i was just thinking

Ride 'em Cowboy!

2009-04-29T09:44:00.000-07:00

Words to Excise from the English Language

2009-04-29T09:39:00.000-07:00

Lifestyle. That's one.

The 20 “Top Paid Apps” at the Apple iPhone Lifestyle section contained:

1. Bikini Blast
2. Bible Shaker
4. sexybytes
9. Sexy Spin
18. Bikini Girls 2
19. Sexy Bikini

Tough to NOT root for them pigs and their damn flu.

Slyvia Plath's Son Commits Suicide

2009-03-23T21:16:00.000-07:00

If I had the guts to do it, I'd do it, too.

Ayn Rand and Conventional Wisdom

2009-03-23T21:03:00.000-07:00

... are always wrong wrong wrong.

It’s not “liberal at 20 or no heart, conservative at 30 or no brain.”

To the folks about to "go Gant" -- go ahead, make my day!

LOL!

The government wants to raise your (well, actually, most of the Galters out there would not see a tax increase anyhow...but those little intrusions of reality into the creaky mechanisms of gray matter are too complex anyhow--poor dears!) taxes by...what?...3%, and your response is to do something unspeakable with teabags?

That should be fun to watch!

Even more hilarious when the wingnuts don't spend a couple of minutes with http://www.urbandictionary.com/ to figure out their chosen term isn't...uh...quite suitable. And when they actually did find out, well, then they blamed the mean ole liberal media (and Harry Reid) for being so mean to their widdle, innocent selves.

*snort*

Going Long Pitchforks, or, welcome to my teabagparty

2009-03-21T16:27:00.000-07:00

So, apparently, the rabble at Fox Noose wants to stir up some shit.

Make it sound like people are all going Galt out there.

What a Rand-y mess.

The "financial" system turned out to be a systemic scam; the bailout is just the second leg in the scam's execution. As long as there are sheep to be fleeced, the fleecing will commence.

Of course, it will all happen because action will have to be taken.

It's an emergency.

Run for the hills!

And don't look at the books!!

Christmas in Germany

2009-03-19T20:09:00.000-07:00

Purifying the Body

2009-03-19T20:07:00.000-07:00

Sunshine

2009-03-19T20:06:00.002-07:00

InStyle

2009-03-19T20:06:00.001-07:00

Buddha Love

2009-03-19T20:03:00.001-07:00

Lesson

2009-03-19T18:35:00.001-07:00

As Orwell’s Party Member tells Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four: “But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.’

How

2009-03-19T18:17:00.001-07:00

Master Sekiso said, "You are at the top of the 100 foot high pole. How will you make a step further?" Another Zen Master of Ancient Times said, "One who sits on top of the 100 foot pole has not quite attained true enlightenment. Make another step forward from the top of the pole and throw one's own body into the 100,000 universes."

Mumon's Comments:
Should there be any who is able to step forward from the top of the 100 foot pole and hurl one's whole body into the entire universe, this person may call oneself a Buddha. Nevertheless, how can one step forward from the top of the 100 foot pole? Know thyself!

Should one be content and settle on top of the 100,000 foot pole,
One will harm the third eye,
And will even misread the marks on the scale.
Should one throw oneself and be able to renounce one's life,
Like one blind person leading all other blind persons,
One will be in absolute freedom (unattached from the eyes).

Progress

2009-03-19T18:15:00.001-07:00

There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. It shows an angel who seems about to move away from something he stares at. His eyes are wide, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how the angel of history must look. His face is turned toward the past. Where a chain of events appears before us, he sees on single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it at his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise and has got caught in his wings; it is so strong that the angel can no longer close them. This storm drives him irresistibly into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows toward the sky. What we call progress is this storm.

Buddha Love, Too

2009-03-19T17:46:00.000-07:00

Unzipped

2009-03-18T10:37:00.000-07:00

Training the Cat

2009-03-14T23:35:00.000-07:00

Training the Cat

Part I

I will promise and am resolved to tell nothing but the truth of events as they occurred to me to have happened in the early parts of the empire. We had the cat as a pet mostly, furry reminder of what is best in our humanity even when challenged. In the union cat contract I saw nothing prohibiting my furball his requisite ganjaweed rations should it come to that. At the heart of darkness it always comes to that. My little one, my pretty one. My orange tiger-striped, tiger-hearted cat: here is the line in the sand: no little fur prints anywhere in the perimeter of the kitchen. And around the perimeter, another one, for more protection, because it will always come to that—more protection, more lucre acquired during nights when my pretty conscience sleep the sleep of poppies. Don’t ever let it wake up. My pretty my pretty cat. So fully integrated. So fully engaged. So filled with the theater and the ballet and the very pretty calligraphic signs. This is the cat I ordered and this is the cat that was delivered.

Part II

In Flanders Fields the poppies do bloom … we hold firm to that hope.

