Dirk A. H. Kolff, Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the military labour market in Hindustan, 1450-1850.

As the title suggests, Dirk A. H. Kolff`s minor classic of a book is quite heavy at times, and not for the faint of heart or for those who don`t want to read about military recruitment and Rajput poetry. It`s a rather unique book as well, as its focus is really on the cultural and [...]

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The New Iraq

Laura Bush on Iraqi TV reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi, throwing the other shoe at her dear husband: “But I know that if Saddam Hussein had been there, the man wouldn’t have been released. And he probably … you know, would have been executed,” she said. “As bad as the incident is, in my view, it is [...]

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The Blasted Pine, 13: Homo Canadensis, by Alfred Purdy

I don’t know him           but thought somebody else did,for everyone was friendly in that bar           except this guy in the red checkered shirt:he was aggressive and pro-Canadian,stubbing a Players outside the ashtray,swaying in his chair and gulping beerlike water             drunk and getting drunker – – “Best beer in the world,” he said.“Bout the only thing [...]

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The Blasted Pine, 11: The Way the World Ends, by Irving Layton

Before me on the dancestandA god’s vomit or damned by his decreesThe exciting twitching couples shook andwriggled like giant parentheses. A pallid CanadienneRaised a finger and wetted her lip,And echoing the nickelodeon“Chip” she breathed drowsily, “Chip, chip.” Aroused, her slavish partnerSmiled, showed his dentures through soda-pop gas,And “chip” he said right back to herAnd “chip, [...]

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The Blasted Pine, 12: Two Poems about the Two Solitudes, English and French Canada

The Status of Canadian Geology A graduate, magna cum lava,Of Ottawa’s College of Mines,He died while at work in UngavaBy failing to read the French signs. His friend from Quebec on the survey,refusing to eat English food,Succumbed to pellagra and scurvy – The ore they’re interred in is crude.                                        – Nathan Fast A Church [...]

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The Blasted Pine, 10: Business As Usual, by Leonard Cohen

The gold roof of Parliament covered with fingerprints and scratches. And here are the elected, hunchbacked from climbing up each other’s heads.   The most precious secret has been leaked: There is no Opposition!   Over-zealous hacks hoist the P. M. through the ceiling. He fools an entire sled-load of Miss Canada losers by acting [...]

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The Blasted Pine, 9: Monsieur Gaston, by A. M. Klein

You remember the big Gaston, for whom everyone predicted a bad end? – Gaston, the neighbour’s gossip and his mother’s cross? You remember him vaurien, always out of a job, with just enough clinking coinage for pool, bright neckties, and blondeds, – – the scented Gaston in the poolroom lolling in meadows of green baize? [...]

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The Blasted Pine, 8: Kirkland Lake, by James Wreford

1943 Under the dark industrial sky we wonder why we have to die who living, were valued at a wage that starved our youth and murdered age. or why engage for tyrants here to end the tyranny of fear, whose quarrel is with all of those the heavens of our desire that close? For justice [...]

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The Blasted Pine, 7: Two Poems of the Spanish Civil War, by L. A. MacKay

The Hymn of the Spanish Rebellion The Church’s one foundation Is now the Moslem sword, In meek collaboration With flame, and axe, and cord; While overhead are floating, Deep-winged with holy love The battle planes of Wotan, The bombing planes of Jove – L. R. MacKay Two Snarls of a Disgusted Colonial 1. Freedom in [...]

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Atheist Blackshirts

The wonders of Wikipedia, at a glance.  List of various ‘rainbow’ toughs and shirts from the 20′s, 30′s and 40′s, exhaustive and comprehensive, Ireland’s, Canada’s and Mexico’s various paramilitary shirt organisations are listed alongside the more famous Nazi and Fascist groups, and those of Romania, for instance. And then this little oddity that I cannot [...]

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John Clute, Appleseed

Months ago I quoted this: “Swim” said Fassin. “You know; when your head kind of seems to swim because you suddenly think: “Hey, I’m a human being, but I’m twenty thousand light years from home and we’re all living in the midst of mad aliens and super weapons and the whole bizarre insane swirl of [...]

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New Species along the Mekong

Such an exhuberance. A shocking pink, spiny new species of “dragon millipede”, Desmoxytes purpurosea, was described in 2007 from Lansak district, Uthaithani Province, Thailand. Several millipedes were found sitting and moving on limestone rocks and on the leaves of Arenga pinnata palms. Scientists suggest the stark bright colour is to alert would-be predators of the [...]

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The Blasted Pine, 6: For the Record, by George Jonas

I think that I live in a street Where the evenings are decidedly darker, A citizen of what is said to be a country, In the year nineteen-sixty-four. All the snow melts around April, In August there is nothing to wait for, The Fall is established in Novemeber, January is mostly Winter. A woman claims [...]

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Peter Weiss, The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis De Sade

Sade: Compassion Now Marat you are talking like an aristocrat Compassion is the property of the privileged classes When the pitier lowers himself to give to a beggar he throbs with contempt To protect his riches he pretends to be moved and his gift to the beggar amounts to no more than a kick {lute [...]

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The Blasted Pine, 5: Hymn to the Glory of Free Enterprise, by J. D. Ketchum

Solo: An Elder Statesman Of freedom this and freedom that the drooling leftist chatters, But freedom for Free Enterprise is all that really matters’ This freedom was ordained by God; upon it rest all others, For man’s divinest impulse is to over-reach his brothers; And so to this celestial urge we make our offering votive; [...]

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