1st Day Issue: Tierra de los Sueños / TdsPosta / Offshore Wind Farm

Click image for larger.

We can see the future through the window of a dream. The future looks like this.

Without dreams, the future is black, void, poisonous, sickened. A dark curtain hides a better future from us.

Ach! waren alle Menschen wijs
En wilden daarbij wel!
De Aard waar haar een Paradijs
Nu isse meesteen Hel.

-- Dirk Camphuysen

KONG HAS CLIMBED TO THE TOP OF LEVER HOUSE!

Click, surely good things happen.

Kong does not always pick magnificent or awe-inspiring buildings to climb. Sometimes he likes to climb undistinguished Bauhaus-influenced glass boxes. Like this one. Since Lever House was built in 1952, so many other boxes exactly like it -- but taller -- have surrounded it, that now the owners wish they could tear it down and build something 20 storeys higher, for the extra rentable office space.

But they can't. It's now a historical and architectural landmark, and can never be torn down.

Wikipedia:

Lever House, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and located at 390 Park Avenue in New York City, is the quintessential and seminal glass box International Style skyscraper. It is the second curtain wall skyscraper in New York City, after the Secretariat Building at the United Nations Headquarters. The building features an innovative courtyard and public space. Most of the headquarters of the corporations on and around Park Avenue adopted this style of building.

The Lever House was built in 1951-1952 to be the American headquarters of the British soap company Lever Brothers.

New York City skyline reimagined, fantasized, memorialized

Click on image, maybe it gets bigger.

Top right: The cover of The New Yorker magazine for the fifth anniversary of the attack which destroyed the World Trade Center towers. Top left: An inside illustration; New York City is restored, but not the WTC. Both depict Philippe Petit, who walked a tightrope between the Towers on the morning of 7 August, 1974. Artists: John Mavroudis and Owen Smith.

Bottom left: New Yorker cover depicting friends, neighbors and relatives of King Kong sitting on the roofs of nearby shorter and more undistinguished buildings while Kong fights off attacking airplanes on top of the Empire State Building. One giant ape watches Kong through binoculars. Artist unknown.

Bottom right: Kong attacks New Yorkers with a Super Soaker. Artist unknown.

Iran missile test photo, latest update

This one's much better.

always trust official state media agencies / the camera never lies / a picture is worth 1000 words / Bigfoot & Loch Ness Monster @ missile launch

In the four-missile version of the image released Wednesday by Sepah News, the media arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, two major sections (encircled in red) appear to closely replicate other sections (encircled in orange).

Below, another image that The Associated Press received from the same source on Thursday, which appeared to be taken from the same vantage point at almost the same time. (Illustration by The New York Times; photo via Agence France-Presse)

The New York Times
Thursday 10 July 2008

In an Iranian Image,
a Missile Too Many

by Mike Nizza and Patrick Witty

Latest update at 3 p.m. Eastern Agence France-Presse has retracted the image as “apparently digitally altered.” More developments at the bottom of the post.

As news spread across the world of Iran’s provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison. Unfortunately, it appeared to contain one too many missiles, a point that had not emerged before the photo was used on the front pages of The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites.

Agence France-Presse said that it obtained the image from the Web site of Sepah News, the media arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, on Wednesday. But there was no sign of it there later in the day. Today, The Associated Press distributed what appeared to be a nearly identical photo from the same source, but without the fourth missile.

As the above illustration shows, the second missile from the right appears to be the sum of two other missiles in the image. The contours of the billowing smoke match perfectly near the ground, as well in the immediate wake of the missile. Only a small black dot in the reddish area of exhaust seems to differ from the missile to its left, though there are also some slight variations in the color of the smoke and the sky.

Does Iran’s state media use Photoshop? The charge has been leveled before. So far, though, it can’t be said with any certainty whether there is any official Iranian involvement in this instance. Sepah apparently published the three-missile version of the image today without further explanation.

For its part, Agence France-Presse retracted its four-missile version this morning, saying that the image was “apparently digitally altered” by Iranian state media. The fourth missile “has apparently been added in digital retouch to cover a grounded missile that may have failed during the test,” the agency said. Later, it published an article quoting several experts backing that argument.

Along with major doubts about the image, American intelligence officials had larger questions on exactly how many missiles were fired. One defense official said that “at least 7, and possibly up to 10″ had taken flight in all, though the intelligence data was still being sorted out. Only one of them was said to be a Shahab 3.

Throughout the day, several news sites have taken steps to disown the photograph that they ran on Wednesday, including LATimes.com and MSNBC.com.

In a sentiment no doubt echoed by news organizations everywhere, an MSNBC editor acknowledged that the four-missile picture was initially welcomed with open arms. “As the media editor working the msnbc.com home page yesterday, I was frustrated with the quality of a fuzzy video image we published of the Iranian missile launch,” said Rich Shulman, the network’s associate multimedia editor. “So I was thrilled when the top image crossed the news wires.”

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting from Washington.

- 30 -

What Child is this who, laid to rest / On Mary’s lap is sleeping? / Whom angels greet with anthems sweet / While shepherds watch are keeping?

I just wanted to drop you a line to let you know that Amy gave birth this morning at 4:55AM to a healthy baby boy. He weighed in at 8 lbs 8 ounces [3.86 kilograms], and was 21 inches [53.3 centimeters] long. We named him Daniel.

Mike

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Mazel Tov!!! Wonderful! Jeez this kid is going to be SMART! What's his Apgar Score? Yeah, I could see little hints that this was on the way.

~ ~ ~

"Children also have artistic ability, and there is wisdom in their having it! The more helpless they are, the more instructive are the examples they furnish us; and they must be preserved free of corruption from an early age."

-- Paul Klee

pest control problems on Renzo Piano's new building

Yes, of course click for larger.

Remember the new Zentrum Paul Klee museum outside of Bern CH? Well, love it or hate it, it's by the Italian architect Renzo Piano.

Here's his latest building, the new headquarters of The New York Times (and, for that matter, The Boston Globe, and, for that matter, the International Herald Tribune) in Manhattan (New York City).

And it seems immediately to have a pest problem -- people (so far only male people) keep trying to climb the outside of it. Three so far.

A guy named George Willig climbed the outside of one of the World Trade Center towers, and a French guy named Philippe Petit hid on the roof of the WTC overnight, strung a tightrope between the two towers, and the next morning walked the tightrope. (When he first got the idea -- he saw a photo of the new WTC on a magazine cover while sitting in his dentist's office -- he didn't know how to walk a tightrope, but he learned.)

============

The New York Times
Wednesday 9 July 2008

Third Man Climbs
Times Building
and Is Arrested

by Sewell Chan

The New York Times Company is preparing to remove some of the distinctive ceramic rods that sheathe its one-year-old building in Midtown Manhattan, after three men have used the rods to scale the skyscraper over the last five weeks, a law enforcement official said on Wednesday.

The third climber scaled the face of the building in the predawn darkness early Wednesday. After unfurling a banner about Al Qaeda and staying on the building for about four hours, the man surrendered to police officers and was arrested around 5:20 a.m.

Unlike the two previous climbers, this one — identified later as David Malone, a 29-year-old activist from West Hartford, Conn., who studies Al Qaeda — did not attempt to make his way to the roof. Instead, he unfurled a banner around the fifth floor of the 52-story building, before climbing a few more stories. Several hours elapsed during which the police appeared to alternate between trying to go after the man and waiting for him to surrender.

