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death
has not touched
me yet

15 REASONS TO DATE DROWNING ICEBERGS ;-)

1 - we're half naked all the time
2 - we're always wet and we love it
3 - we do it on our backs or our stomachs
4 - we are ready at the sound of a buzzer
5 - we can do it fast or slow
6 - we can do it four different ways
7 - no matter how tired we get we can always keep going
always keep going
8 - we can do it in the cold or in the rain
9 - we do it in water
10- we are always in shape
11- we're always ready to go fast
12- it wont take long to get us undresesed
13- we have excellent endurance and stamina
14- we don't mind it when it gets a lil rough
15- we're just so hot

This site is dedicated to poetry and to the people who make poetry possible:
poets and their readers Welcome to Famous Poets and Poems!

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Making Every Word Count
When I talk about tight language, I mean no extra words:
A Cold River doesn't need to "move really slowly" when it can "slink" or "creep" along its banks-- the elimination of the need for an adverb results in a much stronger image with half the words. Why use three weak or common words to say what can be said with one strong word?

Poetry is distilled language; that is why it is not prose. While many other types of writing pay by the word, poetry usually benefits from use of fewer words. When I provide editorial feedback to poets submitting manuscripts to the press I work for, I encourage them to revisit their poems with an eye to keeping language tight and fresh. These problems can be addressed-- and usually fixed-- simply through attention to them in the poet's revision process with each poem.

• Pick Powerful Verbs [Off cuts. Bulletin with Newsweek, 11/07/2006, General News, page 66. By: Andrew L. Urban. The collapse of a planned $250m film production finance facility is being blamed on slow decisions by the Taxation Office. 'The film finance market requires rulings within weeks, not months,' says Tim Levy, a director of Future Films Australia, which has been trying to raise private finance for about 12 feature films. Write and Sell Your Screenplay; Jennifer Byrne opens her new book show with the Miles Franklin winner, writes Jacqui Taffel. Follow the reader: First Tuesday Book Club premieres on the ABC on Tuesday at 10.05pm ]
• · Tapping into the worldwide popularity of reading groups, the ABC has created a book club everyone can join: TRY telling the book club ladies that the novel is dead. That, like the ballet, the symphony, representational painting, the play and the ceramic jug, its work is over, its purpose gone. No one will hear you over the sound of white wine being poured and tales of steamy stuff between the covers. Between the covers ; Having recently joined a book club it was with great interest that I read Graeme Blundell's article on the book club in The Weekend Australian's - Review. Much of the article was devoted to the upcoming debut of ABC TV's First Tuesday Book Club - hosted by Jennifer Byrne and aired on the first Tuesday of every month. Bookish types
• · · From "citizen" to "passport": Belonging to a country used to mean something He who enjoys the right of sharing in deliberative or judicial office thereby attains the status of a citizen ; Once the sex capital of the world, a crackdown on prostitution and the rise of porn megastores are destroying a unique, secret heritage. Last tango in Paris
• · · · A scourge called Silvio ; If this is the third world war, we’re losing There are lessons in the cold war for those who fear the rise of Islamo-fascism
• · · · · You know how it goes: A traffic jam blocks your way to work. A rude driver swerves in front of your car and you spill that just-purchased café latte into your lap. You arrive late, in a lousy mood. From there, the day just goes downhill and your workplace performance falls to pieces. Or does it? Waking Up on the Wrong Side of the Desk; Vegan diet helps type 2 diabetes
• · · · · · Takagi Masakatsu is a visual artist and musician, but his two identities are in fact inseparable. Blending images, video, animation, and music to form unique aesthetic experiences, his art knows no borders. To achieve it he turns to his Mac. Takagi Masakatsu: Sound of Light; Around the world, `citizen' means many different things Czech this out: An Australian citizen is a British subject

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Readers of Cold River take to spirit of democracy like a fish to water ...
Public corruption, unfortunately, will never be totally eradicated. But the will of people to fight it, so as to preserve our freedoms and protect our democracy, is strong The Reasoning Behind Logic Puzzles: Congress Online Newsletter

The Blog, The Press, The Media: People and PR Power 
Astroturfing is evil. Astroturfing is always unethical and usually illegal. It corrodes democracy which relies on transparency. It is usually undertaken by people who are afraid, or lack the skills, to engage in open and honest public debates.
Sometimes it is excused because the other side (NGOs and activists) are unreasonable or claim to represent more people than they really do. That excuse doesn't cut it.
Astroturfing is a blight on the PR profession.

