Monthly Archives: August 2007

Less Of The News That’s Fit To Print

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This morning’s print edition of the New York Times carried this announcement (emphasis mine):

To Our Readers
Starting Monday, The Times will reduce the width of its pages by an inch and a half, to the national newspaper 12-inch standard. The move will cut newsprint expenses and, in some printing press locations, will make special configurations unnecessary. Slight modifications in design will preserve the look and texture of The Times, with all existing features and sections and somewhat fewer words per page.

So the “national newspaper” standard is now 12-inch pages, making the broadsheets just a little (10%) less broad (matching their world view).

Laughing at the Gods


Over at Heading East, a superb blog by Raul Guteerrez, comes this beautiful piece of experiential prose. Do yourself a favor and follow the link, read the whole piece:

In the office of Melvin Hurwitz you will find four guys in ill fitting grey suits hunched over metal desks, all in a row. The lights are florescent and harsh, the walls are dingy, haphazardly decorated with pictures of wives and old pictures of Mr. Hurwitz who sits at the last desk. While the other men chat on the phone or sort through papers, Hurwitz sits with his hands on his desk with a look of real calm. He’s ready to do business.
Heading East: Hubris

Artistic Evidence of Inhuman Acts


This from The Independent online edition:

500 drawings by children who escaped the violence are to be submitted to the International Criminal Court as proof of war crimes by Sudanese forces
Dramatic new evidence of the attacks on the people of Darfur by Sudanese government troops has emerged in 500 drawings by children who escaped the violence by fleeing across the border to Chad. In a ground-breaking move, the remarkable collection of images will now be submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has started proceedings against a Sudanese government minister and a militia commander accused of committing war crimes in Darfur.
Darfur: The evidence of war crimes – Independent Online Edition > Africa

There is more to be found on this at Human Rights Watch

Mahmoud, Age 13
Human Rights Watch: What’s happening here?
Mahmoud: These men in green are taking the women and the girls.
Human Rights Watch: What are they doing?
Mahmoud: They are forcing them to be wife.
Human Rights Watch: What’s happening here?
Mahmoud: The houses are on fire.
Human Rights Watch: What’s happening here?
Mahmoud: This is an Antonov. This is a helicopter. These here, at the bottom of the page, these are dead people.
Human Rights Watch – Darfur Drawn: The Conflict in Darfur Through Children’s Eyes

Wooing Kate Moss

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One thing about Wit of the Staircase, Theresa Duncan’s hyper-cool blog, which always left Pawn more than a little perplexed was Theresa’s fascination with, and defence of, all things Kate Moss. One cannot even count the number of times that Ms Moss or Pete Doherty (her Babyshambles fronting, heroin addicted boyfriend) appeared photographically on Wit, but it must number around a hundred.

We’re sure Theresa, were she still blogging, would have posted something about this:

Doherty seemed prepared to put the couple’s unhappy history with the newspaper aside yesterday by selecting it as the place to lay bare his feelings for her, in the hope of winning her back.
Not all of Doherty’s prose may delight Moss (he describes her as a “nasty old rag” who “kicked me in the head”), but since she reads the paper, he believes his appeal through its pages might work. “Take me back. Kate if you love me then realise I don’t want any other girl. I’m here to tell her that I love her,” the Babyshambles frontman said. “We fell out for the same old reason. She accused me of fucking this girl who lives around the corner. She’s got an awful temper. I grabbed my guitar and books and said, ‘I’m never going to be treated this way again’.”
Ms Moss is reported to have called in removal men to get rid of all of his possessions and has changed her locks, though the musician says she called him in a drunken state recently singing the Breakfast at Tiffany’s classic “Moon River”.
Thirty ways to win back your lover – Independent Online Edition > This Britain

After Theresa and Jeremy Blake (her artist/lover/paramour) passed away this past month (by whatever means) a friend of Pawn began to read up on her and expressed a similar bafflement at the Kate Moss addiction. “She is so much better looking, so much more beautiful than Moss. She should have been modeling.” Here then, some pictures of Theresa to recently appear on the web.

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Stripping Bourgeoisie

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The New York Times today treats us to tales of debauchery from four star restaurants, including this doozie from Daniel, in which a woman rose “making like a dancer at a pole at Scores”:

She stood facing the rest of the dining room. First she took off a vest or a jacket, as best Mr. Le Dû remembers. Then she went to work on her blouse.
Just as she was getting to her bra, the maître d’hôtel got to her. Thus her drunken, wobbly stint as a stripper ended, and so did her dinner. She and her date, a smiling, sloshed man who had seemingly egged her on, were escorted to the door.
“She was not necessarily attractive or young, so it was disruptive,” complained Mr. Le Dû, who left Daniel several years ago and now owns a wine shop in Greenwich Village. “If she were beautiful, it might have been different. People might have been cheering her on.”
Fine Diner to Riffraff: Tipsy Tales of 4-Star Benders – New York Times

But of course, had she been attractive it would have been different…