Ai Weiwei has been released!

Mel Bosworth’s highly anticipated novel, Freight, is available for pre-order.

This piece by Christy Crutchfield in The Collagist is well worth your time.  Promise.

Al Gore has a great piece about climate deniers in July’s Rolling Stone.

Having lived in college towns in both Wisconsin and Minnesota, I’m more than familiar with sports-born rioting. And no one riots quite like a hockey fan. And so having witnessed my share of violence-by-rioter, it warms the cockles of my heart to see that at least the crowd in Vancouver could be persuaded to refrain from book-burning, for Christ’s sake.

Sarah Palin continues her quitting streak.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, is as pleasurable to read as Christopher Hitchens tearing some writer a new asshole. And when that writer is David Mamet, smug and self-satisfied after giving birth to a monstrously-formed, cobbled-together-by-orcs-on-speed political philosophy, the pleasure increases ten-fold.

Damn. That is a LOT of money. Go get some, writers!

Photograph by Charlie Crane.

I wrote about Diana Wynne Jones, and what her writing meant to me, over at Big Other. I’ve received several private responses about this post and how much she meant to others as well, which I feel hugely gratified about. You see, Jones recently died, and I had been meaning to write to her to tell her how much I owed her. I procrastinated, not knowing she was terminally ill, and by the time I got around to it, it was too late. So it makes me feel better, knowing that at least a few others who knew and loved her books read the post and found something good to take away from it.

File this one in the more depressing category. As our economy continues to founder and Republicans blame Obama, screaming that he needs to cut taxes on business so they’ll create more jobs, here’s the real culprit: companies looking not to provide jobs, but to cut them in favor of mechanization, in order to facilitate an even more rapid downward spiral. As the Times points out,  “Workers are getting more expensive while equipment is getting cheaper, and the combination is encouraging companies to spend on machines rather than people.”  And dooooooowwwwwwwwnnnnnnnn we go.

Eerie, beautiful photos of North Korea by Charlie Crane. Look.

Anybody else headed to Netroots Nation in Mpls next week? We’ll (UFCW peeps) be there, sitting on panels, talking to old friends, and…hosting an AWESOME bourbon and bacon happy hour, with bourbon and bacon made by UFCW members. If you’re there stop by and say hi!

Dark Sky’s November Web Issue has some fabulous, fabulous stuff in it, including killer stories by Dave Housely, Ravi Mangla, and Jimmy Chen.

There is a fascinating article on T.S. Eliot and lit crit in November’s Commentary.

Steve Himmer is interviewed by his new publisher, Atticus Books, here. A must-read.

I just added Eric Beeny’s new poetry collection, Of Creatures, to my teeming cart at Amazon.

If you don’t know about For Every Year yet, you really need to. Start with Chantel Louise Tattoli’s new story, which is amazing and terrific and many other superlatives.

Because everyone loves this stuff, Cliff Garstang’s Pushcart Rankings. Dunno if it means anything, but it’s always pretty interesting.

Bush was actually too lazy to write his own memoir. True story.

But. Before you even THINK about sitting the elections in November out, remember this: Republicans are counting on people like you to NOT VOTE, because their people sure as hell will. And if they take over the House and maybe even the Senate, do not think it will just be “more of the same.”  Why?

Because Dems have passed health care. A watered-down version, maybe, but we can improve it and fix it. Dems have passed legislation so that credit card companies can’t screw you over anymore. Dems passed Lily Ledbetter, another step toward equal pay for equal work. Dems have defended things like Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and fixing our broken immigration system and they oppose Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and they are currently trying to extend tax cuts for the middle class and programs to help employ the poor and even if they are weak and pathetic and in the pockets of lobbyists Democrats STILL, by and large, are much much better than Republicans would be.

