Barry Graham's Blog, page 105

My favorite poem of this century so far, I think.

michaelrobbinspoet:

So Yahoo! News has informed me they cannot publish the inaugural poem for Obama they commissioned from me, because it contains the word “queef.” I could drone (ha!) on about the obscenity of a society in which any moron can purchase an assault rifle but a tiny vulgar word is considered too…

I listened tothis Dharma talkby Gil Fronsdal. In the discussion that followed, Fronsdal, an excellent Buddhist teacher, unwittingly showed that an awakened heart does not necessarily lead to political understanding.

When someone mentioned the U.S.’s penchant for oppressing and exploiting other nations, Fronsdal responded with the “well, everybody else does it too” defense. He then praised Americans for their spirit of volunteerism, saying that the support they give to non-pro...

In 1962 Donald Westlake, under the pen name Richard Stark, wrote The Hunter. It was the first of a series of novels about Parker, an amoral criminal who kills whenever it suits his purpose.

Unlike Jim Thompson in The Killer Inside Me, Stark makes no attempt to analyze or explain Parker. His pre-criminal past (if he ever had one) is never mentioned. He has no conscience. He doesn’t seem to particularly want to kill; he just doesn’t care. In The Hunter, when he accidentally kills a w...

Today is the birthday of Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet. I must see if I can find some vegetarian haggis in Portland.

But pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, its bloom is shed;
Or like the snow falls in the river,
A moment white - then melts for ever;
Or like the borealis race,
That flit ere you can point their place;
Or like the rainbow’s lovely form
Evanishing amid the storm.

criminalwisdom:

A homeless man is covered in snow while sleeping on the Bay Street sidewalk in Toronto’s financial district, as temperatures dip to -25 degrees with windchill on January 22, 2013. (Darren Calabrese/National Post)

(Source: nationalpost)

In this conversation with Thomas Pluck, novelist and social worker Zak Mucha says:

Once a pal and I were working a moving job at a hospital… We were, at the moment, under a fume hood, trying to take it apart. Some doctor was talking to us. All we could see were his ankles. At one point the doctor said, “You seem like intelligent guys, why are you doing this work?” My pal under the hood with me actually owned the company.

My pal said, “Hold on. I’m going to look at your face when I answer you.”...

On january 19, The Guardian published a powerful article by an old friend of mine, Kevin McKenna, who was my editor when I wrote about boxing for Scotland on Sunday in the 1990s.

The article is getting a lot of attention, and deservedly so. McKenna, a unionist, argues that Scottish independence is becoming the only viable option.

I am not a unionist, but, even if I were, I would still vote for independence, and the reason is simple. Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister, promises that i...

Today is Martin Luther King Day. Ironically, it is also Inauguration Day, and the U.S. has a President who, though black, would most likely have opposed the Civil Rights Act.

I’ve been saying for some time now that Obama’s supporters have battered wife syndrome. As he makes it compulsory for everyone to buy the wares of health insurance companies, assassinates anyone he wants to, including U.S. citizens, murders children in drone strikes and once again signs off on indefinite deten...

Yesterday I watched The Big Heat. It’s one of the greatest noirs, and far ahead of its time. Some of its scenes have stuck in my mind since I first saw it more than 30 years ago. I’m surprised at what realistic brutality it got away with in 1953; there’s even a discussion between cops of whether a murder in which a woman had cigarette burns all over her body was sexually motivated, with one cop stating that her body showed no signs of that.

Watching it again, I was struck by...