Nightlight News

I had originally begun booked the promising but relatively unknown touring acts Yellow Crystal Star and Black History Moth as long ago as August of last year, intrigued by the heavy water drops and dream blobs of YCS, which evoked in me a degree of nostalgia for my totally fuzzy days in Brazil as a disciple of street yahoos schooling me in the preferred techniques of glue huffing, which involved nothing less than produce bags of the supermarket variety. Clearly days are clearer now, and when months and months ago the prospect of an Independence Day noise show coalesced, mine eyes lighted. What better way to mimic the soul and distance of fireworks with an extravaganzer, a kablooey, a feastival. I searched high and low, spamming bands and gauging interest and wondering who is crazy enuff to play a show on July 4th? Evil Weiner always plays on July 4th, some weiner roastie, but this is somehow escaping my purview, and I yearn for a Nightlight night of classic raws, noisey rock and experimental forms, but accessible for youngster delight. Clearly the time was night.

But at the risk of manifesting (mynifesto), I must admit that somehow, the terms and times have left me thinking of this night through a lexicon of convoluted permutations, derivatives of Independence Day, for we are going to celebrate, but what ... Probably not a "Patriotic" thing, more like a "dispatriotized" thing, curiously entitled-
Blast off to Freakery
Freedom from What? Night of Rock
Nightlight Codependence Fireworks Mimicry
Nightlight Patriotismo Mismo Noise Rock Extravaganzer
July 4th Day of Nothing meets Nothing
Patriotic Nonsense Brouhaha Tomfoolery Shenanigan
Grassroots Dispell Retake Fuck Bush Rock Fest
Tyranny of the Eardrum Patrio-Riot-Eyes Fest
And so on. Clearly the promoter is confused about adequate labels, but the spirit is there - that in these times of times when cluster bomb meets Iraqi innocent, judicial arrogance meets disadvantaged margin, and arrogant prick meets world via Oval Office, there is some cynicism in order on the day when we celebrate our independence from Britain, since what we bought with that independence seems so fraught with hypocrisy and dependence on fractured models of politcs and economics that seem to benefit but a small fraction, that fraction being the death machines and military masters. It's all being stamped with disapproval through our subtly curated night of rock that is the Nightlight July 4th Show featuring

In the Year of the Pig - fav noise rock outfit of NC hands-down best pummeling feedback with a mask on saying we are mean but nice, like a puzzle board smashed into fragments of itself and reassembled by mashing pieces together that don't fit, creating a new jig-saw puzzle that sounds like a band saw/jackhammer duo, yet somehow beautiful and melodic. Featuring members of Horseback, Un Deux Trois, The Hem of His Garment, Cantwell, Gomez, & Jordan, so much more - a nexus of sounds that you are privileged by hearing.
Inspector 22 and the Bramble Ramblers - fractured Beefheart moments and homemade folk rock filtered through dessicated brainwaves and put up in smoke, cheated, lied, and then screenprinted to the bottom of a pair of faded levis, tossed in the laundry, and then hung up to dry in the cul-de-sac of the occult. Todd Emmert's solo project Inspector 22 retooled as a classic rock band featuring members of the Kingsbury Manx with noise-ish tendencies, like the Sun City Girls as Lou Reed's cover band covering songs written by a guy you swear you see every day.
Crowmeat Bob + Craig Hilton - masterful ambience, like pasta of horn, like drone of brown, like a real live life-like reflection of a dinosaur train of thought, like fake jazz on the Ghost Rider's tail pipe. Shaved Heads, heavy metal, and thinking realistically about zound.
Yellow Crystal Star - to be determined, myspace clues for your perusal. Hints suggest Tangerine Dream, Lester Bang's earwax, and unused Kleenex soaked in gasoline.
Black History Moth - Doo-Doo sounds, pugilistic mind-rot, and wave porn.
9:30 PM $6

It is with great pleasure and esteem that I dutifully record missives, perhaps epistles, and certainly the occasional fanatical communique regarding issues of local and national import. Thusly, I was compelled to record the massive biofuels related post, which was the last item of written substance to scorch the keyboard of this lonely Dell laptop of busted screen.

Well, since I compiled all that research and thought into one "succinct" message about the biofuel revolution, it seems as though I have been acutely aware of a general tidal wave of continuous news regarding the subject. It seems as though I am not the only one who is keeping a sharp eye and jittery leg to the grindstone of internet news thumpa.

