyes," Jurgen had told me. "God, the poor dog must have been terrified."

We were all arrested that night. Somehow, though, I succeeded in dragging the officers several hundred feet to a puddle of my own vomit, which they recognized as authentic by cross-checking the stain on my sleeve, and I was released with a warning. And though Jurgen looked considerably better than the two hangover victims I'd bailed out nearly a decade earlier, his bond was much steeper. There was no restitution that my friend could offer; no extenuation offered for crimes of youth.

"Where you wanna go?" I asked him, after the bail clerk counted the hundred-dollar bills I had just laid on the counter.

"Let's get me a couple of belts," he said. "That's what I should have done before. Should have just left the house and drank right through it. Trice would have been asleep when I got back and I could have gone comatose, and neither of us would have remembered a thing."

We drove to the City Club, as it was only three or four blocks away and Jurgen knew the proprietor and knew he would let us stay past closing time. On our way in, a handsome, diminutive waiter, wearing a gold satin shirt unbuttoned to midchest, stopped us, placing an index finger lightly on Jurgen's arm.

"The owner's gone for the night," the young man said, glancing at Jurgen. "But he left the boxed set on the stereo. Want me to slip it in?"

I cringed, but Jurgen tapped the little queenie on his shoulder with a fist, like he would have any fraternity buddy. "You're a good man, Stephen," he said.

The waiter blushed and walked over to the stereo in back of the bar, where he dropped a CD into the platter.

I watched Jurgen swipe the first whiskey from the tray while the waiter lowered a Pepsi onto the table, and I think it was the first time I actually felt embarrassed about my sobriety. We were both in the budding flower of our careers as Men of Letters, and I felt a certain professional responsibility to meet this crisis as all great men in the budding flower of their careers as writers had met similar crises: with a hearty laugh and a glass of Scotch whiskey, maybe even a cigarette. I knew it was irrational, but so probably did John Berryman and Fitzgerald and Dylan Thomas. And as soon as I made that diseased connection, I found myself committed.

"Don't worry about it," I said calmly, but I could feel myself shaking under my coat. "I'll just join you for one, then I'll take you wherever you're sleeping tonight."

He nodded and sipped from his glass and watched me as I pulled my own glass to my nose, inhaling the vapors, washing Cardhu around the rim, bringing it to my lips, letting the first wash of malt nectar flow past the tongue, a sting so full of pain and beauty and recollection that I lost consciousness for a bare moment. "What happened tonight?" I whispered, my voice far off in some boyhood tree house in Longview, Washington, victim to a bottle of Canadian Mist stolen by a neighbor kid from his father.

Jurgen finished off his Scotch and flagged down the waiter, who brought over two clean glasses and an announcement. "We're closing now. And so is the cash register. I can bring over the bottle if you want to pay me a little something for it now. I'll never tell."

"It's up to you." Jurgen shrugged. "I just know your wife's gonna freak if you come home three-to-the-wind. She's a good woman. You want to keep her."

The waiter smiled and left the bottle on the table. I don't know who poured first, but Jurgen didn't say a thing to me about my second glass, or my third. Instead, he repeated a variation on a story I had heard at least a dozen times in as many months. I didn't know what to say to him this time, any more than I had in the past: his wife was crazed, and I thought he was a natural-born saint for putting up with her.

She accused him of cheating at least twice a week and had flung books, ashtrays--anything within reach-- at his skull on at least three occasions. When she drank, she had the disconcerting habit of "revealing the family jewels," as he put it, despairingly, which made every barbecue and cocktail party a source of great anxiety for him.

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I think I would have smacked her around, too. And I said so, finally -- just slipped off my well-lubed tongue, and it came as a genuine shock to my ears.

"No, no," he said, brightening, "I'm glad someone else agrees. God, I've actually worried about having a stroke! Three years of this crap. Here," he said, refilling my glass. "So, you don't think I'm scum?"

The room was pulsing. I stared at Jurgen and saw one of the most patient, decent men I've ever been privileged to know. "Huh-uh. But I couldn't tell you what to do, either. Looks like you're trapped."

