Apologies to those of you who use Internet Explorer and have got an “Aborted” message when visiting this website. Hopefully the issue is resolved now.

I would have continued to be unaware of it but for Christine Clear and Rosemarie Rowley. Rosemarie sent me an email wondering if my website had moved. In Christine’s case, her friends and family who use IE complained that they couldn’t access her website. As her website is crucial to her work, I offered to help track down the reason, as it was fine in Firefox, and so I opened the dreaded Vista and gave it a go.

These things can be like a needle in a haystack, but finally I removed The Pale Blue Dot, that wonderful video excerpt from Carl Sagan’s TV series from, I think, the seventies, which was embedded in her site as a YouTube video. Suddenly IE was happy, Christine was happy and I was happy.

But then this morning I remembered that I too had that video embedded, along with several others in this and my alternative party website.

So I log out of my Ubuntu (Linux) comfort zone, and fire up the dreaded Vista and Internet Explorer (7) once again.

Yup. It viewed both sites and then threw up the page Aborted notice and the page went to, ironically, an IE notice full of javascript. Thanks a bunch, Microsoft. You spend billions developing software and yet you can’t cater for the world’s most popular video site. I normally try to avoid MS bashing, but once again your crappy software has taken up far too much of my time. So now I have to trawl the web to find a solution.
Thankfully I found it at Eastwood Zhao dot COM, for which many thanks.

The solution is simpler, of course, but it’s not the YouTube standard, so we have to do it the MS way once again.

May I implore those of you who use IE to switch to Firefox(or Safari - anything!).
For the more adventurous among you, consider Ubuntu. It solves all these problems at once, as Firefox is its standard browser. You can see my Ubuntu site under Sister Sites in the column to your right.

Thanks once again to
Christine Clear and Rosemarie Rowley, and to
Eastwood Zhao dot COM for the solution.

Also, hat-tip to Daragh and Graeme at Letshost for maintaining an interest in this problem.

hello! spring is here… and the Shell AGM approaches in May. We have 6 shell shares to give away! You must be prepared to be an active shareholder!! (go along to the meetings either in London or Holland on Tuesday 20th May 2008)
http://www.shell.com/home/content/investor-en/shareholder/faq/rds_shareholder_faqs.html
You will have to give some personal details.

for contact see The Rossport Solidary Camp website.

Who would have thought it? Ireland owns part of the US debt, according to a scary article in The Daily Telegraph.

As of June 2007, foreigners owned $6,007bn of long-term US debt. (Equal to 66pc of the entire US federal debt). The biggest holdings by country are, in billions: Japan (901), China (870), UK (475), Luxembourg (424), Cayman Islands (422), Belgium (369), Ireland (176), Germany (155), Switzerland (140), Bermuda (133), Netherlands (123), Korea (118), Russia (109), Taiwan (107), Canada (106), Brazil (103). Who is jumping ship?

Who is jumping ship, indeed! Guys?

We are the seventh biggest owners of the debt, in fact, owning $176 billion dollars of it. That’s enough to keep the occupation of Iraq going for - how long?

Now how did that come about? It’s not the naughty Irish banks using our savings, I hope. Because with the dollar going down the toilet, it would mean the value of our savings doing the same, right? (I’m no economist, so I’m open to correction).

Anyway, read The Telegraph and be very scared.

Tempus fugit.

When I was asked some time ago by Sarah from 7Towers to read with Oran Ryan, March 19th seemed like an age away.
Now suddenly it’s here.
In case you think that Chapters is still in Abbey Street, it moved to a fine, spacious premises on Parnell Street, a minutes walk from the top of O’Connell Street.

Wednesday 19.03.2008
Chapters and Verse Reading: Philip Casey and Oran Ryan

Oran Ryan is the author of The Death of Finn and Ten Short Novels by Arthur Kruger.

Philip Casey is the author of The Fabulists, The Water Star, The Fisher Child, and Dialogue in Fading Light.

Venue: Chapters, Parnell St, Dublin 1
Time: 1.15pm-1.55
Admission: free

In my rare idle moments of late, I’ve been musing on South America, a kind of daydream, really, probably because I was playing a little flamenco on my computer which progressed to a little tango and eventually to Vuelvo al Sur, with Astor Piazzolla & Roberto Goyeneche. You can look up the lyrics in Spanish and their English translation at Planet-Tango There’s something lovely about this song, the music by Piazzolla and the lyrics by Fernando “Pino” Solanas, but I thought I wasn’t quite getting what was haunting about it, so I went looking and found this video. Now I think I get it.

