What's Hot! Old News

Hey Fanz!

Busy don't begin to describe it!

Saturday, September 18, 2004

Alas, it's time for another tawdry episode of the Wee Stinky Band . As always, we will be playing at Rooster's Bar & Grill, corner of Grove & Johnson, in scenic northeast Barrie, Ontario.
Never a cover! Who'd pay it?!!

Sunday, September 19, 2004

The next morning, I have to rush back to Toronto in time to play at Harbourfront with Cooler By The Lake. We'll be playing at 2:00 p.m. in the Lakeside Terrace room of the York Quay Centre, in support of a fundraising auction for the Toronto Bay Initiative. Lots of cool stuff to bid on!!

As soon as that set's over, I have to zoom over to Brunswick & Ulster, (south of Harbord), to play with Mr. Froggie & the Wormgear at the Harbord Village Residents' Association annual street fair. The music starts at noon and includes Lisa Particelli, The Fabulous Quitters, Ron Davis, Faith Nolan, Paddy on the Cell Phone, and Peter Jellard, but we'll be closing the show, starting at about 6 p.m.!

I'll be playing a private party with the Axes of Evil on Wednesday, September 22, and another one with Gordon's Acoustic Living Room on Friday, September 24, and then . . .

Saturday, September 25, 2004

Off home to Simcoe, Ontario to play with Patio Dave & The Lanterns. We'll be playing at The Aud (at the fairgrounds) at a fundraiser for my alma mater, Simcoe Composite School, so they can replace the gymtorium that burned down. (Don't ask.) There'll be other bands, so we're just doing the one set. Sorry, I don't know any more details, or the price.

Sunday, September 26, 2004

Next morning, kiss my mom and race back to Trawna in time to help set up the Amnesty International booth at Word On The Street, which is in Queen's Park this year, then round up the Single Non-Transferable Orchestra and herd them down to the Queen's Quay Yachting Club, 275 Queen's Quay West, (just south of Skydome), in time for the annual fundraising BBQ of the Fair Vote Canada Toronto Chapter. 1-4 p.m. Admission is $20 or PWYC. Not a member? No problem, that's just another $10. You can join at the BBQ!

That evening, it's time for the regular monthly gig at the Free Times Café, 320 College Street, two blocks west of Spadina, with Gordon's Acoustic Living Room. Note that we've switched to the fourth Sunday of each month for the rest of the year.

Thursday, September 30, 2004

The red hot Gordon's Acoustic Living Room are not quite finished with September. Now in its third decade, Descant is a quarterly journal publishing new and established contemporary writers and visual artists from Canada and around the world.

Descant Arts & Letters Foundation presents

The Descant Book Ball

Thursday, September 30, 7pm at Sorauren Studio,
22 Sorauren Ave. Tickets 416.593.2557 / $50

Featuring: Louise Bak, Nicole Brossard, Camilla Gibb, Gordon's Acoustic Living Room, Nalo Hopkinson, Mary-Theresa Lawlor, Mark Kingwell, Tamai Kobayashi, Robert Priest, Susan Swan, bill bissett, Edward Burtynsky, Douglas Glover, Barbara Gowdy, Kris Knight, Dennis Lee, Laurie McGaw, P. K. Page, Emily Schultz, Russell Smith and more!

Other than that, nothing much going on. Well, other than my new job, and the Fair Vote Ontario Fall Action Campaign, and the Amnesty International Toronto Organization Regional Conference, and so on.

You know, the usual stuff.

Wayne Neon
416-407-7009
www.wayneon.ca

. . . and in other news!

stuff from the internet (thanx to Neon News correspondents Nick and Paul):

In his memoirs, "A World Transformed," written five years ago, George Bush, Sr. wrote the following to explain why he didn't go after Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War.

"Trying to eliminate Saddam...would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible.... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq....There was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

If only his son could read.

' I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic destroyed.' - Abe Lincoln

Despite warnings, in 1913 President Wilson approved the federal Reserve Act concentrating control of America's money in the few men who dominate this private corporation. A few years later he reflected:

'I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all of our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world - no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men'. - Woodrow Wilson

Moonie leader 'crowned' in Senate

Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday June 24, 2004
The Guardian

The US Senate was used for a bizarre ritual in which the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the head of the Unification church, was "crowned" and declared himself the messiah in the presence of more than a dozen Republican and Democratic members of Congress, it was reported yesterday.

"Emperors, kings and presidents ... have declared to all heaven and Earth that Reverend Sun Myung Moon is none other than humanity's saviour, messiah, returning Lord and true parent," the 85-year-old Korean "Moonie" cult leader told several hundred guests at the meeting in one of the Senate's office buildings on March 23, according to the Washington Post.

He also claimed endorsement from Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler, who had all been reformed and reborn through his church's teachings - an idiosyncratic version of Christianity which rejects the use of the cross as a symbol and denounces homosexuals as "dirty dung-eating dogs".

An account of the ceremony was first published by a Washington investigative journalist, John Gorenfeld.

According to a transcript of the event, Mr Moon declared: "I am God's ambassador, sent to Earth with his full authority. I am sent to accomplish his command to save the world's six billion people, restoring them to Heaven with the original goodness in which they were created." The glittering event in the Senate's Dirksen building reflected Mr Moon's extraordinary influence in US politics. He owns the conservative newspaper the Washington Times and the US news agency United Press International.

His fiercely conservative attitudes towards homosexuality and pre-marital sex have won him the endorsement of leading Republicans, including the president's father, George Bush, and John Ashcroft, the attorney general, who participated in one of Mr Moon's "prayer luncheons" days before the president's inauguration in January 2001.

Leading black Democrats also played a prominent role in the March ceremony.

An Illinois congressman, Danny Davis, wore white gloves and carried a purple cushion bearing a medieval-style "international crown of peace", which was placed on Mr Moon's head, at an event at which 100 Americans from 50 states were also given lesser "national" and "state" peace awards. The event was an "innocent ceremony," Mr Davis told the Guardian. "It was a banquet to give out awards. I didn't have any way of knowing Reverend Moon would say he was the messiah, or whatever he said."

Mr Davis acknowledged that "three or four individuals directly related to Rev Moon" took part in a fund-raiser for his primary campaign in Illinois earlier this year, but said small sums of money were involved.

Other members of Congress who attended the event said they had been fooled into going by being told only that people from their constituencies would be honoured at the ceremony. A spokeswoman for a Democratic senator from Minnesota, Mark Dayton, said: "We fell victim to it. We were duped."

It was unclear who gave permission for the Senate office building to be used. During the ceremony Mr Moon invoked the blessing of all America's past presidents. He also claimed to have communed with other big names in history.

He told his audience: "The five great saints and other leaders in the spirit world, including communist leaders such as Marx and Lenin, who committed all manner of barbarity, and dictators such as Hitler and Stalin, have found strength in my teachings, mended their ways and been reborn as new persons."

It is not the first time he has claimed posthumous backing. His followers recently took out a two-page advertisement in the Washington Times to run a testimonial to him, quoting 36 former presidents "from the vantage point of heaven".