For example:

The bloggers at Ethicurean put together a little article that shows how the soft drink, meat, and grocery food companies are fighting the latest senate energy bill that would mandate the use of 36 billion gallons of ethanol biofuels by 2022. A 15-year pipeline to potentially prohibitively expensive corn prices, thereby making the precious corn sweetener expensive, and thusly making soda expensive. Particularly interesting are the arguments against the biofuel boom used by this coalition--the big-biz corn-lovers club--which point out that this proposed mandated increase could lead to soil erosion, degraded water quality, and habitat destruction. Well done men of power - you have now gotten around to pointing out the negative environmental effects that are intrinsically related to your underlying modus operandi. Who better to predict the ecological disasters that could potentially result from a biofuels boom than big food, big meat, and big soda?

The United Nations Environmental Programme released a report entitled Global Trends in Sustainable Energy Investment 2007. While most of the report provides details about the types of markets that are integral players in the recent sustainable energy boom, i.e. venture capital, private investment, so forth, there are some fancy facts about how large the biofuels industry is. Globally, the biofuels monster machine is a bloated runner-up to wind, the world powerhouse in sustainable energy investment. Hoorah for the breeze, and biofuels may get there since the Senate gave a push. The oft quoted figure is 36 billion gallons by the not so far off date of 2022. The Senate also said, despite the predictable push-back by "Big Auto", that by 2020 the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks would have to increase to 35 miles per gallon. This is all but a re-hash of regularly available information. Feel free to investigate on your own as you see fit. Keep a close eye to the Bush admin response, and feel free to track at Opencongress.org, responsibility for blog content attributable to Donny Shaw of Fat Worm of Error. Fancy fucking that spongepants. I am fond of opencongress's format and complexity, as it sates innate desires by political junkies to know everything EVERYTHING possible.

Words to come like so many zucchini pancakes.

Editor's note: This is the most massive Nightlight News post ever - not for the faint of heart. Settle in.


The biofuels revolution is up and running - there has never been a better time to be in the commodity farming biz - prices for corn, palm oil, sugar cane, and other stuffs are rising as biofuel demand rises. Ethanol production is the biggest cause of the price hike, at least in the US, but biodiesel is contributing to the hefty increase. One of the most immediate and alarming results is that food prices are also rising, and officials at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) are warning of the impending price increase, which will affect the world's poorest nations to the greatest degree. It's becoming a familiar news line, recycled across the various wires. The FAO is reporting that developing nations will face a 9% jump in imported food prices.

Por Exemplo - Mexico's staple food, the tortilla, is becoming prohibitively expensive, even if that corn frisbee is produced by using the cheaper subsidized American corn. King Corn, that commodity of all commodities in the Western hemisphere, has been maligned in numerous outlets, linked at various times to the militarization of Latin America, America's obesity epidemic, the American farm crisis, and other bad things, in addition to good things such as the strength of Mid-western athletes (just google cornfed).

Much like other technological innovations, the wiseness of plunging money into biofuel production as a response to rising oil prices was not terribly well debated before President Bush declared biofuels made from plants like switchgrass to be an answer for our oil addiction. Bush says in a speech in California a year ago-

Ah Yes, so it is China and India's fault that we have high gas prices, but rest assured - technological innovations will pave the way towards a return to the days of low energy costs and unfettered American consumer travel habits and spending pleasures. All the while saving the environment by making the air cleaner and lowering our dependence on foreign oil. What's a pipe dream? A pipe dream is an unreal fantasy that is essentially known to be impossible. In this case, I skewer Bush's dream because his plan generally has no reference or allusion to reducing our consumption of fuel by reducing driving, setting mandatory fuel mileage requirements for auto-makers, and other pieces of the puzzle that would force or encourage Americans to change their habits. And he usually doesn't mention (never mentions) that starting a war in the Middle East didn't seem to help matters.

Farmers all over the midwest have been converting their fields to corn, for when Bush says oil addiction, our opportunistic agri-business agents of large tractor and prop plane chemical squirtee see dollar signs. They are planting 90 million acres of zea mays this year. I suppose that doesn't mean much for those of us who eat unprocessed food, for the increased corn acreage is coming mostly at the expense of soybean acreage, and corn and soybeans produced at those acreage levels intended for grocery products generally end up as processed ingredients such as corn syrup and soy lecithin, my old favorites! Mom, pass the lecithin! More soy isolate! Kids -> Read more about interesting products produced by soy.

