Fwd: Your care and concern

Best spam ever.

-------- Original Message --------

Subject:	Your care and concern
Date:	Thu, 12 Jan 2012 09:43:23 -0800
From:	Muktar Al Gaddafigaddafimuktarjafar@yahoo.com.ph
Reply-To:	jafgadafi@yahoo.com.ph
To:	undisclosed-recipients:;

To your concern please; 

I am Jafar Gaddafi from Libya. I am a Cousin of Muammar Gaddafi who was murdered by the Western Powers recently in our home town of Sirte. I am currently in hidding in an African Country at the moment as a political refugee because of the recent problems in my country. My family have a huge sum of money deposited in an offshore financial facility outside my Country, Libya and I need your urgent help to quickly take control of this money from the present location to another bank of your choice in your name to avoid it being discovered and seized or any question concerning the source or trace to me. At the moment, it is the only thing left for us now and I want to start a new life with it. This transaction requires immediate attention because of the current political situation in my country (Libya) and I do not want to lose this money to the European government, the USA or the United Nations.

It is a huge sum of money and I am ready to offer you 30% of the money to stand as the beneficiary and transfer to a new bank account of your choice where you can start investment with it. I believe you can help me, but if on the contrary please forgive my indulgence and delete this e-mail content without sharing with anyone.

This money rightfully belongs to me, because it is my part of an agreement for oil that was used to compensate for my late father who died fighting for Muammar Gaddafi and it may be confiscated by the European government. This is the only thing I have to start a new life and change our current situation. If you are interested and able to handle this for me in all honesty without any betrayal of trust that I shall repose on you then contact me on my private email address below.

E-mail:  hic7609@yahoo.com.ph

Please note that this transaction is confidential and should be kept in top secret until we have completed the transfer to your appointed account.

Thank you very much for your understanding.

Thanks,

Muktar Al Jafar Gaddafi

To the Warner Brothers from the Marx Brothers

As reposted from:
http://www.chillingeffects.org/resource.cgi?ResourceID=31

Groucho Marx

Abstract: While preparing to film a movie entitled A Night in Casablanca, the Marx brothers received a letter from Warner Bros. threatening legal action if they did not change the film’s title. Warner Bros. deemed the film’s title too similar to their own Casablanca, released almost five years earlier in 1942, with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. In response Groucho Marx dispatched the following letter to the studio’s legal department:

---

Dear Warner Brothers,

Apparently there is more than one way of conquering a city and holding it as your own. For example, up to the time that we contemplated making this picture, I had no idea that the city of Casablanca belonged exclusively to Warner Brothers. However, it was only a few days after our announcement appeared that we received your long, ominous legal document warning us not to use the name Casablanca.

It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, your great-great-grandfather, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank, had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock (which he later turned in for a hundred shares of common), named it Casablanca.

I just don’t understand your attitude. Even if you plan on releasing your picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn in time to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don’t know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try.

You claim that you own Casablanca and that no one else can use that name without permission. What about “Warner Brothers”? Do you own that too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about the name Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were. We were touring the sticks as the Marx Brothers when Vitaphone was still a gleam in the inventor’s eye, and even before there had been other brothers—the Smith Brothers; the Brothers Karamazov; Dan Brothers, an outfielder with Detroit; and “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” (This was originally “Brothers, Can You Spare a Dime?” but this was spreading a dime pretty thin, so they threw out one brother, gave all the money to the other one, and whittled it down to “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”)

Now Jack, how about you? Do you maintain that yours is an original name? Well it’s not. It was used long before you were born. Offhand, I can think of two Jacks—Jack of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” and Jack the Ripper, who cut quite a figure in his day.

As for you, Harry, you probably sign your checks sure in the belief that you are the first Harry of all time and that all other Harrys are impostors. I can think of two Harrys that preceded you. There was Lighthouse Harry of Revolutionary fame and a Harry Appelbaum who lived on the corner of 93rd Street and Lexington Avenue. Unfortunately, Appelbaum wasn’t too well-known. The last I heard of him, he was selling neckties at Weber and Heilbroner.

