Looking: for Laura Hird’s Born Free and Dan Fante’s Chump Change (check out Wifebeater Bob). Both have been published in Finnish by Sammakko.

Having: a hard time getting through Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction. Like in Franny and Zooey, the first story is great. Raise High is beautiful. But in Seymour, the narrator is just nuts.

We’re in a McDonald’s, the one in the Sokos building in downtown Helsinki. We’re sitting at a corner table, me with my back to the wall because I don’t like people watching me eat. We moved in together two weeks ago. There is no door between our rooms and when I get up at eight in the morning for my half-day job, she wakes up to the clacking of my keyboard and the glow of my screen. Our lives have become like this, too: adjacent, separated by a thin interior wall, a wall with a window at ceiling level but no door. We pass through each other on our way in, on our way out. We sit together, bored, watching MTV, anything that moves fast enough to distract, both of us only a spark away from popping open that first beer which will lead to the next and the rest of the evening and a new day. She is unemployed; I feel like I am. Some nights she sleeps next to me. Most mornings we wake up in our own beds. We are happenstance lovers, though this isn’t love.

Carl Newman of the New Pornographers: “Money would change everything. If someone waves money in front of us, we’ll follow them anywhere. I think we’re pretty anxious to sell out. We will do anything to sell out as long as it doesn’t involve compromising our music whatsoever. I don’t know it that’s an easy thing to do.”

Janne Martola tarvitsee apuasi. Alla Katasto.fin i-postituslistalle lähetetty projektiapupyyntö.

“Kiinnostaisiko ketään auttaa ympäristö-teokseni toteuttamisessa. Apureille luvassa kohtuullinen palkkio.

“Projekti koostuu kolmesta eri työvaiheesta. Ensimmäisessä osassa tarvitsen mahdollisimman monta työ-miestä.

“Apureiden tehtävänä on maalata seiniä, katuja, puistoja, puita, huoneistoja… kaikenlaisia pintoja ja esineitä. Maalaaminen tapahtuu aluksi pääkaupunki-seudun alueella, mutta myöhemmin se jatkuu myös muualla suomessa ja ulkomailla.

“Maalina on krominvärinen Montana-spraymaali. Maalattavana pintana ovat kaikki ympäristön esineet ja asiat. Eli kaikki mitä tulee eteen maalataan kromiksi.

“Teoksen toteuttamisessa vahingoittuu yhteistä- ja yksityistä omaisuutta, joten projektiin osallistujat voivat joutua teostaan vastuuseen.

“Tavoitteena on peittää planeettamme jokainen neliämetri kromilla, jotta auringon valo heijastuu ja valaisee ympäröivän avaruuden.

“Halukkaat ilmoittautukaa hyvissä ajoin. Työt alkavat kesäkuun alussa.”

From The Nation’s article The Junk Science of George W. Bush.

“Science, like theology, reveals transcendent truths about a changing world. At their best, scientists are moral individuals whose business is to seek the truth. Over the past two decades industry and conservative think tanks have invested millions of dollars to corrupt science. They distort the truth about tobacco, pesticides, ozone depletion, dioxin, acid rain and global warming. In their attempt to undermine the credible basis for public action (by positing that all opinions are politically driven and therefore any one is as true as any other), they also undermine belief in the integrity of the scientific process.

“Now Congress and this White House have used federal power for the same purpose. Led by the President, the Republicans have gutted scientific research budgets and politicized science within the federal agencies. The very leaders who so often condemn the trend toward moral relativism are fostering and encouraging the trend toward scientific relativism. The very ideologues who derided Bill Clinton as a liar have now institutionalized dishonesty and made it the reigning culture of America's federal agencies.”