He nodded. "Yeah. I knew it from the minute I proposed. She'd kill herself if I left; but I can't take it anymore. I just can't take it anymore. I was sitting in that ratty recliner in the livingroom, and she came in and started raving. It took me five minutes to figure out what the fuck she was talking about."

"What was it?" I said. I slid my half-full glass of Scotch toward the center of the table and grabbed for the watery dregs of the Pepsi, which I drank down gratefully, then began chewing on the ice. Suddenly, I couldn't stand the taste of the Scotch.

"Turned out she was still mad about a party we were at last week. She got really drunk and I lost her. When she finally came back from God knows where, I was talking to a cousin of an old student of mine. I wasn't doing anything wrong. Like, seven of us were standing around and, Jesus, I was just talking to the girl."

He shrugged. "So I finally got it out of her, what was bugging her. And then she went berserk! Ran into the kitchen and came back with a bunch of dirty plates and shit from the counter. She missed my head by about half an inch with a big meat fork. And then I lost it. Goddamn it, I was just tired of cleaning up all the broken pieces, just tired of dealing with her moods. So I socked her, knocked her out cold. After about three or four minutes, she wasn't waking up too good, so I called the paramedics."

"I thought she called the dogs."

He shook his head. "They brought an Ogden sheriff along with 'em, arrested me on the spot--something about a 'cooling-off period'. Trice couldn't stop screaming...sh' kept saying, 'I deserved it. He didn't mean it, I deserved it!' I felt like a turd."

Jurgen shrugged and shot back the whiskey. "You wanna know what's weird?"

I nodded.

"She's gonna love me when I get home. She's gonna treat me better than she's ever treated me before; she's gonna keep a lid on it." He stared down into his empty glass. "Some gals need to be dominated -- know where the power's coming from. I wasn't thinking like that when I slugged her, but before you came and got me out of the can, I started thinking about Ray Carver. His wife was just like Trice. Carver used to tie on a big one, I mean a really big one, and when MaryAnn picked at him that 'one last time,' he'd bash a bottle over her noggin and then they'd make up and go to bed. It just came to me -- one of those moments of resolution you read about but never really ever have yourself. Everything I ever read by Carver just came at me, and I realized that Trice's been knocked around by every guy she's cared about until I found her. Here I was, thinking I was about to deliver her from a life worse than hell. I thought, I'm a nice guy, a returned missionary for Chrissakes, and I can treat this poor girl better than anyone's ever treated her before. I thought, y'know, maybe one day we'll have kids and start going to church again. I'd like my kids to go to church. But Trice didn't respect me. Now she's gonna love me."

I laid the ten-note on the table and buttoned the topmost button of my coat, and Jurgen and I walked slowly down the icy steps of the City Club. I asked him, one more time, whether he wouldn't rather come back to my apartment and sleep in the guest room and see Trice the next morning, but he declined graciously, and I dropped him off at the base of his driveway and drove back to Salt Lake.

I was glad that I had cut my losses at three, was actually very proud of myself, and the drive home went smoothly. The key slid quietly into the dead bolt, after which I took great care not to bump into the furniture. In high school, if my mother were still up, which she would be, I would be made to breathe into her face, and then I would invariably be grounded for the next two weeks. My father, having never enjoyed the taste of liquor, not even beer, grieved at seeing a nearly grown young man being subjected to such scrutiny, but he always supported her decision. When I turned twenty-one, a few months after I had returned from London, he paid for my admittance to a private rehabilitation clinic, but not once did he speak to me about it, not once did he ask how I felt in those early morning hours around a group conference table with eleven other shivering alcoholics. As for my mother, she thought her boy had been delivered back to her.

I heard a stirring in the bedroom, and when I did, I groped quickly for the refrigerator and sought out something spicy, stuffing my mouth with what was probably the dinner my wife had made for us and had to put away alone hours earlier -- a complicated dish, tasting of chicken marinated in a curry -- as she walked across the hardwood floor and I strained my eyes and saw the crushing hurt, then the anger.