Now about the Burbank studio. I believe this is what you brothers call your place. Old man Burbank is gone. Perhaps you remember him. He was a great man in a garden. His wife often said Luther had ten green thumbs. What a witty woman she must have been! Burbank was the wizard who crossed all those fruits and vegetables until he had the poor plants in such confused and jittery condition that they could never decide whether to enter the dining room on the meat platter or the dessert dish.

This is pure conjecture, of course, but who knows—perhaps Burbank’s survivors aren’t too happy with the fact that a plant that grinds out pictures on a quota settled in their town, appropriated Burbank’s name and uses it as a front for their films. It is even possible that the Burbank family is prouder of the potato produced by the old man than they are of the fact that your studio emerged “Casablanca” or even “Gold Diggers of 1931.”

This all seems to add up to a pretty bitter tirade, but I assure you it’s not meant to. I love Warners. Some of my best friends are Warner Brothers. It is even possible that I am doing you an injustice and that you, yourselves, know nothing about this dog-in-the-Wanger attitude. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to discover that the heads of your legal department are unaware of this absurd dispute, for I am acquainted with many of them and they are fine fellows with curly black hair, double-breasted suits and a love of their fellow man that out-Saroyans Saroyan.

I have a hunch that his attempt to prevent us from using the title is the brainchild of some ferret-faced shyster, serving a brief apprenticeship in your legal department. I know the type well—hot out of law school, hungry for success, and too ambitious to follow the natural laws of promotion. This bar sinister probably needled your attorneys, most of whom are fine fellows with curly black hair, double-breasted suits, etc., into attempting to enjoin us. Well, he won’t get away with it! We’ll fight him to the highest court! No pasty-faced legal adventurer is going to cause bad blood between the Warners and the Marxes. We are all brothers under the skin, and we’ll remain friends till the last reel of “A Night in Casablanca” goes tumbling over the spool.

Sincerely,

Groucho Marx

Unamused, Warner Bros. requested that the Marx Brothers at least outline the premise of their film. Groucho responded with an utterly ridiculous storyline, and, sure enough, received another stern letter requesting clarification. He obliged and went on to describe a plot even more preposterous than the first, claiming that he, Groucho, would be playing “Bordello, the sweetheart of Humphrey Bogart.” No doubt exasperated, Warner Bros. did not respond. A Night in Casablanca was released in 1946.

Maintained by Chilling Effects

Time

Greetings, friends,
For some of you, this may be a surprise as I have sent out a SCREED in almost a year...for many others, a surprise as I haven't sent out an e-mail blast in much longer (since my previous computer died...)  Now I've painstakingly reassembled a lifetime of e-mail addresses...so if you get multiple copies of this message, blame yourself!  Settle down!

I wanted to share a movie with you, a very mundane thing, but one that shot me with such a thrill I've felt compelled to write to you all in the ether once again.  I'm thinking of "The Clock" by Christian Marclay, which recently showed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, after a visit to New York City and London.  I'd call this a "high concept montage"...the artist cut together a 24 hour film (video?) using clips from thousands of other films, most of which either had a clock in the background, or filling the screen, or having someone announce what time it is, and at every point the time exactly matches the current time in the theatre, sometimes to the second.

It sounds silly at first, but the idea grew on me rapidly.  First of all, I am a movie buff even more than an art buff, so just the challenge of identifying the movies the guy used and judging the breadth of his own taste was attractive.  I was also drawn in by the idea that the film would start at 11 AM and continue until 11 AM the following morning, opening up the possibility of going out for dinner and cocktails, catching a few hours, a few more drinks, a puff of something, and maybe even popping in at 4 AM to see what's alive around Wilshire and Fairfax at that hour.

I met a friend who works at LACMA and we went in around 8.45 PM.  One odd effect of this film is that there was never any doubt about the time; if you had to leave at 10, you could time your departure to the minute.  We stayed, in my first stretch, until 9.20, then went over to a neighboring building to a reception.  We had to get drunk for the next stretch; I was committed to see midnight.

I realized two things during this half-hour:  first, the guy had a very broad knowledge of movies, tending towards postwar American and British films up through the present, a slight emphasis on the '80s and early '90s, and a smattering of more recent French and German films, with a few classics of the silent era and the Golden Age thrown in.  I am not arrogant enough to claim I knew even half the clips, but I'll say I recognized more than most of the kids there, and certainly knew more of the actors.