Mr. Malone was taken out of the building’s West 40th Street entrance in handcuffs at 5:39 a.m. and placed in an ambulance. He was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan and then to the Midtown South Precinct, where he was charged with reckless endangerment in the first degree; criminal mischief by intent to damage property; making graffiti; criminal trespass in the third degree; and disorderly conduct by creating a dangerous act.

Mr. Malone, who grew up on Bishop Road in West Hartford, a middle-class suburb of the state capital, played basketball at the Kingswood-Oxford School, a private high school where he graduated in 1997, according to local news reports.

The police received a call at 1:23 a.m. Wednesday alerting them that there was a person scaling the skyscraper, at 620 Eighth Avenue, between 40th and 41st Streets. The authorities closed off Eighth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets to traffic, as well as West 41st Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, diverting vehicles onto other streets. Sidewalks below the Times building were closed to pedestrians.

Police officers tried to catch the climber by cutting through a window on the fifth floor of the building, but after having briefly rested at that level, he had already climbed past them.

The climbing episodes have at this point become something of an embarrassment for The Times. On June 5, two men scaled the building, hours apart, reaching the roof before being arrested. The first was Alain Robert, a 45-year-old French stuntman known for climbing tall buildings; the second was Renaldo Clarke, 32, of Brooklyn, who said he wanted to draw attention to the problem of malaria.

At the time, officials at The Times said they would tighten security and take other precautions to prevent anyone from climbing up the building again.

Asked whether those measures were effective, Catherine J. Mathis, a spokeswoman for The Times, said, “While the steps we took were worthwhile, we believe other measures are needed.”

She added, “We are exploring additional measures, some temporary and some permanent, to prevent a recurrence but are not going to discuss the specific changes under consideration.”

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said, “We have increased our presence in the immediate aftermath of this latest climb and I understand that the Times is taking additional measures to discourage or defeat further attempts to gain access to the ceramic ladder.”

A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that The Times was looking to remove about 9 feet of the ceramic rods from the bottom of the curtain-like screen that encases the building. The official also said that The Times had indeed increased security coverage of the building after the June 5 climbs, but that the level of security coverage had recently been reduced, for reasons that were not immediately clear. Finally, the official said it appeared that Mr. Malone had breached one of plywood barriers that had been erected after the June 5 climbs to deter similar acts.

The Daily News reported on its Web site early Wednesday morning that it had received a call from the latest climber and that he had identified himself as David Malone, 29, of Connecticut, who had dropped out of the University of Michigan to study Al Qaeda.

According to the police, Mr. Malone spoke with Jill Coffey, a night editor at The Daily News, after climbing to the 10th floor, where he sat on a ledge for about two hours.

Meanwhile, officers from the Emergency Service Unit, the Hostage Negotiation Team and other units, upon learning of the phone call, tried to persuade Mr. Malone to come down.

“We wanted him to come down to the fifth floor and we persuaded him to do so by telling him he could talk in person with Coffey there and that apparently worked, because he came down to the fifth floor and he talked to Coffey about his bin Laden plan,” said Paul J. Browne, a police spokesman.

What appears to be Mr. Malone’s Web site, called Bin Laden’s Plan, states that Mr. Malone has been “independently researching bin Laden and publicly advocating the aggressive isolation and destruction of Al Qaeda.” The site goes on to claim that Mr. Malone “has successfully predicted some of the major events of bin Laden’s war” and is now trying to warn of efforts by the terrorist network to goad the United States to invade Pakistan and Iran. (Mr. Malone did not immediately respond to an e-mail message from The Times, sent while he was still on the building, requesting an interview.)

Witnesses said the climber began his ascent near the northern entrance to the building, on West 41st Street, and made his way toward the western entrance, which is on Eighth Avenue, opposite from the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

“I thought he was a worker,” said Michael Pabon, 32, who was outside the bus terminal when he saw the man begin to scale the building. “He turned up to the letter ‘H’ and climbed above it,” Mr. Pabon said, referring to the letter H in the “The” of the New York Times logo, which is made up of giant black letters affixed to the ceramic rods on the Eighth Avenue side of the building.

It was above the “T” in “The” that the climber hung a white banner with red fliers stuck to it. The banner referenced Mr. Malone’s Web site about Mr. bin Laden. Some of the red fliers were also stuck to the windows of various floors in the building as the climber went up.

Witnesses said the climber was using his cellphone repeatedly during his ascent. “He’s some kind of professional,” Mr. Pabon said. “You could see he knows what he’s doing.”

After reaching the 11th floor, Mr. Malone faced out toward the street and talked on his cellphone for several minutes. He then descended to a spot between the 9th and 10th floors. Police officers on the fifth floor had breached a floor-to-ceiling window and some were outfitted with climbing cables and hard hats. A large inflatable cushion had been placed on the sidewalk in front of the main entrance, presumably to save the man if he jumped.

The Times building was designed by the architect Renzo Piano and opened last year. Both Mr. Robert and the second climber also scaled the building using the horizontal ceramic rods that sheath the exterior — and are one of the building’s most distinctive features. The rods are intended to allow sunlight while keeping out heat, helping the building use energy more efficiently.

There is a long history of attention-grabbing stunts at New York skyscrapers. The French stunt artist Philippe Petit walked along a high wire strung between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974, a feat that is the subject of a documentary, “Man on Wire.” In 1977, the mountain climber George H. Willig scaled the south tower of the trade center.

In 2006, another stuntman, Jeb Corliss, was arrested after trying to jump off the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

Prosecuting the stuntmen has sometimes proved difficult.

In the most recent cases, Mr. Robert, who climbed the Times building on June 5, faced misdemeanor counts of reckless endangerment, trespassing and graffiti. But on June 12 a grand jury decided to dismiss those charges, though it did allow Manhattan prosecutors to proceed with two counts of disorderly conduct against Mr. Robert. Lawyers for Mr. Clarke, who faced the same charges as Mr. Robert, said they hoped that he, too, would face only disorderly conduct charges.

On June 26, City Council members introduced a bill that would explicitly make it illegal to scale or jump from a building 25 feet or taller.

Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr., a Queens Democrat and former prosecutor who sponsored the bill, said in a statement:

We need to deter more copy cats, otherwise New York will become a Disneyland for daredevils. Soon anyone selling their book or ginsu knives will be scaling buildings and unfurling signs. We may not deter all jumpers and climbers, but they should be aware that their next stunt could take place on the inside of a jail cell.

Both The Times and the police expressed dismay at the latest stunt.

“We don’t think these antics should be romanticized in any way,” Mr. Browne, the police spokesman, said, adding, “The individuals should be held accountable, prosecuted for it.”

Ms. Mathis, the spokeswoman for The Times, said, “This is a very serious matter. The climber’s irresponsible and dangerous action jeopardized his safety and the safety of others.”

Reporting was contributed by Jill Agostino, Al Baker, Jay Davies, Jennifer Mascia, Hiroko Masuike, Marc Santora and Tanzina Vega.

- 30 -

============
Wikipedia
============

George Willig (born June 11, 1949) (aka "the human fly" or "the spiderman") is a mountain-climber from Queens, New York, United States, who climbed the South Tower (2 WTC) of the World Trade Center on 25 May 1977. At the time, it was the third tallest building in the world (behind 1 WTC and the Sears Tower). It took him 3.5 hours to scale the tower. New York City Mayor Abraham Beame fined him $1.10, one cent for each of the skyscraper's 110 stories.