No dishes would be broken in my house this night, no punches thrown. I would not make love to my wife for many days, and when I would, it would be for both of us a lonely, passionless affair.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Todd Brendan Fahey's collection of short stories, Dogshit Park & other atrocities, shall appear in print as another Far Gone Book in October 2009.  $15.00/signed (excluding shipping).  Contact: fargone@fargonebooks.com

by Todd Brendan Fahey
June 21, 2009


"You've aged really well. Different than I thought. You still have those eyes. ...I've still got my nose," she laughs.

It's a laugh that is she. Never, in this incarnation, will she know how beautiful she really is. Such is not in her to know. It's something she gives away with her laugh.

"You've put on some weight--"

"You've thought about how I'd look?"

"Oh, so often. You know. Fuck, we were insanely in love with each other."

I made some motion to say it's alright, that there's no point in tracking back.

"Yeah. We've both done it. With me, it's that...goddamned perfume," he smiles, gritting his teeth. "And old Genesis."

"Ripples." They say it together, and find themselves laughing. Together. Love is a vacuum, in which nothing else survives. It is a complete laugh.

Stan smiles, just happy to have made the trip.

A dark beach near campus, '84; green windowpane in gelatin. The moon draws the ocean far out, the sheen of sand a blank sheet; time, a carpet across the sky. It could all end here and all would go on just as it is. A shattering thing. Plunge in, swim far out to sea, to not come back; sit and listen to the pitch and ebb of the waters. Whichever. All were here, have been, are, will be, from ever and forever more.

Why not just sit.

She kisses him fully in the mouth. An ancient thing, the collision. She was there, and now we are here. From really wanting to sleep to being under is a stride. The suck of a wave, the wash. Like breathing. The press of her lips a language of intention, insistence. All that had timed out, or been interrupted, waylaid, not given license to, rendered malem prohibitum, all that had kept him in limbo for so many years, now freed. She is not going to stop.

He casts his tongue across her teeth and upward to the flesh above, and she makes a sound that is from memory.

"Uhn.."

"m'I love you."

"m'I know." Grounds her knees into the cushions, astride.

His lift, lodge.

Another resonance, this one not from a place retained. "Doo...you remember coming up to the 10th floor, and we'd sing 'Pigs'...huuh..."

"Stay with me, Sharon."

"Hu...m'trying."

Unclasps his mouth from hers, holds her hips down tighter. "I remember everything. The color of your bedspread; the animals you kept on it. The smell of the staircase up to your room came to me in a dream one night, about five years ago. We're not there anymore."

"H'fuck," a breath coming as from runner in the last legs of it. She has never been here before.

"Stay with me."

"H'on the street that night..."

"May '85. I didn't see you; I felt you."

"That was so weird." She is settling down a bit. "I hadn't seen you in two years; there you were. Honest to God, I didn't know what to do. What did I do?"

"You jumped up off the street and I caught you."

That laugh again. "My friends thought I was insane."

It could end here and still be ok. He will not be disappointed. Like in an NDE--the light and the assurance and the seeing again of persons dear, and then drawn back to the body. Still a very beautiful thing to know; and it will all happen soon enough, anyway. Why not just sit.

She kisses him again. Different this time. It says, Thank You.

Yo ho, yo ho...  I love summertime on islands.  This one is a swell weekend venue.  The ferry allows motorcycles and cars; lots of horses and cows and white sand beaches and even bikinis in the hot months (rare, for this conservative kultur).  Raw fish/sushi of the other variety.  I suspect that psychedelic 'shrooms even grow in the cow patties, but my last hunt was indeterminate.  Will try again next weekend.   

All photos taken by and copyright Todd Brendan Fahey

When driving into town (Walla Walla) on a back road the other day, I noticed that several athletic fields had been built behind the state penitentiary. No big deal right? The thing that made my skin crawl was that there were enough lights to light up the athletic fields at night, as if for night games or, a more sinister purpose, monitor detainees; there is also a dedicated entrance to that area connecting the public road to the arenas, as if to allow bus loads of people to be brought to the arena areas with out the confusion of processing masses of people through the only other entrance; into the maximum security prison. Why lights? Maximum security prisons don't usually have night games. Why no bleachers or stands? Why a dedicated entrance to the athletic fields? If the complex is for prisoners, they can get there from the prison proper. With the addition of the entrance to the athletic fields, there are now two ways in and out. Why? Be afraid

Wondershare software, one of the best providers of net media recoding and converting, has recently released a brand-new product named Wondershare Radio Recorder, which is based on shoutcast protocol-getting mp3 data from server directly. Radio Recorder guarantees the excellent output quality, and will greatly satisfy the needs of those who want to record online radio stations.

