Employee Calls Police After Bag Left In Hotel: “Police said Crosby had checked out of the Manhattan hotel, but left behind a piece of luggage.

A hotel employee looked for identification inside the bag, and called police after allegedly finding the pot, a 45-caliber handgun and two knives inside.

Crosby called the hotel to say he would come back for the bag and was greeted by officers when he arrived.” —The Boston Channel

Bruce Sterling: “They are not representatives of untouched nature, but of *vengeful* nature, of natural processes reasserting themselves in areas of political and technological collapse.”

“They bear some small resemblance to the twentieth century’s national parks, those government-owned areas nervously guarded by well-indoctrinated forest rangers in formal charge of Our Natural Heritage&c;&tm;. They are, for instance, very green, and probably full of wild animals. But the species mix is no longer natural. They are mostly fast-growing weeds, a cosmopolitan jungle of kudzu and bamboo, with, perhaps, many genetically altered species that can deal with seeping saltwater. Drowned cities that cannot be demolished for scrap will vanish wholesale into the unnatural overgrowth. The idea is farfetched, but not without precedent.

Here are some contemporary examples of Involuntary Parks:

• The very large and slightly poisonous areas downwind of Chernobyl, which have been reported to feature wild boars and somewhat distorted vegetable and insect forms.
• The Korean Demilitarized Zone, which is about a mile wide and stretches entirely across the Korean Peninsula. It is festooned with deadly landmines, and rumor says it has tigers.
• The Green Line between Turkish Cyprus and Greek Cyprus. Intruders are shot or arrested there, and in the many years since the unrecognized Turkish secession, the area has become reforested; wildfires there are considered a public hazard.
• Abandoned military test ranges.
• Very old and decaying railroad lines in the United States, which, paradoxically, contain some of the last untouched prairie ecosystems in North America.
• Aging toxic waste dumps, whose poisons legally discourage humans but not animals.”

Landmines, by acting as a deterrent to humans, have created several involuntary parks.

Related: “A fascinating and poignant photographic travelogue through abandoned, radiation-contaminated towns near Chernobyl” by a young Ukrainian woman motorcyclist [via null device]

“Twelve years ago, the far right’s culture war helped defeat a President Bush — and it’s about to happen again.” —Richard J. Rosendall, Salon

The history, daily progress and theory of the enduring counter-community rising very (very) slowly in the Arizona desert in accordance with the vision of architect Paolo Soleri and to the accompaniment of the sonorous tones of the Soleri bells.

I have always been a lover of netsuke and have a small collection of them (mostly inexpensive resin reproductions) myself, particularly those depicting demons or folk themes.

John Kerry’s 1961 garage-band LP. [Do we really know it’s that John Kerry??]

The occasion of King’s Kingdom Hospital prompts a consideration of whether television is fundamentally inimical to horror. —MSNBC