95 percent of ethanol produced in the US comes from corn. That's the starch-derived ethanol that comes from the sugars in plants such as corn and sugar cane. Bush's famous switchgrass idea refers to cellulosic ethanol, which comes from biomass, which is essentially and usually plant junk, at least from a dietary perspective. (It could also be hog poop or chicken shit, but that's another discussion). Cellulose is only digestible by such enterprising creatures as termites and beetles. Humans refer to cellulose as roughage, which helps add bulk to our feces. Quite the sexy feedstock for biofuels eh? It's what your parents (if they were health conscious) wanted you to eat, what helps scrape your colon clean, and, if it weren't so durn expensive to produce, the perfect source for our new fuel future.

Well, our not so perfect future. Here's the run-down real quick. Besides the rising cost of food for the world's poor, the biofuels revolution could also result in massive swaths of land being flattened and converted to monocultures of GMO (genetically modified organism) commodity crops that may be extensively sprayed with toxic pesticides and herbicides, all the while allowing Monsanto, DuPont, and a handful of other multinationals to extend their control over the germplasm and create perpetual cycles of legal and economic control over the land and seeds, land that once represented Jeffersonian ideals and romantic Walden-esque notions, but now increasingly means little beyond agricultural economic inputs in grand equations that mean money for few and suicide for many.

I used to not understand why exactly I should be opposed to GMO crops. I had a vague inkling that as a supporter of organic agriculture, small farmers, local economies, the environment, social justice, et cetera I should not eat them, but didn't really have a good idea why. I thought maybe it had something to do with disease resistance, potential famines from lost biodiversity, and environmental concerns. And even though I am now armed with newer, better reasons to be opposed to GMO crops, I'll still stick with the old ones too.

After watching The Future of Food at the Carrboro Greenspace, I really started to get it. Besides the environmental reasons like lost biodiversity and reduced resistance to pests and diseases, GMO crops should be opposed because they are a part of a larger corporate agenda that increasingly reduces the power of farmers to make independent business decisions that aren't under the legal jurisdiction of the big fat wolves of the agrosphere. In other words, because a company like Monsanto can patent a plant that they have genetically engineered, farmers are at risk of lawsuits because if one tiny seed floats on the back of a Canadian breeze into their field and takes root, they risk being sued for growing their crop without a contract. Or they can be sued for saving seeds from one year to the next. That's really sick. Seed saving is a timeless agricultural practice, and the foundation of good farm business sense. It's what makes heirloom tomatoes taste so good, it's what our agricultural heroes excel at.

GMO crops work in interesting ways, and from a nerdy scientific perspective, they are actually pretty cool. Take for example pest-resistance. Bio-engineers can take DNA from soil bacterium that retards pests, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which is typically sprayed on fields, and insert sequences from Bt into the genes of corn, so that the plant is genetically impregnated with the toxic properties of Bt. If an insect eats the plant, the toxin almost literally splits them open from the inside and kills them. I saw something like that once in a movie ... Or maybe I saw it here ... The question is, does eating GMO corn that has a toxic chemical inserted into its gene sequence cause problems for humans? Of course, the biotech companies say "no, we have tested it". Folks from an organization devoted to, among other things, mandatory labeling on products containing GMOs, say yes. They say it can cause allergy problems, given that if the spraying is so noxious to humans, we ought not put the spray in the food.

GMO crops are a product of the biotech industry, which is one of the champion economic development industry clusters, along with other -tech or tech- fields that are supposedly going to save us from the ill effects NAFTA and GATT and other free trade bipartisan favorites. Perhaps that last statement would be of the type that warrants the little "citation needed" tag on Wikipedia. I oblidge - what I mean to say is that since we have lots of "displaced workers" in this state, a most convenient euphemism for screwed blue-collar workers who can't work in traditional sectors because the 90s free trade agenda legacy has left them unemployed, they need "new high-growth sectors" to work in, sectors that of course are high-profit margin and technology intensive. So retraining workers who used to work in textiles, furniture, and tobacco to work in the biotech industry has become a darling agenda of the North Carolina General Assembly for years now. And so now millions of dollars are being spent each year in North Carolina developing GMO crops, standing in stark contrast to our burgeoning sustainable food systems movement, which is being heralded by vanguards such as the Center for Environmental Farming Systems in Goldsboro.