Before the stunt, Willig was a toymaker. He visited the towers a year before the stunt and took measurements for the equipment he would need. He made special clamps that fit into the window washing tracks of the South Tower. The clamps he designed would lock into place when they were pulled down by his body weight. They would release when he decided to raise them. Once he built the equipment, he went to the World Trade Center 4 to 5 times at night to test the equipment. He began his climb at 6:30 a.m. that Thursday morning. As he was climbing, two police officers, one a suicide expert, were lowered down in a window washing basket to try to get Willig to give up. Willig swung away from the officers so they could not grab him. Willig and the officers talked, and the suicide expert realized that Willig knew what he was doing and was not a threat. The officer passed him a pen and paper, and Willig signed it "Best Wishes to my co-ascender." Police helped him to the top of the tower, by pulling him through a tiny window hatch at 10:05 a.m. and he was arrested. Willig said he could hear the crowd cheering from ground level. His climb received plenty of attention because it took 3 1/2 hours to complete, allowing news cameras and spectators to gather. The only significant problem Willig ran into was irregularities in window washing tracks. However, he was prepared for this because he brought a little hammer to fix the irregularities. He signed his name on a piece of metal on the observation deck of the South Tower, which was still visible until the tower was destroyed on September 11.

The stunt paved the way for appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Good Morning America, The Merv Griffin Show, and ABC's Wide World of Sports. He also got jobs as a stuntman on The Six Million Dollar Man, Trauma Center, and Hollywood Beat.

In 1979, he published a book called Going It Alone (ISBN 0-385-14726-0).

During the 1990s, Willig lived in California's San Fernando Valley, working as a remodeler of commercial buildings.

After the 9/11 attacks that destroyed both towers of the World Trade Center, Mr. Willig publicly said he regretted climbing the towers, as his actions may have brought them to the attention of terrorists. But he later told CNN that that was just an initial, emotional reaction and that he was still glad to have climbed the towers.[1]

==========

Philippe Petit (born August 13, 1949) is a French high wire artist who gained fame for his illegal walk between the former Twin Towers in New York City on August 7, 1974. [1]

He used a 450 pound cable to do so and also a custom made 26 foot long, 55 pound balancing pole. Tight-rope walker, unicyclist, magician and pantomime artist, Philippe Petit was also one of the earliest modern day street jugglers in Paris in 1968. He juggled and worked on a slack rope with regularity in Washington Square Park in New York City in the early 1970s. Petit is one of the Artists-in-Residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. Other famous structures he has used for tightrope walks include that Cathedral, The Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Louisiana Superdome, and between the Palais de Chaillot and the Eiffel Tower. Petit currently lives in Woodstock, New York. A documentary film named "Man on Wire" by UK director James Marsh dealing with Petit's WTC performance won both the World Cinema Jury and Audience awards at the Sundance Filmfestival 2008. The film also won awards at the 2008 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, N.C.

Planning the World Trade Center Walk

Petit first received the inspiration while he sat in his dentist's office in Paris in 1968. He came upon an article on the as-yet unbuilt towers, along with an illustration of the model. He then became obsessed with the towers, collecting articles on the towers whenever possible. Petit also traveled to New York on several occasions to have some first-hand observations. Since the towers were still under construction, Philippe and N.Y.-based photographer Jim Moore went up in a helicopter to do aerial photographs of the WTC.

The purpose of having these photographs was for Petit to make a scale model of the towers to help him figure out the rigging he needed to prepare for the upcoming wirewalk. Petit and three others made fake identification cards (claiming that they were contractors that were installing an electrified fence on the roof) in order to gain access to the towers. Prior to this, Petit snuck into the towers several times, hiding on the roof and other areas in the unfinished towers, in order to get a sense of what type of equipment he needed.

To make it easier to sneak into the buildings, Petit thoroughly observed the clothes worn by construction workers and what kinds of tools they carried, as well as the clothing of businessmen so that he would blend in with them when he tried to enter the buildings. He also noted what time the workers arrived and left, so he could determine when he would have roof access. He once even claimed that he was with a French architecture magazine wanting to interview the workers on the roof. The Port Authority allowed Petit to conduct the interviews, but the real reason he wanted to be up on the roof was to make more observations. He was once caught by a police officer on the roof, and his hopes to do the high wire walk were dampened, but he eventually regained the confidence to proceed with it.

Petit and his crew were able to ride in a freight elevator to the 104th floor with their equipment the day before the walk, and were able to store this equipment just nineteen steps from the roof. In order to pass the cable across the void, Petit and his crew decided to use a bow and arrow. They first shot across a fishing line, and then passed larger and larger ropes across the space between the towers until they were able to pass the 450 pound steel cable across. Cavalettis (guy lines) were used to stabilize the cable and keep the swaying of the wire to a minimum. For the first time in the history of the Twin Towers, they were joined. The 'artistic crime of the century' took six years of planning, during which he learned everything he could about the buildings, taking into account such problems as the swaying of the towers because of wind and how to get the walking cable across the 140 foot gap between the towers.

Shortly after 7:15 a.m., without hesitation, Petit stepped off the South Tower and onto his 3/4" 6x19 IWRC steel cable. The 24-year-old Petit made eight crossings between the still-unfinished towers, a quarter mile above the sidewalks of Manhattan, in an event that lasted about 45 minutes. During that time, in addition to walking, he sat on the wire, gave knee salute and, while lying on the wire, dialogued with a seagull circling above his head.

Port Authority Police Department Sgt. Charles Daniels, who was dispatched to the roof to bring Petit down, later reported his experience:

I observed the tightrope 'dancer'—because you couldn't call him a 'walker'—approximately halfway between the two towers. And upon seeing us he started to smile and laugh and he started going into a dancing routine on the high wire....And when he got to the building we asked him to get off the high wire but instead he turned around and ran back out into the middle....He was bouncing up and down. His feet were actually leaving the wire and then he would resettle back on the wire again....Unbelievable really....[E]verybody was spellbound in the watching of it.[2]

He was finally persuaded by police officers to give himself up after he was warned that a police helicopter would come to pick him off the wire. Petit was worried that the wind from the helicopter would knock him off the wire, so he decided it was time to give up. He was arrested once he stepped off the wire. His audacious high wire performance made headlines around the world.

When asked why he did the stunt, Petit would say “When I see three oranges, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk.”

The immense news coverage and public appreciation of Petit's high wire walk resulted in all formal charges relating to his walk being dropped. The court did however "sentence" Petit to perform a show for the children of New York City, which Petit transformed into another high-wire walk, this time above the Belvedere Lake in New York's Central Park. Petit was also presented with a lifetime pass to the Twin Towers' Observation Deck by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. His signature was on a steel beam close to his departure.

Petit's high-wire walk is credited with bringing the then rather unpopular Twin Towers much needed popular attention and affection. Up to that point, many had regarded them as ugly and utilitarian, and the not-yet completed buildings were having trouble renting their office space.

Bibliography

* Philippe Petit, Two towers, I walk, (New York: Reader's Digest, 1975), ASIN B00072LQRM.

* Philippe Petit, On The High Wire, Preface by Marcel Marceau, (New York: Random House, 1985). ISBN 039471573X.