Part III

which means some kind of Zukunft was at work here. The Zu bothered noone none because at current governmental statistical anal suss the Zu would never get here—the long tail having got in the way. Part of the Kunft was still out there, still being shilled at prewar records. Not that anyone was keeping score, when the layoffs and downsizing and outsourcing and downtrending trendspotters saw evidence of the semantic web growing in heretofore dust farming conditions—some, so they said—saw the light. Moments later the Zu projected as predicted hail on the fifth. It was good theatre it was. Popcorn was needed and Momcorn too, for balance—the maternal instinct having appeared on the scene just before the virgin being tied to the tracks. The audience went wilder. For my own protection and in order to serve you better, we will close down this performance now.

Part IV

A scientific paper reports that

Collective behavior based on self-organization has been shown in group-living animals from insects to vertebrates. In this experimental study, we show collective decision-making by mixed groups of cockroaches and socially integrated autonomous robots. Even when in the minority, robots can modulate the collective decision-making process and produce a global pattern not observed in their absence. These results demonstrate the possibility of using intelligent autonomous devices to study and control self-organized behavioral patterns in group-living animals.

Part V

After a week with the Roomba, the cat is nowhere.

Part VI

Training the cat to like the Roomba has not been a success. Even simple tasks like lighting a fire have been inordinarily difficult. I can manage, after a while, to light a lampe in case the lights go out, but it sends black pollution into my room. I’m sure KatKat does not approve. The fresh, plump raisins assuage my guilty conscience.

Part VII

KatKat winks at me across the room. I wink back. We’re the pussy sisters. We hang out in damp dark heavily hooded hoods. We read the signs. We’re down to four or five now.

All Your Couches Are Belong to Us!

2009-03-13T15:26:00.000-07:00

Apparently, nail maintenance does not require much caloric output.
KatKat can do it all day long...

And then there's Friday the 13th. Not that I'm superstitious or anything...

Do the thing and you will have the power

2009-03-13T15:02:00.000-07:00

Some lessons take a while to learn, and some have to be learned again and again. Take these lessons, for example: lack of judgment and restraint are not virtues after all. Ever- increasing consumption as a means of growth is a flawed model. The concept of “growth” itself needs to be revisited and understood in terms of cancer.

Nearly ten years into the 21st century, the major industrialized countries of the world find themselves bankrupt or near bankrupt, and pouring more money than imaginable into massive sinkholes formerly known as banking, automotive, and real estate sectors. One necessary outflow from this bankruptcy is that the standard model of (higher) education will produce fewer and fewer good results as it fails to map the profound demographic, energy, cultural, technological and financial cycles which will dominate life in the United States for many years to come. As educators we need to be prepared to transmit radically different values to our students, or we will fail them in ways too dangerous, immoral, and irresponsible to contemplate.

...

to be continued...

Smoke and Mirrors

2009-03-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

Question: how do you manage an economy that needs consumers, but that does not need workers?

The situation is grim. The U.S. is, in the best case scenario, entering an economic depression that will be far worse than both the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Panic of 1873. At worst, the U.S. will collapse altogether.

Just as global oil production peaked, our economy evolved into a morbid hypertrophy, and the chief manifestation of it id the suburban sprawl-building fiesta now climaxing in the real estate bust. By the early 21st century, when so much American manufacturing had been swapped out to Asia, there id no business left except sprawl-building, a manifold tragedy which wrecked the banks that financed it, and left the ordinary people mortgaged to it with ruinous liabilities. That economy is now in its death throes. The "normality" it represents to so many Americans is gone and can not be brought back, no matter how wistfully we watch it recede.

We have arrived at a moment when a lot of people have a hard time imagining the future. This includes especially the mainstream media, which has reached a state of zombification parallel to that of the banks. But even in the blogosphere, with its thousands of voices unconstrained by risk-adverse advertisers or meddling managing editors, the view forward dims as a dark and ominous fog rolls over the landscape of possibilities. A mood of ominous watching and waiting pervades the land, its cities and towns, and everyone waits for the next numbers to come out, the next shoe to drop, all the while many of the movers-and-shakers pin their hopes on the chance that Mr. Obama's stimulus bill will allow them to commence building a new freeway from sea to shining sea

The primary question that haunts the republic as we wait for new TARP (the son of TARP, TARP II), "bad banks," economic stimulus packages, infrastructure renewal roll-outs, and other policy life-lines thrown out in near-desperate hopefulness to pull brand America out of a ditch is will any of this work, or are we just throwing money we do not have at money we did not have.

Many believe housing prices will continue to crash and have way to go. Housing inventory is continuing to climb as housing starts continue to bubble away to nothing. There is no denying we are most definitely in deflationary times at this moment.

