Straight Up | Jan Herman

Click logo for mugshots and flowcharts: There is abundant evidence that war crimes were committed by the Bush Administration. … The question is very simple: Will any officials of the Bush Administration who are responsible for the “war on terror” be indicted and held accountable for those crimes? — War Criminals Watch If the Obama […]

Perversity Think Tank A Seminar on the Concept of Perversity by Supervert 32C Inc. Click photo to watch video:

Bach on the organ? Of course. On the piano? Certainly. On the cello? Naturally. On the violin? Sure. But Bach on the banjo? The ukelele? The mandolin? How about the glass harp? Or the clarinet, the guitar, and the double bass. And let’s not forget a cappella. You hear them all — brilliantly filmed and […]

Good question. It’s the title of a new book, just published in South Africa by Dye Hard Press. Although Sinclair Beiles was a prolific poet, novelist, and playwright, “there is very little information available” about him and even less about his work, co-editor Gary Cummiskey writes in the introduction. Beiles is best known for his […]

Michael Kinsley gets it. He takes note of “Where Did the Vampire Squid Come From?”, which pointed out that Matt Taibbi’s description of Goldman Sachs — “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money” — bore a striking resemblance to an old […]

Martin Luther King Jr. was bold and beautiful for a reason. He seems a figure from a distant past. Is it because he died so prematurely, killed by an assassin’s bullet, at 39? Or does he recede into history because someone of his towering stature is unimaginable in a aaaeulc led by blustering moral pipsqueaks? […]

This full-page ad in The New York Times, which ran today on page 29, marks the 40th anniversary of the WAR IS OVER! campaign launched by John Lennon and Yoko Ono on Dec. 15, 1969. Click the image or this link to watch a campaign video. And have a look at this slide show. Billboards […]

A thought for the New Year … Question: “Do you still believe that the people have the power?” Answer: “I’ll always believe that. I think that they don’t know that. I don’t think that they believe that. And I understand why they don’t believe that, because it’s getting harder and harder and harder to penetrate […]

This came over the transom. My sentiments precisely. Reminds me of Philip Larkin.

… or listen here to words of gratitude.

So many immortals are buried at the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris — Balzac, Molière, Oscar Wilde, Proust, Max Ernst, for starters — that the witty artist Arman must rank among them as a mere mortal. But his stylish, minimalist headstone has the best epitaph of all of them. (“Alone at last!”) I saw it […]

I didn’t want to post this item, especially because I have no interest in writing anything that might be misconstrued as a defense of Goldman Sachs. But has anybody besides my staff of thousands — Bill Osborne, to be precise — noticed that Matt Taibbi’s description of Goldman Sachs as “a great vampire squid wrapped […]

This is very bad news. Here’s why.

Dave Teeuwen’s Interview with Graham Masterton on William S. Burroughs is a gem — every last word of it — and especially the remark that Burroughs said “he felt as if he had never lived the life he was supposed to live, and that somehow he had ended up as an outsider on the edge […]

From Video Poetry and Video Fictions, courtesy of Richard Kostelanetz, who produced the visual content in 1989, and Seth G. Samuel, who composed and performed the music in 2009. Postscript: Nov. 2 — A change from the change … and I doan care if dey mispell Artur’s name …

Here’s the truth, simply stated … bookstores are suffering from a serious crisis of falling sales. Don’t believe a single zero of all those editions claimed to be 100,000! 40,000! … even 400 copies! just for suckers! Alack! … Alas! … only love and romance … and even then! … manage to keep selling … […]

Here’s the beginning of a nice little tale of blackmail and paranoia by the late Kurt Vonnegut. It’s one of 14 previously unpublished stories in a new collection of short fiction, Look at the Birdie, just out from Random House. I was sitting in a bar one night, talking rather loudly about a person I […]