* Philippe Petit, Traité du funambulisme, Preface by Paul Auster, (Paris: Albin Michel, 1997), ISBN: 2226041230, (In French).

* Petit Philippe, To Reach The Clouds My High Wire Walk Between The Twin Towers, (New York, North Point Press, 2002). ASIN B000UDX0JA.

i have absolutely no idea / hope it wiggles for u

au Cinéma Vleeptronoise / Zazie dans le Metro / Raymond Queneau / Louis Malle / doukipudonktan / bloudjinnzes

Zazie in the Metro
Zazie dans le métro

by Raymond Queneau (1959)
(then movie version by Louis Malle, 1960)

Zazie in the Metro — or simply Zazie, depending on the translation (original French title: Zazie dans le métro) — a French novel written in 1959, was the first major success of author Raymond Queneau.

Zazie explores colloquial language as opposed to 'standard' written French, a distinction that is particularly marked in French, where correct language usage is governed by an official academy [L’Académie française, fondée en 1635].

The first word of the book, the neologism Doukipudonktan is a phonetic transcription of D'où qu'il pue donc tant ? ("How come he stinks so much?").

In the English version of the novel, this is rendered as "Holifart watastink". In the movie version the English subtitle reads "Whozit who stinks?"

Plot summary

Provincial pre-teenager Zazie stays in Paris with her Uncle Gabriel (a female impersonator) for two days, while her mother spends some time with her lover. Zazie manages to evade her uncle's custody, however, and, métro strike notwithstanding, sets out to explore the city on her own.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

In 1960 the book was adapted by Louis Malle into a film of the same name, starring Catherine Demongeot as Zazie and Philippe Noiret as Gabriel. In the film, Zazie is younger than in the book (where her mother is worried about Zazie's virginity). The book was also adapted for theatre and published as a comic book as well.

~ ~ ~

Zazie dans le métro
Un article de Wikipédia, l'encyclopédie libre.

Zazie dans le métro est un roman de Raymond Queneau, paru en 1959.

Résumé

A/ Zazie est confiée par sa mère à son oncle Gabriel. Dès son arrivée chez l'oncle, Gabriel part travailler et Marceline, sa femme, couche Zazie. Le lendemain matin, elle sort se promener seule dans Paris. Cependant, Turandot propriétaire du bar “La Cave” la voit et tente de la rattraper, mais elle hurle et le fait passer pour un satyre. Zazie s'enfuit jusqu'au métro, mais il est en grève. Elle pleure et un homme vient la réconforter. Elle le prend pour un pervers,et entre dans son jeu: elle se fait offrir une paire de blue-jeans aux puces puis s'enfuit au moment opportun en criant “Au satyre”. L'homme la déclare voleuse de ses blue-jeans et l'emmène voir ses parents. L'homme se présente comme un dénommé Pédro-surplus, marchand forain.Il discute avec Gabriel qui l'expulse de chez lui. Gabriel et Charles emmènent ensuite Zazie visiter la Tour Eiffel. Gabriel y rencontre Fédor Balanovitch, une connaissance, et plusieurs touristes. Zazie et Gabriel montent dans le car touristique de Fédor et sympathisent avec ces derniers. En sortant du car, Zazie et Gabriel rencontrent une bourgeoise veuve du nom de Mme Mouaque qui s'interpose dans une dispute entre eux deux. Un taxi s'arrête, et Gabriel se fait emmener par des touristes du car de Fédor afin que celui-ci leur fasse visiter la Sainte Chapelle. Zazie et Mme Mouaque demandent de l'aide à un poilicier que Zazie pense avoir déja vu quelque part, nommé Trouscaillon. Ils retrouvent ensuite Gabriel qui décide d'emmener Zazie ainsi que les touristes à son spectacle de danse. Pendant que Charles, Zazie, Madeleine, Turandot, Laverdure, Gridoux et Mme Mouaque sont au spectacle de Gabriel, Marceline reçoit de la visite: Pédro-surplus vient la voir afin de lui déclarer l'amour qu'il éprouve envers elle, et lui annonce qu'il se nomme en réalité Bertin Poirée et qu'il est inspecteur. Après le spectacle de Gabriel, ils se retrouvent tous au bar Nyctalopes où un dénommé Aroun Arachide arrive et annonce qu'il est en réalité à la fois Pédro-surplus, Trouscaillon et Bertin Poirée, et ses hommes tuent Mme Mouaque d'un coup de mitraillette. Ils s'enfuient alors dans l'ascenseur du bar, et se disperssent dans le métro. Marceline emmène Zazie en métro jusqu'à la gare de Lyon pour retrouver sa mère. Zazie ne sait pas qu'elle a pris le métro étant donné qu'elle dormait et annonce à sa mère ce qu'elle a fait à Paris durant son séjour: “ J'ai veilli”.

B/ L'histoire se déroule en deux nuits et un jour, à Paris au cours du 20ème siècle, peu après la seconde guerre mondiale. En effet, on peut voir que la capitale est marquée par la guerre (surplus américains).

C/Le narrateur, extérieur à l'ouvrage, raconte l'histoire au passé et au présent de narration à la troisième personne, dans l'ordre chronologique. Les évocations du passé sont racontées par les personnages lors de dialogues.

D/ Il adopte un point de vue externe. Il est en effet spectateur de la scène, et en sait moins que les personnages. Il adopte cependant parfois un point de vue interne avec Zazie.

E/ Raymond Queneau utilise un style particuler, parfois phonétique. En effet, le récit est introduit par le mot “Doukipudonktan”, le mot blue-jeans est écrit “bloudjinnzes” comme l'écrirait un enfant tel que Zazie. Aussi, les personnages ont presque tous un langage très familier et sont caricaturaux. Enfin Queneau résume des actions brèves en un mot comme “(geste)” s'alliant au contexte et permettant de faire comprendre au lecteur l'action, à la manière de didascalies théâtrales.

Les Personnages

Les personnages n'ont pratiquement aucun profil psychologique, beaucoup sont interchangeables, d'autres portent des "masques". Cette absence d'identité est aussi soulignée par le peu de détails descriptifs de leur apparence et leur nom souvent réduit à un prénom passe-partout, symbolique ou résultat d'un jeu de mot.

* Zazie est une petite fille élevée en province dans le village de St-Montron par ses parents. Elle est très déterminée, indépendante et vulgaire en utilisant un langage très familier (tel que l'expression «mon cul» à la fin de certaines de ses phrases). Pour elle, la ville de Paris est «un grand village» mais avant tout un grand espace de jeu. Dès son arrivée à Paris, la capitale en elle-même ne l'intéresse pas, elle souhaite se procurer des surplus américains tels que des blue-jeans ou encore atteindre son but: prendre le métro. Zazie est très curieuse et indiscrète, arrogante et audacieuse. Elle désire devenir institutrice pour «faire chier les mômes» ou bien encore astronaute pour «faire chier les marsiens». Son père était alcoolique et fut assassiné par sa femme, Jeanne Lalochère, car ce dernier avait essayé d'abuser de Zazie. Au fil du roman, Zazie mûrit au contact des adultes et pose bien des questions comme au sujet de l'homosexualité. Peu à peu, Zazie entre dans le monde des adultes sur lesquels elle porte un regard d'ingénue et de candide ; elle ne comprend pas leur comportement, les regarde, les observe.

