December 22nd, 2006

Chris Keeley

Pip's Novel Free - PDF

Pips' novel

novel, 'Faces in the Street', may be downloaded free at http://www.boilingbilly.com/faces_in_the_street.pdf  -- 2.13 Mb.
 
What I'm sending you is in PDF form, which to me is rather like reading a brick, but you might like a copy anyway. Some people say I'm mad to give it away. I disagree.
 
The book is about Australia's most famous writer, Henry Lawson, his mother Louisa Lawson ('Mother of Women's Suffrage'), their radical and bohemian associates -- terrorists, anarchists and seditionists, and Henry's love affairs. It's not what you might think.
 
The reviews are excellent -- see http://www.lulu.com/content/446062  -- even from the USA and Ireland, but the interest from Australian publishers is non-existent so far. It's been suggested that the connection between an Aussie 'icon' and terrorism is too scary for them.
 
Don't worry about copyright; if you wish to pass it on to anyone, feel free. In fact, I encourage it, as it was written to be read and I think word-of-mouth will help this book get published. Please send this far and wide to friends and email lists. The more, the better. Much appreciated.
 
More info is at www.boilingbilly.com , so I invite you to check it out. I have self-published but am looking for a publisher. The Sydney Morning Herald will be publishing my 2,000-word essay based on the premises of the book, in the big Saturday 'Spectrum' section, probably in early January. In Late January, 'Perspective' on ABC Radio National will feature me speaking nationally on this topic, so there seems to be some interest out there. However, the goal now is to convince the literary agents and publishers. So, please pass it on! And any suggestions will be welcome.
 
Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year,
 
Pip
 
 
 

Chris Keeley

sex.com

The only thing missing from the Sex.com story is a dead stripper found with a rubber alligator lodged in her throat -- though, by all estimates, to add this to the URL's outrageous legacy wouldn't be a huge shocker. 

A brief history of Sex.com: all crime, no sex.

A snip from Violet Blue's San Francisco Chronicle column today on the dark history behind one of the web's most infamous domains:
The only thing missing from the Sex.com story is a dead stripper found with a rubber alligator lodged in her throat -- though, by all estimates, to add this to the URL's outrageous legacy wouldn't be a huge shocker. It would only be adding some sex to the mix -- especially considering the Sex.com story includes a fugitive seized by U.S. marshals, hard-luck convicted felons hiding millions in Mexican shrimp farms and strip clubs, the fugitive's daughter caught smuggling over 200 pounds of pot, one multimillionaire dot-com scammer speed fiend with a Stanford MBA, a bizarre bid to buy Caesars Palace and a recent Tijuana gangland-style assassination attempt on a lawyer (nicknamed "The Toad") that left a Mexican cabbie and a 4-year-old boy wounded.

Like mobile-home scammers in Florida and billboard plastic surgeons in Los Angeles, URL grifters are part of the sleazy yet entertaining Bay Area tech-industry zoo. And so when a guy like Gary Kremen snags URLs like Match.com and Sex.com and dabbles in brokering far-reaching Web page patents and "Internet consulting" while (according to a 2005 CNN interview) working on a nice speed habit, he just sort of blends in with the rest of the money-grubbing, VC-chasing dot-com herd. Like most startup cowboys, Kremen sat on the Sex.com URL as an undeveloped property -- until a con man named Stephen M. Cohen came along and swindled VeriSign/Network Solutions out of Sex.com with fast talk and forgeries.

Link

Previously on BoingBoing:

• Sex.com: a url worth dying for?
• Sex.com sells for over $14M,"adult social network" to follow
• Sex.com's CEO is suing Yahoo
• Verisign will have to pay for sex.com mistake
• High-tech companies need high-tech lawyers.
• More on sex.com in the BoingBoing archives

posted by Xeni Jardin

Chris Keeley

Mook

Mook, a five-year-old cat who weighs 24 pounds, apparently escaped from the wire mesh-enclosed area overnight, zoo spokesman John Gibbons said.


A clouded leopard, like this female photographed at the National Zoo's Conservation and Research Center in Front Royal, Va. was discovered sleeping outside her enclosure along the new Asia Trail exhibit. (Ho - Reuters) 

Leopard Escapes From New Habitat at Zoo
Five-Year-Old, 24-Pound Cat Now Back in Enclosure

By Debbi Wilgoren
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 22, 2006; 9:38 AM

 

The National Zoo was shut down for about 30 minutes early this morning after a clouded leopard was discovered lying along the new Asia Trail, just outside her enclosure, a zoo spokesman said.

Mook, a five-year-old cat who weighs 24 pounds, apparently escaped from the wire mesh-enclosed area overnight, zoo spokesman John Gibbons said.

