Someone scraped the contents of Darren Di Lieto’s website and published it into a 350-page book being sold online for $100. via warren.

This book — which reprints without permission several dozen artist interviews which Darren had posted on the LCS blog — transcribes these interviews word-for-word, including the artwork, and was “published” under the title “Colorful Illustrations 93°C”. The book even includes a CD with all the illustrations from the book, all lifted off the site as well.

Publishers have faked their details, resellers refuse to pull the book. The ISBN they provide is also a fake. It being nigh impossible to track down the culprits, (they seem to be located in HK, a city world renowned for copyright infringement), the only real way to shut these people down and/or make sure no one works with them again is to spread the word, create an information backlash and rub their faces in the muck so hard they'll never get clean.

First, please re-distribute this blog post or Darren’s original post. Repost the whole thing, or part of it, in your blog, with links and tags included.

Next, use whatever social networks and news sharing sites you use every day — Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, Magnolia, Digg, StumbleUpon, Facebook — to spread the word about this overpriced book full of plagiarized and stolen content. Feel free to quote us, and remember to also include the same keywords and tags in your posts.

There's more information on Darren's blog as well as a gallery of photos taken of every page.

haiku for ___:
he reminded me
of the twitchy tip of a
purring cat's tail

Paula came over yesterday and helped me begin sorting my things. Now everything's a precarious mess, there's paper piled on every surface, slippery memories tangled underfoot, stacked CD's of old music, and violently coloured stuffed cats curled up to calligraphy kits next to antique instruments and gold framed mirrors. To orate the list would make for a glorious message on an answering machine, much in the style of a baroque-gypsy version of the semi-infamous monologue from Trainspotting:

The truth is that I'm a bad person. But, that's gonna change - I'm going to change. This is the last of that sort of thing. Now I'm cleaning up and I'm moving on, going straight and choosing life. I'm looking forward to it already. I'm gonna be just like you. The job, the family, the fucking big television. The washing machine, the car, the compact disc and electric tin opener, good health, low cholesterol, dental insurance, mortgage, starter home, leisure wear, luggage, three piece suite, DIY, game shows, junk food, children, walks in the park, nine to five, good at golf, washing the car, choice of sweaters, family Christmas, indexed pension, tax exemption clearing gutters, getting by, looking ahead, the day you die.

Now that Wayne and I have picked up boxes, things have been going quicker. It's beginning to make sense outside of my head. Already the detritus of my life is beginning to classify. Speculations correspond with a basic duality: Things I Appreciate / Things I Will Never Miss.

( books for sale )

Minesh has left, gone back to The Smoke. Sweetheart that he is, I saw him to the airport Wednesday and took a bus back into town. He's left me a small stack of fascinating seeming books with erudite notes written in the cover pages that I know I'll never have the cleverness to match. They're sitting next to my bed, now, waiting for me to pick them up and soil their pristine pages with my fingerprints. When he sent me a note to say he got home safe, which I never doubted he would, I sent him a copy of Maginalia.

As if to gracefully ease absence, the airport then apologetically delivered up Michael Green late Thursday night for the tail end of the PuSH festival. Which means, lovelies, that I am generally unavailable for shenanigans until Tuesday. Call me then and don't expect me to be home checking my messenger.

Heart of the World news, there isn't any positive. Monday I sign papers to the effect that if I give them the deposit, they will not pursue any legal action against me. There's nothing else I can say.

It tears my heart.

For those who are new here, and there do seem to be a lot of you, here is a published book you should buy a downloadable copy of and my story in it.

I would like to say this is going to be my last six:thirty a.m. awake for awhile now that I finally have a job, but I know that would be a greedy lie. My face down unhappiness has been heaping lots of them upon me lately and I don't like that my bed no longer smells like me. The air of the apartment has been filling with Kier, our house-guest who hasn't paid his rent yet. It's unsettling, it makes me want to double-wash all my sheets and blankets. I have no desire to climb naked into a bed that someone else has been rewriting while I've been away.

Flickr just reached a quarter of a billion photos.
Sam's lent me a novel, Futureland by Walter Mosely, that I'm halfway through and still can't decide what to do with. I get the feeling off this book that it's not trying to be anything but a sci-fi novel. It was not written to be enduring, inspiring or to be especially moving. This isn't rocking me, not even like a baby. It was written to be put in a bookstore and bought off the wire-rack shelf, to be consumed and then lost to some second-hand table fair. It's a little.. baffling. I remember skimming past books like this in gift shops when I was younger, (and still commonly bought books), scanning the covers and dismissing them, the metallic newspaper quotes on the back covers.

"5,000 of the most important photographs of the last 150 years."