Le personnage de Zazie est hérité des contes philosophiques: entrant dans un monde inconnu, ce genre de personnage porte un regard neuf et interrogateur sur une société où il sème donc le doute et le trouble.

* Gabriel est l'oncle de Zazie. C'est un colosse de 32 ans marié à Marceline et vivant dans une rue parisienne tranquille. Il travaille comme danseuse de charme dans un cabaret d'homosexuels à partir de 23 heures à Pigalle et y est connu sous le nom de Gabriella. Le cabaret est appelé le Mont-de-Piété et Gabriel y danse la Mort du Cygne en tutu. Il se couche donc très tard et a l'habitude de dormir la journée. Il se considère comme un artiste et improvise des poèmes sur la vie à Paris, des monologues aux accents baroques sur la vanité de l'existence. Il se fait des manucures et utilise un parfum appelé «Barbouze» de chez Fior qui n'est pas au goût de tout le monde. Gabriel est un habitué du bar de son ami Turandot, situé au coin de sa rue, où il prend constamment de la grenadine. Il est apprécié de tous et aime se rendre compte des choses par lui-même. Ayant subi la seconde guerre mondiale, Gabriel a vécu le débarquement américain, et a du mal à s'adapter aux technologies américaines, comme la machine à laver. Au début du roman, il n'ose pas dire à Zazie qu'il est danseuse de charme et lui fait donc croire qu'il est veilleur de nuit. Il tente de protéger Zazie de tous les danger et lui fait visiter Paris avec son ami Charles, mais ces deux derniers ne connaissent pas les noms des monuments, ce qui engendre des disputes. A la fin, préocuppé par les constantes questions de Zazie sur son homosexualité, il décide de l'emmener voir un de ses spectacles au Mont-de-piété.

* Marceline est la femme de Gabriel. Elle est ménagère. C'est une très belle et élégante femme. [Autres hypothèses] Certaines allusions laissent penser que Marceline serait un homme, un travesti d'une grande élégance. Dans l'adaptation cinématographique, elle se déguise en homme, ce qui pourrait apporter un indice supplémentaire confirmant cette hypothèse.

* Jeanne Lalochère est la mère de Zazie. Elle vient à Paris afin de voir son amant et dépose donc Zazie chez Gabriel et Marceline. Elle est couturière et vit à St Montron et est donc Sanctmontronaise. Elle fendit le crâne à son mari qui avait tenté d'abuser de Zazie. Son ancien amant, Georges, lui avait procuré la hache, arme du crime. Elle le quitta ensuite car il essaya à son tour d'abuser de sa fille.

* Turandot est le patron du bar appelé «La Cave». Il apprécie et loue la technologie américaine, ayant très mal vécu la seconde guerre mondiale. Turandot a un perroquet vert appelé Laverdure qu'il apprécie. Il se soucie de Laverdure comme de lui-même et déclare le connaître mieux que personne. Le perroquet répète sans cesse la phrase «Tu causes, tu causes, c'est tout ce que tu sais faire» Au début du récit, Turandot n'apprécie guère la présence de Zazie, mais au fil de l'histoire, il va s'y habituer et finir par apprécier cette dernière.

* Madeleine est serveuse au bar «la Cave» et travaille donc pour Turandot. Elle est appelée par son surnom Mado-ptits-pieds. Elle est plus ou moins amoureuse de Charles, le conducteur de taxi et ami de Gabriel. Mado-ptits-pieds admire Marceline par son élégance et sa beauté. Elle se fiance avec Charles à la fin du roman.

* Charles est un conducteur de taxi de 55 ans. Ami de Gabriel, il ne sait différencier les monuments parisiens les uns des autres. C'est un bel homme, costaud et en bonne santé. Il a une moustache. Il est sérieux, gentil, honnête, économe et romantique. Charles est un habitué du bar “La Cave”. Complexé d'être seul à son âge, Charles décide de se marier avec Madeleine.

* Gridoux est cordonnier. Il est connu pour être celui qui sait toujours tout, il parle latin. De peur de perdre des clients, Mado-ptits-pieds lui apporte chaque midi son déjeuner qu'il mange derrière son échope.

* Pédro-surplus se déclare être marchand forain d'objets de l'armée américaine aux puces. Il a une moustache et des lunettes noires. Après avoir ramené Zazie à son oncle et sa tante et lui avoir acheté des blue-jeans, cette dernière le présente à son oncle comme un policier satyre. Il est de nature impatiente. Il prétend avoir oublié son identité (nom, profession, âge...) devant Gridoux. A la fin du roman, il va déclarer l'amour qu'il éprouve envers Marceline, et se permet de lui poser plusieurs questions, en lui disant que son nom réel est Bertin Poirée, et qu'il est inspecteur.

* Trouscaillon se déclare être un policier catholique, habitant rue Rambiteau dans le 1er arrondissement. Il ne se fait pas respecter par les citoyens (il ne fait qu'un avec le personnage précédent).

* Aroun Arachide est en réalité un homme qui, depuis le début du roman, manipule tous les protagonistes, s'étant fait passer pour la policier Trouscaillon, le marchand forain Pédro-surplus et l'inspecteur Bertin Poirée. Tous ces personnages font donc une seule et même personne: Aroun Arachide.

* Fédor Balanovitch est un ami de Gabriel. Il est conducteur de car touristique et connaît très bien la langue française. Il est natif de Bois-Colombes dans les Hauts-de-Seine.

* Mme Mouaque est une vieille et laide bourgeoise veuve. Depuis la mort de son mari, elle est devenue nymphomane et tombe amoureuse de Trouscaillon. Elle se fait tuer par Aroun Arachide (Trouscaillon) à la fin du récit.

Arrière plan

a/ Le sujet annocé par le titre de l'ouvrage est le métro. En effet, le métro obsède Zazie, mais il est en grève lors de son séjour à Paris. La première question que se pose le lecteur est: “Va-t-elle prendre le métro?”. Ce problème est résolu d'une part, et irésolu d'autre part. Car Zazie prend bien le métro, ce qui résout le problème. Mais Zazie est endormie dans les bras de Marceline prenant le métro et ne se rend donc pas compte que son rêve est en train de se réaliser. Le métro est, ici, une métaphore. Il représente le monde des adultes fermé à l'enfant qu'elle est encore et où elle tente de pénétrer. C'est un roman initiatique. Les aventures parisiennes de Zazie sont des épreuves qu'elle surmonte avec brio, protégée et guidée par son oncle Gabriel (cf : l'archange Gabriel, d'ailleurs devenu "archiguide" dans le roman). Elle pose nombre de questions, fouine partout, fugue, démasque les adultes, les met dans des situations embarrassantes, leur tend des pièges, etc. C'est une enfant terrible, sans complexe, audacieuse, arrogante, insoumise, sûre d'elle, qui ignore la politesse, etc. Elle incarne l'ingénuité d'une jeunesse qui a soif d'apprendre, et de comprendre; quand les adultes prétendent que le monde est ordonné, elle ne se contente pas des apparences, mais préfère vérifier, et met à nu le désordre.