For example, 91 percent of North Carolina cotton plants are GMO. Another example - Ventria Bioscience is growing GMO rice near Plymouth. It's "pharma rice", a crop that yields pharmaceutically viable proteins for medical applications, in this case rice engineered to grow with the same proteins found in mother's milk embedded in its genetic make-up. Titty rice!

There are a myriad of applications for genetically modified crops, I can't even begin to list them all here. Instead, I will offer an example of one of the numerous, esoteric, specialized uses for GMO corn. DuPont has developed a corn-based polymer that can be used in place of petroleum-based ingredients in any number of products. It's produced by fermenting corn sugar with modified E. coli bacteria to produce a clear liquid compound, a process that is actually somewhat similar to making corn syrup. It's the science and glitz of these processes that clouds the environmental and social implications of GMO crops. The Raleigh News & Observer, who authored the article I link to above, only came this close to discussing the full negative implications of GMOs:

In fact, the article was written from the standpoint that using GMO corn to replace petroleum based ingredients in things like "rubber" boots and airplane de-icing solutions is good for the environment, since we don't use as much oil. (One of the problems with spending endless time and energy devoting yourself just causes like the environment or social justice is that you learn very quickly that things are rarely, if ever, just good or bad, and there aren't very many solutions that don't cause new problems.)

Much of the rest of the world doesn't want GMOs. Europe has banned imports of products containing GMOs, and Chinese consumers don't seem to want them either. Many other countries, like Japan, have experienced difficulty with shipments of commodities, like rice, that are contaminated with unapproved GMO products.

I digress . . . The whole point of this GMO diatribe was that it is entirely likely that GMO crops will be a large part of the larger biofuel plan. I mean, why not? Why not engineer crops to produce the highest yield of fuel after processing? If we can do it, why in the world wouldn't we let technology solve a problem? WHY NOT?!? SCIENCE IS ALWAYS RIGHT, DAMMIT!

OK, I let sarcasm get the better of me. I digress. Because I started this article with the intention of sharing with you some ridiculous news concerning the efforts of some of us to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, clean up the air, and make the world smell more like Frenchie Fries. And I am committed to taking the long way around to revealing the original news tidbit that prompted this increasingly epic post about biofuels.

Ah biofuels. Like GMO crops, yet another technological marvel that will save the planet, without the possibility of negative consequences. Besides the potentials for deforestation, mono-cropping vast swaths of land with GMO crops, and smoke screen filters that don't address our highly consumptive travel patterns which are causing the problem in the first place, ramping up biofuel production and driving up prices for biofuel ingredients has even given paramilitaries in Colombia cause to celebrate. They are driving peasants off their land, through killings and intimidation, in order to cut down all the trees and plant palms for palm oil production, adding daily to a population of over 3 million displaced peasants, a population that is being likened to the refugee crises in Darfur and the Congo.

This is but a taste of the controversy surrounding biofuel production. And biofuels are pretty much here to stay. For example, a House energy plan under consideration will reduce the amount of biofuels included by mandate in fuel at-the-pump, but would require service stations to install ethanol pumps. This would all be part of a plan to increase biofuel production to 20-some-million or 30-some-million, depending on who you talk to, gallons of ethanol based fuel by two thousand and seventeen and thirty or thirty two etc. Automakers will be required to produce E-85 compatible cars. Of course, all these seemingly do-good regulations cost us something in the butt end of things, either by bolstering efforts to use liquid coal-derived fuels or by giving lawmakers a piece of legislation to tack on their prohibitions on California's tailpipe emissions standards. Actually, the feds haven't formally prohibited Arnold's tougher-than-the-Clean-Air-Act standards, they are just dragging their feet, taking their sweet time before granting a waiver from the 1977 act.

You know the real reason why Bush, friends, business, all those folks drooling at the feet of the biofuel industry are lusting for something besides oil. It's certainly not because there is no more money to be made in oil. The oil markets operate according to basic principles of the free market, and in times of high demand and tight supply, those in the industry will indeed make a crap-load of money. OK, one of the biggest reasons that the biofuels industry is such a babycakes puppydog favorito industry right now is because there is also a good bit of money to be made in biofuels AND, unlike oil or coal, biofuels have the "good for the environment" stamp all over them. Clean energy venture capital investments in U.S. based companies has grown from less than one percent in 1999 to almost ten percent in 2006 - a ten-fold increase. Out of five selected energy sectors with US based operations and venture capital sector activity, biofuels outpaced all the others, with $813 million in investment, compared to the second runner up $476mil in "Energy Intelligence", whatever that is (most likely refers to the industry that provides information on energy markets and industry). All that and more available via download by perusing the presentations and speeches from the 2007 NC Sustainable Energy Conference.

