Arc v' May 2004

26. May 2004. Beautiful aliens descended upon my tiny city to spread their message of light, joy, and hiccup cures through terrific harmonies and jagged structures.

My online word publishing network continues to grow, as I am pleased to announce the launch of euc.cx/ddec. ddec is an experiment in numerous elements that have interested me for a while, which include:

• Focus on narratives. I've been trying to return to prosaic writing for a while. I've used Industrie Toulouse recently as a place to start out such experiments, but I wanted a dedicated place.
• Content relationships. I been wanting to track references between stories, characters, places, etc. This is especially important as Eucci and aodl audio works are starting to tie in to a larger narrative universe.
• Self organizing. As I write the words, I want them to fall in place into the site's hierarchy automatically.
• Next generation management. For a long time, I've been wanting to apply this not only to words, but to my online label rive. My hosting for euc.cx is fairly simple, and I've wanted to keep it simple: no database management systems, no web application servers, nothing. I've maintained most of it with Adobe GoLive 6.0, but some areas of the site are getting to be a bit much.

Enter Ftrain Sitekit, which uses XML and XSLT, and is powering not only Ftrain.com but also Harpers.org. I found an old version of the code on Sourceforge, and with a small degree of work, got it up and running in a couple of days.

There's more I'd like to tell, as I'm finding myself getting sucked deeper into the concepts of the Semantic Web and hope to explore that side of the world further. But for now, I just want to announce the existence of ddec, and to also make the mistake of promising more content on Industrie Toulouse related to some of the old topics we all know and love.

If the building is not on fire, that is.

In dreams last night there was the concept of the Greenbox, an Eucci alternative to the aodl Redbox. This may or may not happen, but it's an idea that I'm starting to entertain (if for nothing else than personal entertainment). At the very least, it's an interesting concept and an interesting symbol to show up in dreams.

Buried in my storage closet is The Greenbox, something picked up at an antique store in Fredericksburg to be used as a storage place for letters from The Girl Back Home. Since that relationship ended, it has also become a storage container for other momentous creatures of terrifying light and ruin, and it's about to gain a new member. It was curious that, in the dream, the Eucci Greenbox was deemed to be such a good idea. However, even in the dream, it was put down as a "good concept only."

There is temptation, though, to make it. With Laa 3 on the verge of sellout (one copy left!), I'm a little tempted to release some similar stringent minimalist environmental constructs in CD form, starting with one that's still my favorite: Kate Cheuffer Stripped Bare. I've also wanted to bundle the nostalgia demon twins onto a single CD (those twins being the finest luxury travelache / heartache releases 028 and 029).

KCSB, coincidentally, was initially to be the first Eucci CDR, with the notion that it would be Haute Couture - manufactured entirely to order with different lengths and each one unique. Which, come to think of it, might still be a fun experiment. I also wanted to do that with Shatter (the loudest Eucci piece ever made), and have given away a few variations of it (ie, for a friends 27th birthday, I gave her a 27 minute version of it).

Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts... I should leave well enough alone, for now.

The Luxury Spring 2004 release cycle is almost finished. Appearing on Nishi is this cold piece of environmental extraction.

Benotz folded his arms and leaned on the bridge's iron railing. Grey skies matched his thoughts. Cigarette smoke soothed as the wind hit his back. The bridge shook as a trolley rattled past, and Benotz noticed the waves beginning to pick up in the river below. Another drag, another wave of calm. He cast his eyes back towards the rehabilitated industrial buildings of Halo District and sighed. He didn't want to go back there today. Not for a while. Benotz was overwhelmed with a feeling that he couldn't quite peg down; he only knew that life felt different. Heavy and electric somehow. He had to step away.

Benotz ground up the remains of the Lucky Strike in his fingers and watched tobacco bits scatter over the water. Reaching into the front pocket of his denim jacket (a favorite), he pulled out another cigarette and huddled in the wind to ignite it. Turning his back towards the district, he continued his journey across the bridge into a new burgeoning commercial sector with a new destination in mind - the bus station, and then wherever. A cold electric weight went through his system as he thought (briefly) of going to LGL Point. Benotz shook his head, breathed deep, and resolved to head in any other direction. But even he knew that no matter where he ended up, there were elements he could not escape.

He dropped dollar after dollar into a pay phone tonight. Dead end phone calls to the south, placed outside assorted convenience markets. The connections appear to be lost. Perhaps just forgotten. Summer asylum arrangements still have to wait. As he walked away from the phone and considered the potential company, the delay suddenly seemed wise.

She sat on the lake shore, feeling the sun on her arms and the first true hot damp humidity of pending summer. On the run from Atlanta, but staying ever in The South. Summer asylum arrangements seemed successfully dodged. She contemplated sleep under the loblolly pine. Tomorrow, the road would lead through Birmingham.

Harpers.org has a comprehensive listing of events, published in the magazine and online since 2000, related to torture. It groups torture under war crimes, under war tactics, under war, under human endeavor.

The May 2004 issue of Harper's has a reading of dispatches from Guantánamo, as interviews of released prisoners collected by the BBC and Human Rights Watch. The interviews cover more torture and abuse.

Billmon captures scenes from a cover up. A stunning collection of quotes and links denying and documenting American torture abuses in Iraq and Guantánamo.

The October 2003 issue of The Atlantic has a cover story by Mark Bowden on The Dark Art of Interrogation, covering many different sides and history of this issue.