Paull Young's blog post this week brought home the disgrace of this ineffectual approach to me once again.
So why not use the power of blogging to campaign on this issue and to at least make people aware of what's so bad about astroturfing and why good PR people need to take a stand against it?
Paull has created a page on the newPR wiki which tells you all about astroturfing, this campaign, and what you can do to help.

• PR bloggers urged to fight against astroturfing [ Trevor Cook's post introducing the campaign AntiAstroturfing / ; From Wired, a cover story on Rupert Murdoch and MySpace Perched on the edge of a bright white power sofa ; Six trends driving the global economy. First, steam power replaced muscle power and launched the Industrial Revolution ; Human relationships were basically variants on the dynamic between master and slave ]
• · From Media Matters, a look at the top falsehoods about The New York Times and the Bush bank-tracking program. Warrantless domestic surveillance program ; Muddler as he was, Charles Dickens's character in David Copperfield, Mr Micawber, understood how sixpence could be the difference between happiness and misery: if your income is sixpence more than you spend, that's happiness; if it is a sixpence less, misery. The same lesson applies to  BBC story
• · · Google making Microsoft irrelevant? With its new spreadsheet application, Google continues on its path toward world domination All Hail ; PDF version: Compendium of Innovative E-government Practices: a compilation of case studies of innovative e-government solutions
• · · · Are you a Howard hugger or a Howard hater? Conventional political wisdom holds that one must either love John Howard and loathe Paul Keating, or vice versa. The Longest Decade ; It will surprise no-one who lived in New South Wales during the 1970s and 1980s that a book called The Wran Era focuses almost completely on Neville Wran. David Hill headed Wran’s Ministerial Advisory Unit, inevitably dubbed the Mau-Mau after Kenyan terrorists. Wran’s most obvious asset was his mastery of the media The Wran era: ‘A sometimes volatile period’
• · · · · ECCENTRIC to the last, John Marsden left an estate valued at between $8 million and $10 million - and he left nothing to chance. He even left instructions on the future home for his collection of ornamental ducks Marsden has a final word ; Jim Ritchie - Whistleblower's tragic end Police warm up to unique approach to cold cases
• · · · · · AUSTRALIANS could use electronic voting systems in next year's federal election if a proposed trial goes ahead ... We are prepared to live with that downside because it is a huge step forward Blind to lead way in e-voting ; E-mail is so last millennium...Young people see it as a good way to reach an elder _ a parent, teacher or a boss _ or to receive an attached file. But increasingly, the former darling of high-tech communication is losing favor to instant and text messaging, and to the chatter generated on blogs and social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. E-mail losing its clout in the world of text-driven communication

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Another summer day at Iceberg ... This is a weekend to die for ;-) When the last World Cup whistle blew in Berlin this month, on July 9, it was a signal of the end of the biggest, richest and most watched competition in the history of soccer. It will also, more controversially, go down as the world's biggest-ever betting event... Football. Ltd. the ugly face of modern football: business

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Blogging Souls on Ice:
Mother Jones - An article on America's human embryo glut and the unbearable lightness of almost being.

Aanis Elspas is a mother of four. Unlike most parents, she had three of her children simultaneously. The nine-year-old triplets were born in 1997 after Elspas underwent a series of in vitro fertilization treatments for infertility

• I don’t have the heart to thaw them [The Internet is rapidly becoming the world’s library: academics should be ensuring their book is on the shelf. Academia online ; Traditional media still the one]
• · Virginia Postrel on how massage went from the strip club to the strip mall PDF version Transform the health care system; The Next Starbucks? ; It's easy to make futurists look silly. For every prediction that comes true (or that sort of comes true—Nostradamus predicted that someone named "Hister" would do something terrible one day), about 20,000 more do not. Down with the techno-utopians! Up with the techno-realists!
• · · New spokesman Tony Snow has brought a more playful style to White House public relations, but secrecy is still a concern The good humor man

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Pacific International hotel chain rocks as do the noisy bunch of Asian kids next door who keep working class people awake in the middle of the night ;-(