I decided then I was only going to read books I would like to write, or literature that pushed my envelope, built of a nature so different that I can barely grasp them, insisting in my head that the better quality I read, the better I will write. Input matching output, I decided I want my shelf to be full of books that are endlessly interesting, not quite classics, but of the sort that can light up repeatedly and at different times of my life. This leaves me a rabbit in the headlights, uncertain what Futureland is for. This book is entirely alien to my nature. I suspect it's meant to be entertaining, but it doesn't survive my criteria, I don't feel challenged. Is this what people commonly read?

Fujitsu develops “invisible” barcode for photographs.

A patient's self-rewired brain revives him after 19 years in a vegatative coma.

Minus Kyle, Duncan, & Grant, you people missed a fantastic show. Tigers crept off the stage, dreams of lights, lakes of visionary stormy weather. The Roman Empire shuddered and fell under the waves of Atlantis. Shane brought his mother back to life as the audience cried and his grandmother told us all to rise and shine, all to a really good steel string slide. I managed to film clips of most of the first act, but not all of it, only enough to give you the barest skeleton of what actually happened. In the end, I have shaky teasers, but no real trailers. Next time, you, be there. Get out your silver kitchen knife and go culture hunting when I tell you to.

So with only about a full day's warning, we managed to get almost thirty people to Pirates of the Caribbean. An affable man sitting behind me noticed that our group took up two full rows and asked how much organization went into it. When I told him we hadn't bothered with very much this time around, how it was entirely arranged through our on-line journals, he mentioned oh-so-fortuitously that he has an event coming up at the Planetarium. He handed me a cleanly designed flyer, the sort of thing I would notice on a table, and smiled when I said I would give him a plug. After a bit more conversation, he asked, "Will you really mention us?" Then handed me a free ticket.

UK scientists have developed technology that enables artificial limbs to be directly attached to a human skeleton.

I've been listening to the music The Beige have on their website for hours now and I'm going to leave one on when I finally go to bed. The flyer design made me ask if it was ambient, but though their songs powerfully insinuate Brian Eno leanings, they seem to play something else, a translucent mellow jazz with a delicate twist of quiet pop. I really like it. Stylistically, they remind me charmingly of Múm. The musicians, Andrew Arida, Geoff Gilliard, Mark Haney, Rick Maddocks, and Jon Wood, manage to dance the line between chill, softly effervescent, and catchy without being fluffy, bland or relying on hooks. I'll have to remember to bring extra money when I go, because I want to buy the album.

The show is only an hour long because they have to vacate in time for the stoned kids to watch the resident Doors/Zeppelin/Hendrix/Pink Floyd laser show, but they'll have drinks and mingling downstairs afterward and their own visuals projected on the ceiling during their set. I'm curious to see what they're going to do with the space. It can be awkward to set up anything meaningful around a giant robot projector ant that rises from the floor, but already I can imagine how their melodies could transform awkwardness into underwater gracefulness, sort of how a good director cuts out the sound in moments of tension.

University of Alberta researchers have created an ultra-sound technology to regrow teeth, the first time scientists have been able to reform human dental tissue.

About half my books have been spoken for and some already bought.
( a list of what's left )

Dancing and Other Near Catastrophes, for Troll, because he doesn't get out much.
We're ghosts haunting the wrong houses, spooks without a C.I.A. Neon signs fading into the distance and motels empty of newlyweds. We're what influential german dramatists pictured when they had fever dreams, two people with shiny smiles anxiously standing by the side of a blind sea. Your hand in mine, how dangerous. Your graceful fingers spell out initiative while mine tactfully promise a lack of sleep. We're going to spell out the end of the world together, in the movement of lines on palms and programmable languages directed by the tilt of a wrist. We're the sound of a solitary radio while driving through Nevada at night. We're the 327000 feet languishing between the earth and the edge of her atmosphere. No sleep and we're speaking in punctuation. No dreams.

Burrow's laptop recently got stolen while she was in Seattle. To try and raise money to buy a new one, she's selling prints of her artwork. If lithographs aren't your thing, but you'd still like to help, her link for donations is here.

Me, I'm house-cleaning in prep for my trip to Europe. I've got a list of books I'd like to sell. I'm wanting them to go for 30% cover price OBO with probable discounts for wholesale.

( list of books for sale )

Prices, descriptions, summaries and opinions by request. These don't include the fantasy novels that have been taking up space in my hall because I don't feel like typing out 50c titles, but if you're a fan of things with fairies or McCaffrey-esque aliens on them, drop me a line and I'll see what I can provide. I warn you ahead of time, however, that they all have metallic letters on the front and questionably detailed paintings for covers.

There will be a movie night at my place, Tuesday the 13th, of Snow White: a Tale of Terror, a more faithful adaptation of the Grimms Brothers' tale, starring Sigourney Weaver and Sam Neill. A Potluck will start at 7:00 with movie at 8:30.