L'autre sujet récurrent concerne l'homosexualité de Gabriel. Tout au long du roman, Zazie va demander à Gabriel s'il est homosexuel ou non. Gabriel l'emmènera alors à un de ses spectacles pour qu'elle voie pourquoi les gens disent qu'il est homosexuel, mais qu'il ne l'est pas en réalité. Là encore, il s'agit de ne pas se fier aux apparences.

b/ Les thèmes représentés sont: les relations parents/enfants, l'homosexualité, le métro, le travail, l'enfance, l'amitié, le tourisme, et l'argot...

c/ L'intérêt du lecteur: tout d'abord, le lecteur veut savoir si Zazie prendra le métro ou pas, thème principal du roman, qui s'écrit donc autour d'une action bien mince et qui n'a pas vraiment lieu. Peu importe au fond cette trame; seul compte l'enchaînement d'actions extravagantes et en grande partie hasardeuses, qui caractérisent la vie: on prévoit de prendre la métro, mais il y a grève; alors arrive tout ce qu'on n'avait pas prévu ...

Avis personnel: Il fut très intéressant de découvrir l'univers de Queneau dans Zazie dans le métro, son style si particulier. Le personnage de Zazie m'a beaucoup intéressé car c'est en effet une fille qui a beaucoup de personnalité,et son langage familier nous montre une fillette forte et insensible, mais on découvre derrière ce masque une petite fille ayant besoin d'amour et d'attention de la part de sa mère. Le personnage de Turandot m'a paru antipathique du fait qu'il se plaigne de la présence de Zazie chez Gabriel.

Autre avis: Queneau, l'auteur des Exercices de Style, qui manie la langue française avec verve et irrespect taquin, s'intéresse dans ce roman à tout un monde interlope: ce sont les petites gens qui sont mises en scène, des gens qui ont un côté voyou (et fascinent par là le touriste en mal de pittoresque parisien et de choucroute de bas étage), mais des gens qui se caractérisent finalement par une gentillesse de fond. Le roman rend compte de la vie: peu importe ce qu'on fait: tout peut être résumé par ces mots: on vieillit... et ce avec le sourire, quand on sait avoir le regard enfantin, et donc à la fois naïf et sans concession de Zazie qui au final reste heureuse de son voyage.

the Evil PizzaQ from Hell

This one is so ... well, awful, ghastly, horrible, nasty, Evil ... that the Prize is not a few lousy pizza slices, but an entire free Italian dinner (transportation, shipping Not Included, you got to come here or I got to go where the winner lives, winner can choose fave Italian ristorante).

It uses every letter of the standard English alphabet

abcdefghijklm
nopqrstuvwxyz

and the standard English spellings of the words for numbers:

one
two
three ...
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen
fifteen ...
twenty-one
twenty-two ...
forty-five
forty-six ... etc.

So here is the PizzaQ from Hell.

Make this sentence, but correctly.

This is just an example, all these number values are just fake, dummy values:

This is my favorite English sentence, and it contains two a's, one b, two c's, one d, thirty-seven e's, twenty f's, four g's, thirty-nine h's, fifty-one i's, one j, one k, forty-seven l's, twenty-five m's, eighteen n's, thirty o's, one p, one q, thirty-three r's, forty-one s's, fifty-five t's, thirty-six u's, twenty v's, seventeen w's, fifteen x's, twelve y's, and one z.

Now you have to make the same sentence, but with the correct words for the correct numbers for all 26 letters.

Hurry up, I don't have all day.

The Boiling Halvah Chronicles: The Prequel / I love Shawn Fanning / my Yma Sumac mp3 / I am woman hear me roar

Courtesy of the F_minor archives circa 2000

At this time, the End Of The World was perceived as the original Napster (which had TONS of GG on it, it wasn't just teenage garage bands whining about boiling halvah)

Prependix:

On the original Ur-Napster, in the days of dialup and 56kps speeds, downloading an mp3 took an eternity, and while waiting for it to complete, you could hang in Napster's chatroom with thousands of other denizens of this House of Depravity.

One lapidary post:

ShoeMirrorGuy: Metallica can suck the corn out of my shit.

=================

Mary Jo Watts wrote:

To come back to an older thread raised by Anne Marble in July b/c I'm
really curious...

Do any of you take advantage of Napster's "offerings" of GG recordings?
If so, why? Is Napster ethical?

---

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Re: GG and Napster and MP3

---

• To: F_MINOR@email.rutgers.edu
• Subject: Re: GG and Napster and MP3
• From: Elmer Elevator <bobmer@javanet.com>
• Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 04:10:35 -0400
• Delivered-to: F_MINOR@EMAIL.RUTGERS.EDU
• Reply-to: Elmer Elevator <bobmer@javanet.com>
• Sender: "Mailing list devoted to the discussion of Glenn Gould's work and life." <F_MINOR@email.rutgers.edu>

---

omigawd ... i wondered where this went ... i posted it just to mary jo by mistake.

Woo Woo what a great controversy! Thanks, Mary Jo!

Let me see if I can get this half-right from memory ... F. Scott Fitzgerald said an artist is someone who can carry two diametrically opposite ideas in his head without going crazy.

Idea 1. I make my living from Intellectual Property and rely on the world to respect it in order to make my living from it.

Idea 2. I discovered .mp3's and, not long ago, Napster, and I think they're wonderful. Before I logged on, I suspected Napster would be nothing but the ghastliest cacaphony of rap, tekno, Britney Spears, The Carpenters, Lilith Faire, ABBA and whiney-teen music (?), but the first time I typed "Glenn Gould" on Napster, I was astonished at the huge number of selections that spewed back. (Not to mention Caruso, Weill, Teresa Stratas, all my classical favorites, that avant-garde loony Harry Partch, and wonderful treats from the ancient past like the comedy duo of Jonathan & Darlene Edwards doing to "I Am Woman" what should have been done at its birth.)

I think it's a magnificent achievement that 1904 Caruso recordings, shouted into a mechanical sound collecting horn to scratch a wiggle on a wax cylinder, are now being preserved for cyberspace and the future in a format that can never warp or degrade. Regardless of what his Estate may think, everything I know about Gould's obsession with any technology that did good things for music tells me he would have been thrilled with .mp3's and Napster.

As I hose up these wonderful nearly-lost musical treats from Napster, it's clear that people in their 50s and 60s and beyond are having the time of their lives transferring their beloved old vinyl (many of these treats never made the jump to CDs) to .mp3s as a labor of love, and offering them up to the world, wondering who might want them. Almost every time I'm on Napster, some far-away stranger tries to download my Yma Sumac tune. Napster is like the music store of a music-lover's fantasies.

I need to say a word here about the 19-year-old Northeastern University boy who invented Napster by writing its clever song-swapping and cataloging software. He only made much more efficient a process that was already going full-tilt and gangbusters on IRC (Internet Relay Chat). But where an .mp3 chatroom might "only" give you access to the collections of 200 users at a time, Napster connects you with the hard-disk collections of hundreds of thousands or even millions at a time. Even South-American .mp3 chatrooms couldn't find me any Astor Piazzolla. Napster offered me a dozen Piazzolla tunes instantly.

When Justice and Law and Decency and Order finally prevail, and Metallica and the music industry put Napster out of business, what do they want to happen to this brilliant, clever, music-loving lad? Will they be happy when he's back hanging around in the parking lot of the all-night Seven-Eleven? I sincerely think we need to recognize and reward a prodigious technological talent who's given so much fun and pleasure to a world of music lovers, and resist the stiff-necked Puritanical temptation to represent him as some sort of New Age war criminal.