Rents are falling all across America. Chrysler's desperate plan to keep factory workers working is to ask strapped dealers who have no business to buy more cars for their lot inventory. Retailers are still showing "60 to 80% Off" on signs posted in their windows with many of these retailers, i.e. Zales, Gap, Macy’s, to name just a few, closing hundreds of unprofitable stores and turning the countryside way stations of commerce into "Ghost Malls.” The banks themselves, and banking in general as we have known it for most of our lives, is now burnt crumbs at the bottom of our toasters: bread, gone one step deader.

How this all shakes out will be interesting to see. But one thing is for sure: this is not a time to be making large purchases of cars, homes, boats or any other consumer durables when you do not know if you will have a job, or whether there will be enough gas at cheap enough prices to continue the escape ever outward from the decaying core of cities.

All the structural and macro economic change aside, it is the over-arching economics at work: 1) each of us finally waking up and rejecting the consumer label as an insult to our humanity and damaging to the fabric of the Republic , 2) beginning to see everything we spend on as an energy exchange, and 3) taking the blinders off to the entire production/distribution cycle and making decisions based on more criteria than price, convenience and attributes.

We have to, so to speak, get to place mentally where we can face the kinds of change that are now necessary and unavoidable. We are not there yet. It is not clear whether the elected new national leadership knows just how severe the required changes will really be. Surely the public would be shocked to grasp what is in store. Probably the worst thing we can do now would be to mount a campaign to stay where we are, lost in raptures of happy motoring and blue-light-special shopping.

Belief in any system--and in this case this means the concept of belief in the economic system--is like oil to a combustion engine. Without belief in the credibility of the system, the economy seizes up and dies. It is that simple. If a system lacks credibility, if people do not believe in it, then they will not participate in that system. Now in some cases, if things have not gone too far, trust can be reestablished and with that trust a belief in the system might grow--and the engine can be saved. But once trust has eroded beyond the point of repair, there is no chance of resuscitation. Either the system has to be thrown out and a new system has to take its place, or the citizens of the system have to be compelled by force and repression to accept the old way of doing things. This is where we stand.

Belief in the credibility of our economy has been summarily destroyed. It is entirely possible, that credit contraction, derivatives unwind, liquidations, bankruptcies, foreclosures and layoffs are enough to take us down for the count. These factors are now participating in a self-reinforcing and absolutely vicious feedback loop, which can implode the economy and government finances within the next several months. The delicate global infrastructure that is so highly dependent on the smooth functioning of both physical and financial transactions is being thrown into global and local disarray. As an analogy: you could throw sand into a Dutch windmill's gear cogs without too much degradation, but try that with a modern sealed precision reduction drive, and it is destroyed. Our economies have evolved during previously relatively quiescent decades into a fatally sophisticated system that depends on stability in the key economic powerhouses.

That stability is long gone, and the resets of the Alt-A's and the Option ARMS, beginning in 2009, will might likely finish off what the sub-primes kicked off on their own. Let us not forget the looming fiascoes in securitized commercial real estate, student loan, credit card, and auto loan debt. Furthermore, the hundreds of trillions in casino-style derivatives bets riding on all these bad investments can only serve to supercharge the coming mega-implosion.

Of course, the above factors will not be operating in a vacuum. The reactions by various peoples and governments in response to all this will include national debt defaults, hyperinflationary "counterfeiting", trade barriers, predatory devaluations, riots, martial law and, possibly and ultimately, big wars.

The governments of all major countries stem mightily against this incoming tsunami of bad economic reality. Money, all of a sudden no object (as it is “other people’s money” as always), is being thrown into the maws of cash-starved banks and institutions that act like banks (AIG comes to mind). Yet, the wheels of economic engines are not turning.

The bailout money allocated so far has disappeared without so much of a trace or an uptick in market activity or confidence. This alone should give one pause for thought and worry. As banks hoard this bailout money, and excess reserves mount in the financial system, there will be great potential for a rapid expansion of the money supply once banks start lending again. Look out for the cheap money to rush into another asset bubble: this time most likely in green tech.

Blowing up one bubble after the next (internet > real estate > green tech?) is devastating to any constant growth or confidence in markets. The continual boom/bust cycles accelerate toward the ultimate mega-crash from which there is no recovery.

Let us look at the solutions put forth thus far, and let us not fool ourselves: deficit spending on dead end infrastructure like the highways, and related plans for hybrid vehicles are efforts to sustain the unsustainable. So, we need trains running into the cities, where so many of the populace work. Really? What are those workers producing? There are few, if any inner city factories. We have shipped our manufacturing base to other countries. What is left of our manufacturing base survives on life support. Half of Detroit already looks like a post-apocalyptic Mad Max scenario—blight as far as the eye can see.

What was good for GM is bad for America. There is talk about our need for high speed trains. Where would they go, and to what end? Haven’t we yet learned that there is no reason to get anywhere in a hurry? There is not a single person on earth that needs to get anywhere in a hurry, unless they need to get to a hospital for surgery, and then a high speed train is most certainly not the way to go.