Today Graham and Burrow and I are going to Grandview Park to sell books off a blanket. Bad fantasy novels and old sci-fi for a negotiable two bucks a book. Come join us, we'll be there until the weather kicks us out.

EDIT: The weather won.

Jimmy Buffet, a musician of some sort according to the blurb on the back, has managed to write novels that blissfully survive every bookshelf razing I've had in a decade. Back in 1989, he wrote Tales From Margaritaville, a collection of short stories about cowboy sailors and being in love with the ocean that gave me cravings for fish, which I'm allergic to, and sailing down in Florida. I mention it because I've just re-read it for the Nth time and it still carries the same effect. It's all flying-fish sandwiches and satisfying endings, people in a poisonous paradise doing the best they can and remembering to enjoy when they're puzzled. He makes me care about football, fishing and golf. It's a little crazy. I've been to Florida.

Though of course, it makes for a great escape from the rain that's outside, persistently threatening to dissolve the front windows of the store with basic erosion. It's almost so much rain that it seems unrealistic to try to describe. There's more rain in the air between me and the opposite side of the street than would be required to fill a backyard pool. It's like a joke. How much water was there? This much, and then you point to an ocean or a Great Lake and cackle like a demented child. Bloody ridiculous, really.

I've been finding solace in the must-see media of the week, Un-Pimp My Ride, a gratifying short series of advertisements from Volkswagon that feature a gang-signing german scientist, ("V-Dub representing Deutchland"), who actually made me laugh out loud. This video was last week, though still wonderful.

And by request: Warren, on his birthday, shamelessly flirting back and forth with Joss Whedon.

Adventures from the Technology Underground Catapults, Pulsejets, Rail Guns, Flamethrowers, Tesla Coils, Air Cannons, and the Garage Warriors Who Love Them.

The world has left me by myself this evening. My brain is stumbling, wanting to be placed in the hands of someone warm who would curl up with me, knot their hands with mine and drowse into grounding sleep. I feel so incredibly detached, as if I were to know the trick of it, I could lift up my body and float into the ice-cream cold sky. The wind would be unbelievable, the chill worse than a bad piano recital. I don't want that tonight. I want to murmur, "where are you going?" on the edge of sleep and have someone reach over and comfort me. It's becoming a stretch into years, that feeling. I'm so bad living in only half marriages. It's like a sickness, this not having certainty. I enjoy the pauses, but I need something stable. It took so many years of clawing back into an emotional world that I feel as if I'm squandering when I'm trying to be satisfied with small print contracts.

I've been mentioning in conversation lately my traveling approximation of childhood. I've clarified there was trauma. I was a girl, they were an older boy. My mother was young, my father a violent man. I've almost shown the carried scars on my body, graveyards of happy memories I never got to have, but somehow, it just wasn't the time. In a very strong way they don't matter. To my mind, I didn't properly begin until I was seventeen. Before that I was running around on automatic, a seed in a field that never got any water. There were no genuine feelings, only faked approximations because if I didn't keep up with people, they began to let on that I was too much of a problem. What I want to explain somehow is that past all the months of living in the back of a truck, all those accumulated years in hotel rooms and blank transitory hallways, I can forgive myself for leaving the world alone when I was younger, but not any longer. What I've finally gathered is too precious. See? I hold out these hands in spite of everyone. It's simple. Interaction is the way to stand in front of time and take the force of the blow.

Holy Tango of Literature "What if poets and playwrights wrote works whose titles were anagrams of their names?".

I'm living close to the line right now. I'm got less than a hundred dollars to live off until I find myself employment, and I get back on the twenty-fourth. It was a matter of keeping my job or going to Montreal. To me there was no question. With the little I was making, there was no feasible way to Save Against A Good Time. Damn the basic idiocy of leaving with as little as I do. If I'm going to go, it's going to be now. If nothing else, the cold will be a deterrent against staying.

I haven't found anyone who's willing to take my ferret and I only have one day left. It's kind of Ryan to try and make it back here every day to top up his food and water, but I'm not sure I can rely on him to remember. Are there any volunteers in the audience? He's very sweet and won't hide anything in a place impossible to find. There's an issue with him getting into dangerously exciting places like Beneath The Fridge and you'll have to get used to checking under things before you sit on them, but overall, he's really quite easy to take care of. Food, water, a twice a week sink bath with dishsoap or shampoo, and he'll sleep with you at night if you let him, especially if there's a draught.

The PostSecret Book A hardcover with 288 pages, many of the postcard images inside have never been seen before.

I finally finished Dreadnaught today. Holy mother of all! I may have a better grasp of history, but I never want to read another word about armour plating in my life!