And I don't have a doubt in the world that sampling an artist's music from Napster stimulates millions of people to go out and $BUY$ the whole album. How many times in a record store has an unknown artist caught our eye, but we decided the investment was too dear to take a dare? And then wondered what we might have missed. Napster brilliantly fills that "take a dare, it's free" gap.

Is Napster ethical? Would that the world, and cyberspace, had simple answers to such a question! I think the unsimple answer is that, as in cutting-edge medical technology, ethics are about twelve years behind technology. (It's certainly ethical to keep ME alive for an extra ten years, but is it ethical to keep 5 billion people alive -- and with Viagra -- for an extra ten years?) In "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," the King and the Archbishop have a wonderful conversation about a most terrible and frightening new invention -- the printing press -- and how it will cause nothing but grief and woe for civilization. We got past that.

In one of his "Life Is Hell" strips, Matt Groening asks the music industry's contention: "Is Home Taping Killing Music?" Groening replies: "Yes. Instead of making billions and billions and billions of dollars, the music industry is now making only billions and billions of dollars."

The Grateful Dead (like Gould, obsessed with cutting-edge technology, and a pioneer in cybercommunications for the "masses") also need to be mentioned. For the last decade before Garcia's death, The Dead was consistantly among the Top 5 highest money-making bands (despite their shocking longevity and superannuation). One of The Dead's unique strategies was to ENCOURAGE bootlegging and the briskest possible underground trade in bootlegged Dead tapes. (Amazing particularly when you consider they only played about three recognizeably different songs.) Their fans loved them for it, and became a loyal cult -- Deadheads -- the likes of which no other rockers have ever approached.

Likewise, one of Teresa Stratas' closest friends, whom she tended in the years before his death, was a creature who haunted Lincoln Center stealing sound and selling opera bootlegs for opera lovers who just couldn't get enough of their favorite stars. So even among the artists who purportedly are the victims, there's a great range of opinion about the ethics of stealing and selling and swapping their music. (The Diva of the movie "Diva," played by the wonderful Wilhelmina Wiggins-Fernandez, calls the very act of recording her voice "la viol" -- rape.)

Go Napster! You rock! You rule! (You should hear what Napster users have to say about Metallica. If I were Metallica, I couldn't have planned a more certain way to make all my fans suddenly detest me.)

Technical Addendum for the Napster-Addicted: As .mp3 files are huge, very soon they will challenge your hard disk. Even if you remain content to download them at the painfully slow 56k modem speed, you'll soon be tempted to store them off-line. Zip drives, which many of us already have, are a great start, but Napster and .mp3 files have been the chief boost in the new popularity of CD burners/toasters (CDRW, "Read-Write" CDs) as the solution to off-line mass storage. With this machine, of course, you can make your own "mix" CDs.

Elmer ("racin' to the future first") Elevator

Elmer Elevator's Discount Prep:
www.javanet.com/~bobmer/

---

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Now they know you watched the teenager skateboard into the boiling halvah

BBC News
Thursday 3 July 2008

Google must divulge YouTube log

Google owns video site YouTube

Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled.

The ruling comes as part of Google's legal battle with Viacom over allegations of copyright infringement.

Digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) called the ruling a "set-back to privacy rights".

The viewing log, which will be handed to Viacom, contains the log-in ID of users, the computer IP address (online identifier) and video clip details.

While the legal battle between the two firms is being contested in the US, it is thought the ruling will apply to YouTube users and their viewing habits everywhere.

Viacom, which owns MTV and Paramount Pictures, has alleged that YouTube is guilty of massive copyright infringement.

Legal action

When it initiated legal action in March 2007 the firm said it had identified about 160,000 unauthorised clips of its programmes on the website, which had been viewed more than 1.5 billion times.

Following the launch of its billion-dollar lawsuit, YouTube introduced filtering tools in an effort to prevent copyright materials from appearing on the site.

The US court declined Viacom's request that Google be forced to hand over the source code of YouTube, saying it was a "trade secret" that should not be disclosed.

But it said privacy concerns expressed by Google about handing over the log were "speculative".

The ruling will see the viewing habits of millions of YouTube users given to Viacom, totalling more than 12 terabytes of data.

Viacom said it wanted the data to "compare the attractiveness of allegedly infringing video with that of non-infringing videos."

'Erroneous ruling'

The EFF said: "The Court's erroneous ruling is a set-back to privacy rights, and will allow Viacom to see what you are watching on YouTube.

"We urge Viacom to back off this overbroad request and Google to take all steps necessary to challenge this order and protect the rights of its users."

The body said the ruling was also potentially unlawful because the log data did contain personally identifiable data.

The court also ruled that Google disclose to YouTube the details of all videos that have been removed from the site for any reason.

- 30 -

"The Wild Bunch," "Bridge on the River Kwai," big screen theater showings in NYC

Sam Peckinpah's 1969 movie "The Wild Bunch" will be showing at The Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center, New York City as part of the Film Society's William Holden series. Showtimes:

Friday 11 July 2008 3:30 and 8:45 pm

Tuesday 15 July 2008 1 pm

I assume this is the restored print of Peckinpah's original release, before the studio hacked the crap out of it. It very likely will be projected in the very rare 70mm format.

Pauline Kael called TWB the greatest film of the sound/color era. It certainly has the most remarkable cast of both American and Mexican actors at their most mature, powerful and brilliant.

"The Bridge on the River Kwai," perhaps Holden's greatest role, will be shown at the Walter Reade

Saturday 5 July 2008 at 3:15 & 8:30 pm

disco worms (Vermi discoteka) from Planet Yobbo

The disco worms (Vermi discoteka) of Planet Yobbo just love to boogy all night and all day. They are born dancing, live an average of 19,500 years, and die dancing.

Six sexes are shown above, filmed at a rave.

Also shown: 11 red Disco Worms waiting impatiently in line to use the restroom.

Disco Worms do not eat and perform no known function other than dancing, having sex, and sometimes taking credit courses at Yobbo City Community College. Some of the tracks they dance to last as long as 39 hours.

Top Image: The vending machine for bottled water and energy drinks at one of the most popular Worm Discos.

French kiss this toad, he used to be a Prince / World Year of Ugly Animals / Johnny said he worked for the railroad and had nothing to do with the Sea

WARNING:
THE FOLLOWING ESSAY
ASSUMES NATURAL SELECTION.
CONTAINS NO
SUPERNATURAL INGREDIENTS.

Uwe der Anonymous von Wedding DE wins the pizza, we are talking Toads here.

(I couldn't get it to wiggle unless I used the Wikipedia URL, and the URL said: .Bufo.gif so this didn't really require Herr Kommissar Hans Berlach oder C. Auguste Dupin. Klaas from Rotterdam could figure out this one.)

But not just any Toad.

This sucker is the Cane Toad, Bufo marinus. The "marinus" is a mistake, Larry the Cane Toad is entirely a land creature

~ ~ ~

... you told me you worked for the railroad
and had nothing to do with the sea
you said a lot, Johnny
all one big lie, Johnny
you cheated me blind, Johnny
from the minute we met
I hate you so, Johnny
when you stand there grinning, Johnny
take that pipe out of your mouth, you dog
Surabaya Johnny
No one's meaner than you
Surabaya Johnny
My god -- I still love you so
Surabaya Johnny
why'm I feeling so blue?
you have no heart, Johnny
and I still love you so.