Hmm. I'm going to back up a second and say all this heavy-handed sarcasm about the promise of biofuels saving the world is not, in any way, meant to make you think that biofuels are "bad" in that classically black and white way that is inappropriate descriptive diction for just about any subject except our President. He is Bad.

In fact, supporting biofuels can be a really good decision, but just like anything else, there are nuances to the decision, moderation is best, and using biofuels is but one part of a larger picture that includes reducing consumption and supporting local economies.

Enter Piedmont Biofuels, which, to the green cognoscenti of central North Carolina, are like minor rock-stars of the sustainable communities movement. Sure, some of them are a little crazy, self-professed energy nuts, and the crew down there is going to hold you to a very high standard, just like some of the folks on this comment stream at OrangePolitics.org discussing Weaver St. Market's move to Hillborough. But they also have some very good things to say about biofuels. This speech given by Rachel Burton does a fantastic job summing up the difference between getting excited about biofuels and getting real about solving the problems of energy consumption. Their mission basically boils down to, in addition to saving the planet one batch at a time, helping people create their own fuel rather than relying on flawed massive systems. That is admirable, to say the least, but also strikes me as a terribly practical way to go about doing business. As soon as I have some money, I wanna diesel truck! An old, light bodied model (sigh).

I think it is finally time to wrap up this discussion, and tell you a little story about what it means to try to provide your own fuel. While there is biodiesel, which is produced in a process similar to making soap, there is also vegetable oil, which can be used to power a vehicle with a diesel engine and a conversion kit. People who have converted their diesel engines to run on vegetable oil can literally filter old fryer oil from fast food and other restaurants and put it directly in their engine, turn key, go. Smells like french fries, zoom. Well, it's not that simple, there are plenty of considerations to be made in order to have an engine that is running properly, but the image is startling. This is some truly off the grid self-reliance shit, not for the faint of heart, lazy of butt, or devoid of conscience. People are getting into the mode, getting into the conversion, and a small movement is starting which has as its unofficial emblem canola, which is actually a trademarked term for rapeseed. Q-Tip? Band-Aid? Kleenex? Canola.

Take poor Mr. Teixera of Charlotte, NC. Bob Teixera, a guitar teacher, converted his car to run on veggie oil and started buying soybean oil from Costco to power his 81 Mercedes. Enter THE MAN.

The N.C. Department of Revenue, always looking out for (gunning for) the little guy, fined him $1,000 and told him that if he wants to legally use veggie oil in his car he needs to post a $2,500 bond. See, NC has the highest per gallon at the pump fuel tax in the Southeast, and that money mainly pays for highway improvements, which are key to economic development. Reggie Little, assistant director of the motor fuel taxes division, said "We're not here to hurt the small guy, we're just trying to make sure that the playing field is level." Thanks Reggie! Way to level the playing field.

And tell me Reggie, what do you mean? Are a handful of vintage diesel automobile drivers torquing the playing field? Is it now unfair for those of us who pay tax on fuels that destroy the quality of our air and have caused thousands of deaths, greedy policies, and violent consequences for the environment and humanity to be supporting the driving habits of people who are sincerely trying to save the world? Those of you with your logical fallacy books are probably finding scores of red flag opportunities for objection with this diatribe aren't you? Sarcasm isn't nearly as convincing as well thought out arguments and carefully researched essays, but then again, I am just blogging away, and don't quite mind that these little tangents have a tone that belies my contempt for one side in favor of another.

I doubt that a handful of veggie oil powered Mercedes are really what causes all that wear and tear on our fancy roadway system. Bet it's more likely that huge trucks, like oil tankers for example, are causing rapid wear and tear and making it necessary to spend millions of dollars on repaving efforts (although it is my understanding that that particular swath of pavement was messed up from the moment it was poured).

How did he get nabbed? Apparently state regulators were inspecting diesel RVs near Lowe's Motor Speedway for illegal fuel and then their attention got caught by Bob's sticker that said "Powered by 100% vegetable oil". One lesson to learn is don't put stickers on your car that advertise things you don't want the law knowing about. The other is stay away from racetracks on race days.