And another thing ... Is anyone who is serious about the literary scene in Australia surprised ;-)
AS Australia's sole Nobel laureate for literature, the late Patrick White should occupy a place of honour in our nation. Instead, as The Australian's Jennifer Sexton reported on Saturday, many of the nation's publishers do not recognise his prose or even consider it suitable to print. Sexton submitted a chapter from White's novel The Eye of the Storm to 12 Australian publishers and agents. Not one would have published it. How embarrassing. The only conclusion to draw is that Australians do not honour their literary legacy. Two decades ago, White was a fixture on the secondary-school syllabus. It says much about Australia that students are made to study movie posters and book covers but White's timeless literary genius is not accorded a place.
Jayne Denshire and Helen Bateman of Limelight Press and Rebecca Kaiser of Allen & Unwin are yet to respond ...
Whatever you do do not mention the literary ignorance

Antipodean bohemian published in Canada Now blessed with amazing American and European distribution

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Just like the river, always in love with the moon ...
-Source my space ;-)

Blasts from parliamentary past, John and Rebecca, shared a few stories over coffee with me. I was late, but it is better to be later than never especially after tasting all kinds of Wirra Wirras ;-) Adelaideans are very forgiving lot especially when it comes to relaxing Saturday morning - Honourable mention to great bakery and Providore Paul and Irene Noakes of Gourmet to Go fame and also Atlas Continental whose barista has never ever left Adelaide yet makes the best coffee and squeezes the freshest juices on earth - the place also attracts laughter ;-)

Margaret enjoyed her Salmon, Peter had half of the organic chicken and my eye fillet was cooked to rare perfection last night. Much damage was done to our liver ... Six more days and another set of Sydney based wine lovers will suffer my company at Pyrmont.

While I do not miss the Sydney smog, I certainly have spicy food withdrawl as Dial's Kitchen is one of the best cuchina in the world and Mal attracts only the best quality of taste buds and and eyes for exotic details around her ;-)

I am coffied out, newspapered out, ( SMH, the Australian AFR even Adelaide Advertiser) and now even walked out as the River Torren is such a twisty mass of H2O. Luckily, it is peppered with cozy cafes all within stone throw distances be it at Hindley or Rundle or whatever streets ... I gather that the headlines in Sydney today mention Adelaide Cornelia Rau

Indeed, many bohemian characters would be worried if they were not booed by taxing lorraways and barranquerros of these world or similar death coaches and green avocados ... Like Cold River Barri Kosky is different

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When I lay down I thought and said

Perhaps tomorrow I may be dead

Yes, I shall stand with all my might

And for sweet liberty will fight.
- Lt. James McMichael 

Iceberg Survives Cold River Crossing: marking rusty barb wires over a quater of century old IT'S A BOOK! Resuscitating the Storyteller: 7 July 2006 AD
Biography allows us in the best case to see a human being in exactly the grandiose way that Tomas Tranströmer described in his poem “Romanesque arches”:
Inside the vast Romanesque church the tourists thronged
in the half-dark.
Arch after arch yawned, no view of the whole.
A few candle flames flickered.
An angel with no face embraced me
and whispered through my whole body:
“Don’t be ashamed of being human, be proud!
Inside you arch after arch opens without end.
You will never finish, that’s how its meant to be.”
Blinded with tears
I was thrust out onto the simmering piazza
along with Mr and Mrs Jones, Mr Tanaka and
Signora Sabatini
and inside them all arch after arch opened without end.
(For the living and the dead, 1989)

As Gordon Bowker points out in his life of Orwell, it is interesting to note that the central character in 1984 works as a kind of anti-biographer. Winston Smith’s profession is, of course, to falsify the past, to eradicate individuals from history
Biography keeps the idea of the author alive, and does do with a mixture of history and fiction.

BOOK LAUNCH INVITATION: Iceberg Survives, Cold River

Coming soon to one of the coolest bars in Sydney: The Iron Curtain escape: The Stuff of Dreams

IT'S A BOOK!

Born in the USA in 2005 (after a 25-year gestation!)
Weight: 800.0 grams
Length: 244 pages
Baby Dimensions: 9.0 x 6.0 x 0.6 inches

Iceberg's is throwing the Proud Father a party ... Selected Friends are invited to join Icebergs for the Antipodean Paperback Launch of - Cold River - by Jozef Imrich. This is an escape story with frostbite ...

SUNDAY, July 9 - Noon (til late)
@ Sydney’s hottest literary venue, Bondi Iceberg Spy Bar
(between ocean pool and roof)

Cold River @ Sydney’s hottest literary venue, Bondi Iceberg Spy Bar

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From the time the plane touched down in Sydney on 8 September 1980 , I sensed my world was about to change forever.  Political enemy of the state one day, political refugee at Traiskirchen the second and Antipodean free man at Villawood the third. Boundaries are erased when political escapees are active in assigned different roles ... Women today expect more help around the home and more emotional engagement from their husbands. But they still want their husbands to be providers who give them financial security and freedom ...