Ich war jung, Gott, erst sechzehn Jahre
Du kamest von Birma herauf
Und sagtest, ich solle mit dir gehen
Du kämest für alles auf.
Ich fragte nach deiner Stellung
Du sagtest, so wahr ich hier steh
Du hättest zu tun mit der Eisenbahn
Und nichts zu tun mit der See.
Du sagtest viel, Johnny
Kein Wort war wahr, Johnny
Du hast mich betrogen, Johnny, in der ersten Stund
Ich hasse dich so, Johnny
Wie du dastehst und grinst, Johnny
Nimm die Pfeife aus dem Maul, du Hund.
Surabaya-Johnny, warum bist du so roh?
Surabaya-Johnny, mein Gott, ich liebe dich so.
Surabaya-Johnny, warum bin ich nicht froh ?
Du hast kein Herz, Johnny, und ich liebe dich so.

-- Bertolt Brecht

~ ~ ~

and the extra slice would have gone to anyone who said Central America or Mesoamerica, or thereabouts. That's where Bufo marinus is a natural part of the evolved ecosystem.

Trinidadians call them "crapeaux," the Creole / francais name for the ugly little things. Larry has several local aliases. And he looks a lot like three or four other big toads, so he's frequently mistaken for an entirely different animal.

Until you try to kiss him on the lips to transform him back into the handsome Prince he says he used to be.

He has a huge set of poison glands on his head that secrete a profoundly powerful neurotoxin, which isn't even fun to party with if you're a Toad Licker -- a brand of Party Animal just down the street from Liquified Natural Gas Huffers.

In 1935 Bufo Marinus was imported from Central America to the Carpenteria coast of Australia to feed on an insect pest that was damaging commercial sugar cane plantings.

Larry found the familiar bugs tasty, and was happy to be Australian.

But in his Central American home, Larry had evolved among a matrix of predators, who had evolved ways of eating lots of Larry's relatives without dying promptly of a poison overdose. The size of Larry's family had been kept in check, by an excruciatingly slow process of trial and error, for a million years or more.

Australia has no natural predators that can kill and eat Bufo marinus -- without dying. Bufo has been marching southwest since 1935 at a rate of about 1 kilometer per day, and reproducing without check. It is expected eventually to overrun the entire continent.

Here is one of its victims, the monstrous-looking freshwater crocodile (Crocodylus johnstoni) in the Northern Territory of Australia.

This, by the way, has been declared The World Year of Ugly Animals. One of the biggest problems with nature conservation is that most of the money and resources go to save animals we think are cute, beautiful, noble, gorgeous, handsome, brave, etc. All the money goes to Bambi.

Nobody wants to pay any money to save nasty-looking Toads, or poisonous snakes, or sharks, or bats, or big ugly spiders, or vultures, or centipedes.

Save the freshies! Kill the fucking cane toads!

===============

----- Original Message -----
From: "ProMED-mail"
To:
Sent: Monday, June 30, 2008 5:37 AM
Subject: PRO/AH/EDR> Crocodile deaths, bufotoxin - Australia: (NT)

CROCODILE DEATHS, BUFOTOXIN - AUSTRALIA: (NORTHERN TERRITORY)
*************************************************************
A ProMED-mail post

ProMED-mail is a program of the
International Society for Infectious Diseases


Date: Fri 27 Jun 2008
Source: New Scientist Environment [edited]


Dead freshwater crocodiles in Australia's Northern Territory were
once a rare sight. But since 2005, locals have witnessed mass
die-offs. Researchers now say the toxic and invasive cane toad (_Bufo marinus_) is to blame.

Two surveys, in 2005 and 2007, suggested that the mass croc deaths
have progressively moved inland from the mouth of Victoria River, at a
pace that matches that of the cane toad invasion. The toads secrete a
milky-white toxin from glands behind their eyes and on their backs
which is lethal to many predators.

Mike Letnic of the University of Sydney and his team say a massive 77 percent of some populations of freshwater crocodiles -- or "freshies"
-- have died since 2005.

The numbers are particularly worrying, says Letnic, because removing top predators like freshwater crocodiles (_Crocodylus johnstoni_) can boost the number of their prey and trigger a cascade of ecosystem
changes that are difficult to predict.

Pest out of control
-------------------
Cane toads were introduced to Queensland in northeast Australia in
1935 to combat the cane beetle, a sugar cane pest, and have been
steadily marching westward across the continent since.

They are now considered invasive pests in their own right: they have
decimated populations of Australian monitor lizards and certain
species of snakes.

To try and understand the damage the toads are inflicting, Letnic and
his colleagues surveyed crocodiles in 4 regions of the Victoria River
in the Northern Territory.

Crocodile sightings in the Victoria River Gorge region, where the
invasion began, dropped from 156 to 49 between 2005 and 2007. The
toads moved upriver from the gorge, reaching the Longreach Lagoon
region in 2007. There, sightings dropped by 15 percent compared to
2005.

"We expected this. We first heard reports of dead freshies from
helicopter pilots flying over rivers in the Gulf of Carpentaria [east
of the Victoria River] where cane toad had invaded," says Grahame
Webb, director of Wildlife Management International in Darwin.

Wave of death
-------------
Proving a causal link between cane toads and crocodile deaths is
tricky, in part because crocs rapidly digest amphibians, so traces
are rarely found. But Letnic says the "wave of death" has moved
upstream with the toads, strongly suggesting the toads are the cause
of the dropping crocodile numbers.

Letnic's team is continuing the surveys. They say the freshies and
cane toads are often seen in close proximity to each other. This is
likely to be all the more true in dryer regions like the semi-arid
upper reaches of the Victoria River where the 2 species are forced to
share water holes, says Letnic.

If true, cane toads could pose an even greater threat to native
species as they move south into the dry interior of Australia and the
need for water brings them into close proximity.

The researchers say in the long term, the high death rate may
naturally select for crocodiles that have a higher tolerance to the
toad toxin. This has been seen to happen in some blacksnake
populations that have also been hit hard by the cane toads.

In the meantime, however, the toxin appears more lethal to younger
crocs, suggesting that the reproductive rate of the populations could
take a big plunge.

Reference
---------
M Letnic, JK Webb, R Shine: Invasive cane toads (_Bufo marinus_)
cause mass mortality of freshwater crocodiles (_Crocodylus
johnstoni_) in tropical Australia. Biological Conservation (DOI:
10.1016/j.biocon. 2008.04.031)

[Byline: Rachel Nowak]

--
Communicated by:
ProMED-mail Rapporteur Mary Marshall

[Bufo toads produce a cardiac toxin and a neuron toxin. Dogs and cats
salivate profusely when they have encountered these amphibians.
Generally they spit the toad out but washing the mouth out may be
helpful.

The freshies may be absorbing the toxin transdermally or through
ingestion. We will be interested in any follow up reports. - Mod.TG

Chytridiomycosis, a fatal fungal disease, has been reported from the
cane toad (see ProMED ref. below), but cannot be used for biological
control because it is deadly to all frog & toad species. - Mod.JW.

Additional information and photographs available at:
- freshwater crocodile

- cane toad


Australia's Northern Territory and Victoria River can be located on the map at
.

- CopyEd.MJ]

[see also:
Chytrid fungus, frogs: background 20001201.2096]
...tg/mj/jw