Wondershare Radio Recorder, a powerful software with 20,000+ online radio stations, is mainly used to record those online radio stations of shoutcast protocol, and can also convert recorded songs into mp3, m4a, aac, wma, mav, ogg, ape, etc, so that you can enjoy the most popular radio music in your iPod, iPhone, Blackberry, Zune, Apple TV, PSP, Creative Zen, PS3, Xbox 360, Archos.etc. Key Features • Wide-Ranged Radio Resources Wondershare Radio Recorder provides large amounts of online radio resources, including the recommendation of Top-200 radio stations and almost 20,000 most popular online stations throughout the world. It also support playing, recording and collecting your favorite radio stations into your “Collection” list.

• Radio Stations Collection Besides wide-ranged radio resources, it also supports collecting your favorite stations with such huge resources freely. And you could also add pls. files as you like, and record, play, delete those collected stations and pls. files.

• Record online Radio Stations Radio Recorder is mainly used to record radio stations of Shoutcast protocol. And the recorded songs will be split into song by song automatically.

• Convert It could also be used to convert the recorded songs into any audio formats, and put them into your iPod, iPhone and Blackberry. • Edit ID3 tags Supporting editing track information such as title, artist, album, genre, comments, etc, thus you can make your own music library at will.

• Upgrade free: The program will inform you intelligently every time once the upgraded version is publicized. So you can choose to upgrade free or not.

Availability and Suggestion: You can download the free version of Wondershare Radio Recorder on: http://www.download-streaming-video.com/radio-recorder/

In order to help us provide you better products, you are highly appreciated to send us your feedback via e-mail: sales-hm3@wondershare.com About Wondershare Software Established in the year of 2003, Wondershare is dedicated to developing innovative multimedia applications for both individual users and business users. Our company name "Wondershare" shows our philosophy - to share our creativity with the world, and bring fun, ease and professionalism to our users. http://www.download-streaming-video.com

By Frosty Wooldridge
May 3, 2009

In my 40 years traveling around this planet, I discovered human beings respect nothing anywhere in the world. No matter how beautiful, no matter how pristine the location and no matter what country—human beings toss their trash everywhere.  They inject their chemicals into the land, air and water.  They throw their rubbish into rivers, lakes and streams. 

In my forty years of Scuba diving around the world, I’ve seen our pristine lakes and oceans turn into trash cans for humans.  Millions of tires, nets, plastic, glass and metal containers roll around the ocean floor like ‘creatures’ out of place.

As recently exposed on Oprah, “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch” twice the size of Texas, features three million tons of plastic debris floating around the Pacific.  In some places, it reaches 60 feet thick.  It kills millions of marine creatures annually.  It’s not just the Pacific, 46,000 pieces of plastic float on every square mile of all our oceans and seas!  That figure is correct!

While riding my bicycle around the world or climbing mountains, I have seen humans toss soiled baby diapers into pristine pools, fjords and rivers.  On Mt. Everest, known as the “Earth Mother”, climbers have left tons of trash and garbage on her flanks in their efforts to reach the top.  At the base, climbers have turned the area into a sewage pit.

Most large rivers running out of industrial nations feature raw sewage that creates ‘dead zones’ like the 10,000 square mile one at the mouth of the Mississippi River to 27,000 square mile dead zones in the North Sea.  How big is that?  That’s the size of North Carolina.

Instead of changing their ways, humans continue adding more trash upon the trash with no end in sight.

In a sobering expose’ Mother Jones featured a brilliant piece by world famous author Bill McKibben.  He also wrote a ground-breaking book: The End of Nature.  I highly recommend reading his books.