In his book So Help Me God former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Roy Moore, the “Ten Commandments judge,” State Acknowledgement of God

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: The stories of a life: intellectual Father Christmas
A special issue of The End of Biography, including an editorial on the stories of a life. As Gordon Bowker points out in his life of Orwell, it is interesting to note that the central character in 1984 works as a kind of anti-biographer. Winston Smith’s profession is, of course, to falsify the past, to eradicate individuals from history:

Freud focused too closely on an individual’s past. Today a personal biography is more like a collection of short stories than a novel. It can be difficult to find a theme running through it.

• He approaches Marx rather as an enthusiastic naturalist might view a virile alligator; the beast is magnificent, but some of its habits are frankly disappointing Hysteria of ideas: See you later, alligator [Biography keeps the idea of the author alive, and does do with a mixture of history and fiction. Resuscitating the author ; In order to be able to create a life-narrative the individual needs a collective social backdrop Plotless individualism]
• · PDF version: Joseph Epstein on Friendship Among the Intellectuals ; Amitai Etzioni who kindly links to Media Dragon writes about the rights and responsibilities of immigrants The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Vetting Services
• · · Peter Coleman who used to be the regular visitor at the NSW Parliamentary Library notes Why Anglos Run the World ; Statistics indicate it is Is church too feminine for men? ; My kids want me to stay home tonight so that they can play Hop on Pop. But I'm hoping that my wife and I will somehow manage to hop on a plane to Finland instead. She Ain't Heavy, She's My Wife
• · · · BROKEN GENIUS: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age Madness in the method; A review of The Bloodless Revolution: Radical Vegetarians and the Discovery of India How to be Lank, Fleet and Nimble ; Management guides claim that anyone can make it, if they work hard enough. By promoting this false dream, such books threaten to turn us into slaves
• · · · · Today people do not believe in objectivity but in a variety of perspectives. Post-modernism has provided biography with scholarly legitimacy. The individual against theory ; The exotic, benign image of the Himalayan kingdom cannot conceal the battle between authoritarian politics and democratic dissent that is shaping its future. Bhutan’s democratic puzzle
• · · · · · Conservative hypocrisy puts college out of the reach of working-class Americans Divesting From Our Future ; Why is it that you can't recall a single instance when Thoreau described shitting in the woods or a time when he discussed the romantic shortcomings of hermitage? As long as I can remember, I have romanticized the notion of becoming a hermit. Kauai Diarist: Jungle Boy

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What’s wrong with that exclamation? You hear it uttered everywhere, by friends and family, on television, radio, the internet…Happy Fourth of July! Not so independent.

July fourth is Independence Day in the United States, a day when Americans commemorate the signing, in 1776, of the Declaration of Independence, a document that formally severed political ties with Britain, then America's colonial ruler.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Those words, written by a 33 year-old activist named Thomas Jefferson and published by the Continental Congress on July 4th, 1776, are but a few the significant phrases in America's Declaration of Independence ...

Similar the words were included by Vaclav Havel in Charter 77 - Three boys three days after July celebration in 1980 escaped across the Iron Curtain took place - A day I shall always remember 7 of 7 1980.

26 years later some of my friends gather at Iceberg this weekend to mark the day potential Iceberg Survived Cold River crossing ...

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Google sends me many of my readers ...
Like medicine, blogging is learned through practice and experience. Yet bloggers (like doctors) can practice their craft more effectively if they relentlessly seek new knowledge and insight, from both inside and outside their websitess, so they can keep updating their assumptions, skills, and knowledge.     

The funny thing about blogs, whether we realize it or not, is that who we are and what we're made of  shines through. Over time the reader really does get to know the blogger and form opinions which do lead to book buying decisions. There are authors whose books I will never read after reading their blogs and conversely authors who I never would have read otherwise who I go out of my way to support their fiction because of what I've discovered about them through their blogging. When Blogs Are Worth It

The Blog, The Press, The Media: Columnists at Confab Hail Blogging: The Media should stop pretending it knows nothing
The BRW Rich 200 list met with some interesting guerrilla marketing in May. The Big Issue, a street magazine sold by the homeless and long-term unemployed, had a cover story on the Poor 20 that mimicked the Rich 200.