The second thing I realized was far more important:  this film was no gimmick, not merely a bunch of clock faces cut together in rhythm, like some MTV music video from the cable era.  This work was painstaking and brilliant, with sound from the overlapping scenes being used to strongly tie the montage together, and more than just clock and people glancing at watches, there were many short clips with no visible reference to time, two-shots, themes, everything forming a cognitive whole.  This fucking madman took a gimmick and made a 24-hour movie out of it.  It was absolutely riveting, and not just because nearly every minute found a visual reference in a clock (especially a digital clock turning over to the next minute...), which in itself is not boring at all...in fact it is extremely tense, and a tension that finds no release, like some Wagnerian motif twirling and spinning ever higher without a climax.  Just a half-hour lit me up like a fuse.

We got drunk and raved about the experience with some other people, a few who'd just shown up and a few who'd been there all day, and were committed to seeing a least portions until the "end" at 11 the following morning.  I had to work the next day, but I decided to push it as far as I dared.  We went back in at 11.20.

I extended this final stretch until 1.35 AM, when I conceded that someone could easily sit through the entire film, running for the john and maybe some stimulants, without napping or even getting comfortable.  I reached a few conclusions that didn't increase my intimacy with the CINEMA, but certainly cemented the bond in a way that most people, except those who've sat through "Berlin Alexanderplatz" in one sitting (hand up) or goddess forbid, "The Sargasso Manuscript" (hand up), or perhaps a film editor will appreciate.  I experienced the rhythm of film on a new level.

The film taught me something about the device of showing a clock at all in a film; it usually appears as an anchor or a device, so this was a long, long chain of such anchors, driving the tension ever higher.  It taught me something, through repetition, of our relationship to time, the constant monitoring of it, our enslavement to time.  The intensity of certain moments signaled an arbitrary relationship to time; there were, obviously, more clips around the top an hour than either quarter or the half-hour, and hardly any for the intervening minutes (except the build-up to midnight, which began in earnest after 11.30)...yet the filmmaker's depth of appropriation found a reference for nearly every minute of every hour; the longest stretch I noticed without a clock was three or four minutes between 1.05 and 1.10.

Midnight, which I'd waited for, was something of a disappointment; so much of midnight in film was merely SHOWING the clock, and there was for that minute a very fast montage of at least a dozen films, with a bit too much Big Ben for my taste; but this was the statement.  I didn't get the clip of " À Meia-Noite Levarei Sua Alma" ("At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul") I'd been waiting for, but I didn't see any Brasilian films, come to think of it.  Even 24 hours is a limitation in the vast body of film.  But the disappointment wasn't much (indeed, the few minutes after midnight were a great release, as in most films this shows some great disaster averted, just as I was told had happened around noon.)  By then the specific minute meant little.  On a deeper level, "The Clock" tuned me into the great unconscious humanity of the cinema.  One profound result of tying together thousands of films to a diurnal cycle was a psychological "average", if you wish, of what people are doing at any particular minute of the day.  My first half-hour had been full of people finishing dinner, going out, preparing themselves, moving inside; the two hours around midnight were full of fucking, drunken partying, but most interesting, full of insomnia and normal people going to bed, moonshadows on the wall, and then the lapse around one AM, building slowly to the tension of two.  I am sorry I couldn't stay until dawn, because I know some of my favorite movies (just like my favorite experiences in life) filled the gap between two AM and the sunrise; I can only imagined the bleary-eyed self abuse littering the screen around 4, and not as much sex as you'd guess; the clock is not foremost in those scenes, but scenes of stress and minute-counting...which is, of course, what the entire 24 hour film was an homage to:  minute counting.  And it was a delight to join in, if only for a few hours.

On the deepest level, "The Clock" was a lovely tribute to one of my favorite activities:  going out to see a movie.  Somewhat to my surprise, the theatre was packed, people drifted out to have meals, get cocktails, grab a smoke, but always came back for another hour or two, or just a few minutes; but there was no question that we were sharing that experience.  There was none of the usual crowd, where some come to fawn and some come to trash the film; we were all united in a unique and pure cinematic experience, a dark, warm room under the full moon and next to the Tar Pits, laughing, drunk, shouting out the names of dead actors, riveted to pure mainline rush of filmic tension.