“Waste not, want not” by Bill McKibben, Mother Jones/May-June 2009 http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/05/waste-not-want-not

“Once a year or so, it's my turn to run recycling day for our tiny town,” McKibben said. “But it's also kind of disturbing, this waste stream. For one, a town of 550 sure generates a lot—a trailer load every couple of weeks...

May 3, 2009
The Independent (UK)

Revolutionary new web software could put giants such as Google in the shade when it comes out later this month. Andrew Johnson reports

The biggest internet revolution for a generation will be unveiled this month with the launch of software that will understand questions and give specific, tailored answers in a way that the web has never managed before.

The new system, Wolfram Alpha, showcased at Harvard University in the US last week, takes the first step towards what many consider to be the internet's Holy Grail – a global store of information that understands and responds to ordinary language in the same way a person does.

Although the system is still new, it has already produced massive interest and excitement among technology pundits and internet watchers.

Computer experts believe the new search engine will be an evolutionary leap in the development of the internet. Nova Spivack, an internet and computer expert, said that Wolfram Alpha could prove just as important as Google. "It is really impressive and significant," he wrote. "In fact it may be as important for the web (and the world) as Google, but for a different purpose."

Tom Simpson, of the blog Convergenceofeverything.com, said: "What are the wider implications exactly? A new paradigm for using computers and the web? Probably. Emerging artificial intelligence and a step towards a self-organising internet? Possibly... I think this could be big."

Wolfram Alpha will not only give a straight answer to questions such as "how high is Mount Everest?", but it will also produce a neat page of related information – all properly sourced – such as geographical location and nearby towns, and other mountains, complete with graphs and charts.

The real innovation, however, is in its ability to work things out "on the fly", according to its British inventor, Dr Stephen Wolfram. If you ask it to compare the height of Mount Everest to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, it will tell you. Or ask what the weather was like in London on the day John F Kennedy was assassinated, it will cross-check and provide the answer. Ask it about D sharp major, it will play the scale. Type in "10 flips for four heads" and it will guess that you need to know the probability of coin-tossing. If you want to know when the next solar eclipse over Chicago is, or the exact current location of the International Space Station, it can work it out.

Dr Wolfram, an award-winning physicist who is based in America, added that the information is "curated", meaning it is assessed first by experts. This means that the weaknesses of sites such as Wikipedia, where doubts are cast on the information because anyone can contribute, are taken out. It is based on his best-selling Mathematica software, a standard tool for scientists, engineers and academics for crunching complex maths...

April 26, 2009

Please provide press and/or interview for MI Representative Paul Opsommer, regarding HCR 0006 ["No RFID chips in Drivers Licenses"].

Rep. Opsommer writes: "I have received many calls from people in support of my call for the Enhanced Drivers License agreement to be terminated because of the RFID chips. This has become critical because the Secretary of State has indicated these RFID chipped licenses will be available this month, April 21st. It would set a horrible precedent that we must have RFID of any kind in our licenses."

ISSUES ARE: HCR 06 Enhanced Drivers License; HCR 9 2nd amendment and HCR 4 10th amendment for state sovereignty.  [http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(5wwczw45fbywurf2vgfrnefo))/mileg.aspx?page=getobject&objectname=2009-HCR-0006. Read repeal the RFID chip in licenses bill here: http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(pak5z045mnp3quzfdl1xzg45))/mileg.aspx?page=GetObject&objectname=2009-HCR-0004 .  Read 10th amendment bill here: http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(41rzw0i43efe4p45g1n55y45))/mileg.aspx?page=getObject&objectName=2009-HCR-0009 .]

There is a petition people can sign: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/michigan-stands-for-constitutional-sovereignty

Contact Representative Paul Opsommer: LANSING OFFICE We are located in the: Anderson House Office Building N-1197 House Office Building Lansing, MI 48933

MAILING ADDRESS N-1197 House Office Building P.O. Box 30014 Lansing, MI 48933 Phone: (517) 373-1778 Toll Free: (877) 859-8086

Email: paulopsommer@house.mi.gov

http://www.gophouse.com/contact.asp?District=93

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=12856=93