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Chris Keeley

NYT Publishes White House-Redacted Op-Ed Critical of Iran Policy

NYT Publishes White House-Redacted Op-Ed Critical of Iran Policy
The New York Times has published a controversial, White House-censored article critical of US policy towards Iran. The Bush administration had blocked the piece on the grounds it contains classified information. The op-ed is co-authored by Former National Security Council official Flynt Leverett. The New York Times did not defy the White House censorship and published the piece in redacted form. Leverett has argued the White House demanded the removal of sections detailing publicly known information about how Iran cooperated after the 9/11 attacks and offered to negotiate a diplomatic settlement three years ago. In an accompanying statement, Leverett writes he will continue to campaign for the article’s publication without White House censorship.

Chris Keeley

What We Wanted to Tell You About Iran

December 22, 2006
Op-Ed Contributors

What We Wanted to Tell You About Iran

By FLYNT LEVERETT and HILLARY MANN

Washington

HERE is the redacted version of a draft Op-Ed article we wrote for The Times, as blacked out by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Publication Review Board after the White House intervened in the normal prepublication review process and demanded substantial deletions. Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House.

Indeed, the deleted portions of the original draft reveal no classified material. These passages go into aspects of American-Iranian relations during the Bush administration’s first term that have been publicly discussed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; a former State Department policy planning director, Richard Haass; and a former special envoy to Afghanistan, James Dobbins.

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Chris Keeley

Redacted Version of Original Op-Ed

Redacted Version of Original Op-Ed

By FLYNT LEVERETT and HILLARY MANN

The Iraq Study Group has added its voice to a burgeoning chorus of commentators, politicians, and former officials calling for a limited, tactical dialogue with Iran regarding Iraq. The Bush administration has indicated a conditional willingness to pursue a similarly compartmented dialogue with Tehran over Iran’s nuclear activities. 

Christophe Vorlet

Unfortunately, advocates of limited engagement — either for short-term gains on specific issues or to “test” Iran regarding broader rapprochement — do not seem to understand the 20-year history of United States-Iranian cooperation on discrete issues or appreciate the impact of that history on Iran’s strategic outlook. In the current regional context, issue-specific engagement with Iran is bound to fail. The only diplomatic approach that might succeed is a comprehensive one aimed at a “grand bargain” between the United States and the Islamic Republic.

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Chris Keeley

Sidestreets the movie

Sidestreets the movie

http://www.sidestreetsthemovie.com/home.html

An urban comedy anthology that takes place over a 24 hour period on the hottest day of the year, with interconnecting stories from each of the five boroughs of New York City. In Queens, Romanian butcher's apprentice Josif dreams of a house in the suburbs for himself and his wife. In the Bronx Puerto Rican Marisol sees her boyfriend as a way to a life of glamour, but is mistaken. In Manhattan, fashion designer Sylvie is facing eviction from her SoHo apartment, and latches onto a Japanese department store buyer in an attempt to get her career moving. In Staten Island, Chandra is fed up with her husband's brother, a faded Bollywood star who has come to visit. And in Brooklyn, a West Indian couple's marriage comes under strain when Errol buys a too-expensive new car.

Tony Gerber made his directorial debut with this anthology film, a comedy-drama that opens with a 1950s black-and-white newsreel focusing on the ethnic diversity of New York City. This multicultural mix is dramatized in five interlinked tales set in each of NYC's five boroughs on a hot summer day: In Manhattan, a Soho fashion designer on the brink of eviction begins a relationship with a Japanese department store buyer. In the Bronx, the daughter of a Puerto Rican baker thinks her lover can provide a portal to a glamorous, successful life. For the Queens segment, Gerber expanded his 1995 short film, A Small Taste of Heaven, about a gambling Romanian butcher's apprentice who dreams of someday purchasing a nice suburban house for his wife. On Staten Island, the wife of an Indian limousine driver is treated like a servant by her husband's visiting brother. In Brooklyn, a West Indian man makes the mistake of pawning his wife's family heirlooms to buy a Cadillac. Shown at the 1998 Venice Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

http://www.sidestreetsthemovie.com/sidestreets_lrg.html
Chris Keeley

Movie Review--The Good Shepherd

   Worst movie of the year. Hyped, unbelievably good reviews. Reviewers
must have been heavily bribed. Badly written, badly directed, badly
acted, confusing, incomprehensible, 157 minutes long but feels more like
four hours, supposedly about the CIA but isn't, dialogue which is mostly
hard to hear (a blessing), Matt Damon  mostly stares, rarely speaks,
appears barely sentient. However, really revealing about Skull and Bones
at Yale (if it's true). Don't waste your time. De Niro should find
another line of work. Or do a movie about Skull and Bones.

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Robert V. Keeley