What would Republicans do? They would repeal health care, for starters. They would cut government services for the poor and disabled and elderly. They would cut school funding and advocate firing teachers if they can’t or don’t teach to the test, no matter what the circumstances of the child being tested might be. They would shrink government, resulting in lost jobs for teachers and firefighters and cops and lots of other people we rely on. They would extend tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and bring back, yet again, two rusty old standbys: a missle defense system and trickledown economics–two things we know don’t work and will cost us billions. They’ll outsource more of our jobs overseas, privatize Social Security, scale back Wall Street reform in favor of the speculators, undermine worker safety laws, and finally, if they don’t get their way, they’ll shut down the government.

How do I know Republicans will do all of these things? Because they’ve told us they will.

So please. Do not try to tell me you just don’t care. Do not try to tell me that they’re “all the same.” Don’t try to tell me you’re tired or busy or just not inspired anymore. Because if you do not go out there and vote, crazy people (Sharon Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Carl Paladino, Rand Paul) will win and will take over our government and if you think things are bad NOW…just wait until next year. These people think government is evil, that we should all fend for ourselves, that if we want roads and schools and parks that we should pay for those things ourselves and if we can’t afford to pay (just like those lucky duckies who can’t afford to pay taxes) then we should just eat cat food and die. These people are NUTS. You do not want them in charge.

And if NONE of this wins you over in any way–then please vote for my sake. And the sake of my kids that I want to have someday, and who I want to grow up in a world where they can still hope to be anything they want to be and to still have a shot at what we used to call the American Dream.  This may not happen anyway. But it surely won’t happen if we let Republicans be in charge again.

Please?

The real article is here. Read it and see if you don’t agree that this is his slippery, weasely point.

P.S. I can believe that we’re having this debate. What I can’t believe is the insane amount of media coverage it’s getting. I guess it’s just that August political news drought.

Now, this awful excuse for a human being brings us…ready for it?…TERROR BABIES. It’s like Muppet Babies, but EVEN SCARIER.

Fuck these people. Can’t we just admit they’re nuts and hang a sign around their necks that says, I AM NOT ALLOWED TO TAKE PART IN THE DEBATE BECAUSE I AM TEH MORAN? Can’t we please?

From Wonkette:

An Arizona elementary school mural featuring the faces of kids who attend the school has been the subject of constant daytime drive-by racist screaming, from adults, as well as a radio talk-show campaign (by an actual city councilman, who has an AM talk-radio show) to remove the black student’s face, and now the school principal has ordered the faces of the Latino and Black students to be changed to Caucasian skin.

Palin has figured out that this is really all you have to do to win elections in this country — flatter middle Americans’ moronic fantasies about themselves. The great thing about flattery is a) you can’t overdo it as hard as you try, and b) it doesn’t pin you down to messy political positions, controversies, things you can be harassed about by Chris Matthews and other press weasels.

It’s basically a risk-free strategy. You get up on stage and you say, “I’m just like all you idiots. And you idiots rock!” People will fall for this stuff. The ingenious part in Sarah Palin’s case is that she probably genuinely believes it.

Taibbi argues that even Dubya never had the same success with these same methods, because he was too used to the high life despite his cowboy image. Palin, on the other hand, really is of the people–her people.

Read the new issue of PANK, including this very sly story by Kyle Minor.

Get outraged over Arizona’s latest racist move.

Send xTx, writer and blogger and mistress of awesome, a poem or story or thingamajig about ZOMBIES! Because this is the summer of ZOMBIES and she will be featuring these things on her site.

Shout “I declare you to be AN OUTLAW!” every time you answer the phone. God, that movie looks like a dried piece of crap, doesn’t it? Poor Cate Blanchett. It’s not her fault. She is beautiful and talented. And it’s her birthday, so please be nice to her.  And why does everyone have to SHOUT so much in movies nowadays? Russell Crowe is probably standing right next to that guy. Although if Russell Crowe were standing next to me, I would shout at him, too. I would shout, MAKE A GOOD MOVIE! But he probably wouldn’t.