I don’t know how many events I can make myself, but the Dublin Book Festival is on from tomorrow till Sunday.

See the schedule here.

There is a fascinating excerpt from Clean: An Unsanitised History of Washing, by Katherine Ashenburg in today’s London Times.

Excerpt from Clean: An Unsanitised History of Washing, The Times, London

In the spirit of the book, I thought I’d quote My Masculine Skin, from my last book of poems, Dialogue in Fading Light (Dublin, New Island Books, 2005).

You can download a free copy of Dialogue in Fading Light at Irish Literary Revival.

My Masculine Skin

I would as soon not shave or shower.
I’d rather remain pre-Victorian,
and leave my hair for birds to nest in.
It would be good to lie on in bed
for weeks, letting the sheets slowly rot,
a sprawl of worthless books quarter read,
the mould on the dishes getting drier.

However! Happy as a pig in flight,
though still disdaining deodorant,
if I smell only
of my acidic masculine skin
and not of a stinking netherworld
I would wallow in,
it’s because you draw me to the light.

My Masculine Skin, a poem by Philip Casey, is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

“From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink – greetings!”

– George Orwell, 1984

We are about to enter into a state where every digital step you take is recorded. At the end of March, the Government will introduce the most draconian law in the history of personal privacy in Ireland: 24-hour internet monitoring. A log will be made of everyone’s internet activity and every email sent and received.

Greetings from the State of Surveillance.

see full article by Marie Boran Silicon Republic 28.02.2008

The tagline of a Canadian commenter on DailyKos

Canada - where a pack of smokes is ten bucks and a heart transplant is free.

I wrote a small afterword for Michael Augustine’s latest book in English, Mickle Makes Muckle, translated from the German by Sujata Bhatt and published by Dedalus Press . You can download some of the poems (and my afterword) in pdf, listen to Michael reading from the book at the Dublin launch, and indeed buy the book here. My afterword refers to our long friendship, so I was particularly chuffed to hear from Pat Boran, editor of Dedalus, today, that Carol Rumens has written a fine piece about the book in the Guardian Arts Blog Poem of the Week.

I’ve missed several events of late including the launch of Days Like These, a limited edition of poems by Tony Curtis, Theo Dorgan and Paula Meehan. That event was in The Teacher’s Club on February 1st. I got the date wrong, as I seem to do quite a lot in the dark winter evenings. The edition of 300 copies (with an additional 26 copies in hardcover) was published by Brooding Heron Press, Waldron Island, USA. I can’t seem to find a website, but I found this description of the press.

Brooding Heron Press and Bindery

Sam and Sally Green began printing poetry chapbooks in their Seattle home in 1978, but moved to a small island off the coast of Washington in 1982. There they operate a small farm and have built their own house and studio, all without electricity or running water. The Brooding Heron Press was named after their emphasis on the nurturing and creative process instead of the final product.

The Greens print about 3 titles per year on a C&P platen press and focus on works of poetry. Their work has been recognized with several awards and reviews.

Hopefully Days LIke These is available in Books Upstairs, so I can make amends for missing what must have been a great evening.

Another Dedalus event I missed - again, the days back to front, o woe is me! - was the launch of John Jordan, Selected Poems, edited and with an Introduction by Hugh McFadden; and To Ring in Silence, New and Selected Poems from Paddy Bushe. At least I have the books, kindly sent on by Pat.

Paddy Bushe visited China some years ago, and to my great pleasure, brought my novel The Water Star with him. A small incident, somewhere in China, brought forth the following poem, including in Ring in Silence, which I hope Paddy won’t mind me reproducing here:

Petals
for Philip Casey

The waitress puts a vase of grassland flowers
On the table where I’m reading The Water Star.
Hesitant, practising English, she asks its name,
Then frowns at my phrasebook characters.
Shui Xing? … But, in water is no star.

As I mime reflection, pointing to huge distances,
Her eyes light with sudden understanding
And she laughs with delight at the image.
I turn again, smiling, to my book.
Two petals shimmer on the open page.

Zhongdian, 6 July 2000

© Paddy Bushe