It's a wicked story, a real shot to the independently-minded fuel-using subculture, and hopefully not a harbinger of increased regulation on small-time DIYers. Public outcry would help, and there are some representatives who don't think the Dept of Revenue should be pursuing this course. I'll keep my eyes open as the story develops. And I'll keep my nose peeled for cars smelling like french fries - maybe the Revenue Department will start offering rewards if you turn in violators. I have to find some supplemental income in order to pay off this stupid student loan debt.

The scanner got fixed, sort of, so I am about to post a whole slew of Nightlight fliers, some of which are promoting shows which have passed. And the schedule is already out of date, and I made it only a week ago.
Just trying to while away the muggy buggy summer with a steaming hot laptop in my lap . . .



























I guess I'll get more up here soon . . .

Summer Breeding is what the mosquitoes are doing right now. They weren't really doing much of anything to speak of, and then Tropical Storm Bernard? Billy? oh - Barry dropped water and I guess he kinda fueled the Summer Breeding.

But what I really meant to write about was summer reading, but "potty" brain insists on being heard first. Summer reading is what they talk about in all the magazines, and radio shows, and apparently we are all supposed to be doing it right now? I don't know, because except for kids on summer vacation and people taking off work (aka on holiday), most of us are still working and living the same schedule as before right? And what about hot weather makes you want to read more? I guess when it gets really muggy and even moving slightly causes one to break out into a ridiculous sweat, perhaps reading is the highest impact activity imaginable. I actually tend to enjoy sweating, although the effects on my axillar odor are somewhat distasteful to those of effete nasal sensibility, like my momma. Nevertheless, a fondness for perspiration would definitely put me in the minority.

I tend to find reading to be difficult. OK - qualify that statement, you say. I can read fine. I find it hard to finish books. I get somewhere past the first thirty pages and then just plain up and lose interest. So the best things for me to read are a) short story collections b) comics c) magazines d) non-fiction and reference books e) internet music reviews f)job boards g)news. I shy away from fiction and storybooks, except on long vacations, like sojourns to Mexico. But nevertheless, in the sheer interests of consistency with the other medias - like the NPR program Day-to-Day "Summer Page-Turners" I now do my best to produce the -

Nightlight Summer Reading Club

It's not really a club in the sense that you can join. And certainly not as influential as Oprah's much lauded but secretly conspiratorial Book Club. That is, I do not conspire, by suggesting these novels, to lift you out of any slump, or help you recover from anything, except maybe boredom. I doubt these books will save your womanhood, or renew your faith in god, but then again, WHO KNOWS!! But I welcome your comments, and please let us know about your favorite summer books, and if you write a review of something (short, like 100 words), I'll post it here. OK? Just email nightlightbooking(at)gmail.com
Ready, set, go!


First on the list is Labyrinths. This paperback is a Borges collection, and as such, it is full of the a-type charklies approved book content - short stories, although there are also essays and other such writings. Borges has an inimitable quality and ability to create works of fiction that are as mind-bogglingly complex as an encyclopedia, very intelligent, interesting, and suggestive. Suggestive of higher disciplines like metaphysics or linguistics, but grounded in a style that mimics the essay while painting a picture of fictional worlds. Often the short stories begin as if picking up from some other spot that was never written about - Borges appeals mainly to my sense of the absurd and my desire for writing that challenges both the vocabulary and the mind of the reader. In this case, many of the writings in Labyrinths encourage we the readers to subvert our casual relationship with natural reality in favor of a creative and morphing concept of the world as an illusion through which we illustrate vastly complicated and yet terribly simplistic ruminations.








Kramer's Ergot, for the unaware, is possibly the coolest and most interesting collection of underground comics going around these days. This is the sixth of the series, and somehow, it falls short of the last two. Maybe it's that there are too many "real-life" style comics, and not enough of the weird and wacked style that held my attention in the past editions (like the Matt Brinkman comic, or Leif Goldberg's). Editor Sammy Harkham has done a great job of putting together some real eye-pleasers, and there are plenty of interesting stories - especially the mind-blowing Popul Vuh High School (21 Jaguar St) - which just about justifies the asking price (see below). For those of you that thought Popol Vuh was just Werner Herzog's house band, relearn - P.V. is the Mayan Book of the Dead, and in this comic, it gets recast as the story of a surreal high school. The hypercolor finale pages are inspiring to say the very least. Kramer's Ergot is a good way for folks who are interested in comic art to throw down a fat wad of dough ($35) in order to recieve a beautiful present to yourself that gives and gives. Souther Salazar's super-cute Ferver and Razzle is a personal fave, and as always, C.F.'s adventure stories are interesting. PaperRad's style is inimitable and always welcome in any comp. Overall, Kramer's Ergot remains the stand-out comics anthology of the day.