If you have the opportunity, take a few days off, brew some coffee, and jump in.

Here are some articles for you to further enjoy:
Original article from the Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-taylor/christian-marclay-conquer_b_774451.html

Los Angeles Times:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-clock-20110518,0,1376376.story

BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11692234

BBC video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8svkK7d7sY

And the Huffington Post again:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/17/the-clock-at-lacma_n_863295.html

Please let me know how you all are doing...time is of the essence!  Many smiles,
Joel

Boom Krasch Bang

Greetings, friends,
It's that time of year again, when we're certain it's summer, the neighbors nearly blew up my car, all in the name of good, clean fun.  No trip to the Colony this year; those rich folks are way, way over me.  But I know better people in Malibu anyway...perhaps I'll be with them.  I must be upfront:  it's time for me to find a chair and get hammered in it.

My boss decided to quit today; he made it all of 11 months.  If I hadn't just bought a house I'd laugh, or try to send a message back to 1989, when I accepted that job at the American Film Institute library..."DON'T DO IT!  GO BACK TO DRUG DEALING!"  Well, whatever.

Anyway, today (Thursday) if you are in Los Angeles, Devo is playing at Hollywood Park.  No joke, and if you get there before 9 PM, it's only $8.  I am in the mood to go, I am going to see Devo, I am going to play the ponies, and verdammt if I don't play a few hands of poker in the casino.  It's going to be that kind of a weekend; go to the bank and come down to Inglewood.  Fireworks are legal here; bring money for alcohol, gambling, New Wave music and explosives.  How ugly!  If you get down here before 8 PM, come over to my house for an apéritif.  This weekend it's whiskey, whiskey, whiskey.

One more public service announcement:  I am disposing of a pile of maps at the library.  Do you like maps?  They are colorful and make great gifts, wrapping paper, or collage-fodder for young kids.  I'm getting rid of a few hundred topographic maps (about 2' by 3'), mostly of national forests in Alaska and the Midwest, and a few tubes of larger nautical maps of the Gulf Coast and the Great Lakes.  Time to clean up!  Anyway, let me know if you can join us at DEVO or if you want some MAPS.

The explosions outside have me nervous; I need a smoke and go to bed early.  Long weekend!  I am somewhat amazed that 5 years have passed since Miss Una and I were sitting in a lakefront cafe in Ascona, drinking Kir Royales and dressed to the nines, when Kimi Raikonnen broke a front axle on the last lap of the Grand Prix of Germany.

I was missing all my friends from the Mackey Apartments, indeed, as I went to my first party there in several years.  They tore down the garages finally, I can tell you, and built an "exhibition" space, a two-story monster that vaguely mocks its predecessor.  You would have liked it, though, as Peter Noever vamped in his white suit, free beer and free hot dogs (off a silly hot dog cart, no less), a huge rubbery beer tub, and Miss Glaxia dressed in a blonde wig, two slabs of beef and not much else.  I missed Vienna so much, friends, I was almost embarrassed.

Well, I will be back in September, perhaps in a swank apartment on the Ku'damm, perhaps just lost in Entropa, instead of Europa.

In the meantime, please enjoy my new favorite blog, Tea Party Jesus.

Whatever.

Tall Eye: if you dig a hole through the earth you will not, in fact, be in China

By Kate on Maps
With the exception of readers in Chile or Argentina (¡hola y bienvenidos!), your mom was wrong. Molten core of the earth aside, the hole you dug in the backyard when you were six had no chance of ever reaching China. Luckily Tall Eye exists to help answer the question - if I dig a very deep hole, where will I end up?  Wi thjust a few clicks you can find the point on the earth that is exactly opposite you.

Are there any practical uses for this tool? I'm really not sure, but I do feel like my geography knowledge has improved a little bit and I now know the meaning of the word antipode (I know, where have I been?) It's also kind of fun, and there's nothing wrong with that.

And be sure to wave the flag!

Vive le screed!