"
I die fast in this city
outside I die slow

everywhere i am is just another thing without you in it
"

years ago a friend purchased one of those very not legal tiny miniature turtles in the streets of chinatown. somehow it came to pass that she could not keep the turtle, so little turtle was handed over to the custody of my family. the poor thing, it turns out the turtle is suicidal. could it be the pressure of feeling unwanted? who knows. but little turtle got out of the tank that was eir home, and tried walking off the desk, plummeting to a certain death that wasnt so certain after all. little turtle lived.

but little turtle's fate is yet to be determined, for eir shell is misshapen beyond normalcy. we have a little hunchback turtle!

ok, the turtle isn't really a hunchback. but theres something quite strange going on with eir shell, where the body seems to have outgrown the shell but it's still attached, and is turning onto itself in some strange twisted way. when i can get ray and his digicam over here, i'll post a picture as testimony. what's one to do..

"Here's a fitting tongue-in-cheek tribute to a roller-coaster year, a time when the truth was often more bizarre than fiction. by Daniel Kurtzman, AlterNet"
(http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17451)

these two are the gems:

Four of these headlines appeared in the satirical weekly "The Onion." Which one appeared in a U.S. newspaper?

a) Bush Re-Election Campaign Creates Thousands of New Jobs
b) Bush Diagnosed With Attention-To-Deficit Disorder
c) Bush Bravely Leads 3rd Infantry Into Battle
d) Latest Leak: Bush Orders An End to Leaks
e) Bush Asks Congress For $30 Billion to Help Fight War on Criticism



Walden O'Dell, the chief executive of Diebold Inc., one of the largest manufacturers of computerized voting machines, raised eyebrows when he said he was committed to what?

a) Rigging voting machines to ensure Democratic victories in 2004
b) Helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to President Bush in 2004
c) Utilizing an electronic version of the butterfly ballot to confuse Florida voters again
d) Installing software enabling voting machines to make helpful suggestions

the cancer cluster stats in this region are frightening. for paul and mike and anyone else interested in paul's posts about the toxics in his neighborhood:

this is a website made by a local environmental justice organization that lets you zoom to maps of your community and view the top environmental concerns for that area, what the pollution source is, and how to do something about it. (http://www.ecothreatny.org/) this is a link that paul found to maps of cancer incidence; maps of risk factors, including environmental information. (http://www.health.state.ny.us/nysdoh/cancer/csii/nyscsii.htm)

love canal: what would you do if your house sat on 20,000 tons of toxic waste?

earlier this year i had a chance to work on the 25th anniversary events of love canal (http://www.chej.org/Lovecanal.html). 25 years had passed since residents won (after a long long struggle) the right to be relocated, and it had seen the growth of a movement and many a collaboration among groups that never usually work together. but 25 years also saw many broken promises made by politicians, and a growing blatant disregard by companies (like praxair) (still) releasing dangerous substances into communities.

i remember driving up to the niagara falls community for a walking tour, how creepy it looked and how it felt like a ghost town. a couple of years back, they had knocked down all the houses in a few block radius. so now, all that's left is overgrown grass with trees in what used to be front yards and back yards. the grass is so overgrown that the sidewalks are covered. you can make out driveways, but theyre all covered with overgrowth too. eery..

lois gibbs and the other love canal residents told us some pretty crazy stories, about kids playing on the street only to have the rubber on their sneakers melt, tons of birth defects whenever babies were born, spontaneous fires starting all over.

keep in mind that there are a whole bunch of ppl still living there now. the dept. of conservation/ dept. of health had put up a fence surrounding where the canal caps off, and once there were warning signs about the toxic area. but since, someone has taken down the warning signs in the area. now, the area is known as beaver creek (or some name that's really latent just like that) and theres nothing to tell you or remind you that its toxic there. which kinda explains why there are people living there now right. they let enough time pass, and no one remembers what happened..

i'd like to think there are no more love canals, but that simply isn't realistic. the very same thing is happening in hickory woods in south buffalo. and there are tons of toxic sites on the east side and in tonawanda and cheektowaga. it's right in our backyards..

we really liked the triplets of belleville (http://www.sonyclassics.com/triplets/). it was fun if only for a short while bc i fell asleep watching it. (me falling asleep says nothing about how good it is btw, it's just my narcolepsy coming through) if you have ever enjoyed something like monsieur hulot's holiday by jaques tati, run out and see this. when it comes out 6 months from now in bflo that is..

it's dark. it's animated, but it wont look like what you'd expect. the trailer: (http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony/thetripletsofbellville.html). i won't reveal any more, but to say be wary of spoilers if you check out metacritic (http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/tripletsofbelleville/).