In terms of blogs, we're in the 'Wild West' days. But many of them will be edited in the future, I'm sure," said Kansas City Star columnist Bill Tammeus, who does a blog on faith-related issues -- and likes "the freedom of not submitting stuff to editor

• You don't have to write about everything ... You can just link to something instea [Another Way to Get at Thousands of Deals Blog of practicing note ; A conversation at Readerville on writing to “the market” has brought up some issues I’d like to use to start a diaglog here. To market, to market to buy a... ]
• · In the Old Parliament House, everyone used to mix: politicians, journalists, staffers. Notable press gallery grump Alan Ramsey is adamant it is filling that a new exhibition exploring the history of the press gallery at Old Parliament House features dummies. Leaks, Scoops and Scandals: The Press Gallery 1927-1988 has granted two journalists the dubious honour of being immortalised as mannequins. Gallery on display; Bloggers - Quote of the year ;-)
• · · This is a much-anticipated session at Gnomedex - everyone is looking forward to hearing what a potential president of the USA has to say Live-blogging Senator John Edwards at Gnomedex ; Women’s Voices Boom in the Blogosphere
• · · · The increasing tendency for governments to create a legal "meta-level" where spatial and physical humiliation becomes everyday practice. Made in Washington; When do The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times publish a secret? Editors Dean Baquet and Bill Keller respond. SINCE Sept. 11, 2001, newspaper editors have faced excruciating choices in covering the government's efforts to protect the country from terrorist agents ; The administration's protests that the press revelations about a financial monitoring program may tip off the terrorists are overblown. A Secret the Terrorists Already Knew
• · · · · Tuangou, or team buying, aims to drive unprecedented bargains by combining the reach of the internet with the power of the mob Shop affronts ; Why is The New York Times so wicked? Rabbi Aryeh Spero wants to know. The people’s right to know
• · · · · · The GOP's media bashing is a response to journalists' attempts to hold the administration accountable—a job Congress won't do. Political Theater ; James Fallows on how broadband sent over power lines offers Internet access everywhere in your house, and could also offer the country a way to save energy; E-mail Out of Every Plug

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A Link dedicated to my lowest year 2005 AD: Many of human solution have unintended and unexpected consequences - of which most of us seem totally, blissfully unaware. There is no beast as cruel as mankind

Stephenie Meyer is the debut author of Twilight (Little Brown, 2005). From the catalog copy: "Isabella Swan's move to Forks, a small, perpetually rainy town in Washington, could have been the most boring move she ever made. Interview by Cynthia Leitich Smith

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Sometimes even the stars refuse to shine, BUT ...
No one is more curious than characters in Nippon club ;-). 

Dark Materials film gets green light - An unknown British schoolgirl will play Lyra Belacqua in the movie adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials.
Harper Lee breaks her silence in letter to Oprah - The veteran author of To Kill a Mockingbird has made a rare contribution to contemporary letters, publishing an autobiographical article in the chatshow host's magazine O. The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say I was wrong

• Who knows where ideas and thoughts and links for blogs come from?...  Modern love [ A Dutch photographer finds revelations in the commonplace Ordinary people ; Our problems are complex, we are more than just stories...  Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books We're really excited about it]
• · The curtain rises on a shrine to housewife heartthrob Karel Gott Like Mattoni mineral water or Karlovy Vary wafers, the name of legendary Czech crooner Karel Gott has become one of this country's most readily recognizable brands. In the land of the Czech pop god ; We judge others by their acts, but ourselves by our intentions Electric Shadows
• · · There's something about the thrill of creativity-- seeing something through from idea to execution A Guide to Laptops for Writers ; We either make ourselves happy or miserable. The amount of work is the same 52 Projects: Random Acts of Everyday Creativity
• · · · On a chilly summer's night in Switzerland in the year 1816, a nineteen-year-old girl named Mary Shelly sat up screaming in bed. Her sleep had been interrupted by a terrifying nightmare that had jolted her awake. Writing: The Stuff of Dreams ; In Search of the Lost Heart: Karen Armstrong’s The Great ... Somewhere over the rainbow...
• · · · · Spare a thought for God as the world moves into the second round. Soccer, sin and supplication ; Grief shared is half grief. Joy shared is double joy: If the happiness experts are to be trusted, we should take time every day to count our blessings. What better way to spend a holiday, then, than wallowing in the misery of others? Lives and Times
• · · · · · Culturally transmitted identity ; Jim Baen, publisher of the extraordinary science fiction line Baen Books, has passed away. Jim Baen, sf publisher ; Cold River alert: The deaths keep piling up on: Boing Boing and Media Dragon post