Andrew Weil is a totally well-respected scientist who did a bunch of carefully planned and well thought out experiments where he gave stoners and non-stoners regular doses of marijuana back in the late 60s and he came to some very interesting conclusions. This book, in a weird way, is the closest thing on this list to an Oprah Book Club selection because it can really help those of us who have intense relationships with drugs understand why we seek out these moments of altered conciousness, and what we can do to maintain non-self-destructive relationships with drugs. In other words, he has some really good things to say about fucking yourself up, and why you might be more/less inclined to do so. For instance, he helped me understand what it was about alcohol I didn't like (too "noisy" in the head), and what it was about marijuana that was so appealing (puts you in the present, with little regard for immediate future or past, hence the semi-oblivious stoner gaze and attention). The beauty of the book too, for the hard of attention span like yours truly, is that you can pick it up and put it down at will without worrying about losing your place - the chapters stand on their own. That is especially true for the chapter on the drug habits of Amazonia's inhabitants. A good read for anyone with a slightly intellectual attitude towards their own self-destruction or investigation into altered conciousness. Also an excellent argument in favor of meditation.




More books to come? Doubt it, going kinda slow on the above and haven't picked up something new in a while. I say to you - RECOMMEND!! Although, I do religiously read The Nation and Harper's, and got an information packet from ATTRA that has really caught my attention. It's called Building Better Places: Federal Programs for Sustainable Agriculture, Forestry, Entrepreneurship, Conservation, and Community Development . . .

You might be tired of all the waxing on this site - eat this, don't eat that, read the farm bill blogs religiously. When is the stupid blogger at the Nightlight site gonna talk about something vicious, some vices, show some weakness beyond diet obsession?
After all, this format is perhaps, at best, read by four people with any regularity. Perhaps it looks good, but are these words worth anything? Is this just practice for some blog that matters? Doubtful, for the blog, in all its self-indulgent glory, is still, in this tapper's eyes, but a whiff of the fingertip, and does little to really transmit the heart of the world's thumpers beyond the swipe of logorrhea that clogs this e-toilet. Give me a pen and paper and I'll make something that matters - give me a keyboard and I'll waste my time, but give anyone a blog and be prepared for some e-smudge -> e-butts -> e-ashes. My contempt for the blog is partially wrought from its irreversible hold on the computer-scope, and partially from my hope that passing time will dim the screen and bring back the blank wall.
But self-indulgence is not the vice that vexes the night air - on the contrary, the night air is being thickened sweetly with the rays of a full moon. Anyone who burned college up in zig-zag smoke may also know that certain novelists, conspiracy theorists, unshaven maidens, witches, hermits, and nature lovers have ascribed certain qualities to the moon, and especially the lunar tuna in its full glory, that make it a special friend for the night owl. The nights of the full moon are said to produce craziness, as if craziness needed its own help.
I used to use the full moon as a convienent excuse to drink too much. Now I drink not a drop, and actually think I feel the moon a little more heavily (as a consequence). However, instead of tugging at my elbow in order to tilt my wrist at the proper liquid-pouring angle, the moon is tugging at my animal instincts and burning up my proper training or self-restraint.
That's all you get, not a detail more. Instead, what this really means is that I entertain the notion of lycanthropy this week, wondering whether it is just plain silly to believe that certain humans turn to animals by the light of the full moon? Can that reflection in the sky, with all its sexy winking and nodding, with all its heavy presence and orange fervor, can that ball turn me into something more hairy and more willing to wreak havoc by tooth and claw, not tooth and nail? Doubtful to the pragmatist, likely to the romantic, attractive to the gothic, religious to the black arts. Batting the eye at the head of the pyramid is one thing, but invoking a shape-shifting moonbeam is a whole 'nother slice. What's the point of this stupid rambling?
I simply think it would be cool if there was a high school where the teachers were werewolves and the security guards operated metal detectors to ensure that no silver bullets would be brought onto school grounds. And so I find my sketchbook.
Good Night.