Our current financial and economic recession is only a symptom of a more fundamental condition.Unless we address these more fundamental concerns, the symptom will never be altered in a lasting way. Overall there is much gloom, disappointment and fear, yet here and there, in tiny marginal pockets, there is also an odd kind of optimism surrounding an energetic debate about how to build a sustainable, liveable, stable future, or as Homi Bhabha said a long time ago: ”In every emergency, there is also an emergence."

After a Long Absence...

2007-11-02T09:29:00.000-07:00

Well, I thought I'd get with it again.

I still have nothing to say, but I'm saying it.

Plus, I have a new baby, and I need to show off baby pictures!

I'm learning the zen of non-attachment to material things. Thanks, KatKat!

To Pee or Not to Pee--that is the Question

2007-04-22T08:54:00.000-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6094782.stm

Sometimes I wonder what we should worry about.

Who uses what toilet is an issue of immense proportion.

If handled wrong, it will shake the foundation of society and lead to riots, to a complete breakdown of all moral and ethical limits, to an utterly anarchic way of living.

No boundaries.

Worse than Grand Theft Auto.

It will be responsible for floods, hurricanes, the demolition of the dollar, the rise in unemployment, the bust of housing bubble, peak oil, chem trails in the sky, the melting of the icecaps in both poles.

Whatever you can think of--it will be responsible.

Blame it....

Now, don't you feel better?

UnFair Vanity

2007-03-23T13:17:00.000-07:00

Can it get any more blatantly sexist?

The men have faces, clothes.

The woman?

Faceless, naked, except for fetish shoe...

Women = object = de-humanized = as old as the hills

but

at what point

in our development

do we move beyond that?

And please note the dismissive (?)/calculating (?)/ gaze of the guy sitting in the shadows...

From a Friend in Oz

2007-03-21T17:56:00.000-07:00

...from a song for the times:

Oh those that were living just tried to survive
In that mad world of blood, death and fire
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
While around me the corpses piled higher
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head
And when I awoke in me hospital bed
And saw what it had done, I wished I was dead
I never knew there was worse things than dying

Oh no more I’ll go Waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and near
For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs both legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me

Give Them a Credit Card

2007-03-17T21:16:00.000-07:00

The wall is in place

The conditions might just be right for the rest

Those poor people suffer

Suffering is something people get used to, then it isn’t suffering as much as it is the urge to scratch your nose. Eventually the itch will dissolve on its own. You can go back to the regularly scheduled program. Nothing is over; everything is just getting started. Check your body for signs of alien invasion, for signs of cancer, for signs of the coming of the Christ.

Nobody really wants to blow themselves up, not even for seventy-two virgins

Or whatever the number truly is

The open range, the wide open sky, a fire in the distance, a distance receding like a hairline

A fracture
An open wound
A place dogs bury their bones
A place in a book with underlined lines

The book is a place of accumulation, knowledge easily carried across mountains, through valleys, no memory of having done so, just a broken spine, a leaf-taking when the fire wouldn’t start. A monstrous accounting for inventory, sheep for sacrifice, pots for stirring. Hordes horde. It’s in their genes. When you arrive at the other side, you will have no memory of having done so. Your soles will be raw and bleeding and certain scenes have been deleted. Not everything and everyone will fit into this narrative. Are you tall, handsome—plastic surgery can achieve that for you. The secret is that there is no secret. The other secret is that there is another secret after that. It’s best not to talk about that. Sloppy errors here get you killed. Therefore: look for evidence, not meaning. Jesus was a carpenter, he designed flux capacitors for the rich and when they stopped being righteous and rich: no more capacity. He went on strike: am me in my apartment: a part of me partying apart from men. And the women, o, the women went after the counterfeiters with righteous indignation. After all those lesser wares came from factories of child labor suffering, beside supporting unsavory brutes in the service of a letter god. Not in this town. No. In this town we believe in the power of positive thinking—what is your positive mental attitude today? (the answer better be “fantastic, happy and well) Well, now that you asked, it sucks. There’s pain here and there and the subprime is about or already in the shithole. Friends are going chapter 13 and others joining up because that’s about the best option for a dead end job bagging groceries at minimum wage for the rest of your life. If you make it out alive, you might have a shot at the great American dream, not the real one, but the mythological one-the one sold in H-woo and various trade pup—but no matter, you have bought into the system and the system now owns you lock, stock and barrel. Credit? Sure, we gots credit. And when we call it all due or raise the universal default rate to 30 percent….well, whatcha gonna, sucka? Watch American Idol? Yeah, I thought so. We so worship our gods. Don’t forget: looking good counts, too—get tight fitting jeans.

As Per Your Request

2007-03-17T21:14:00.000-07:00

Bring Back the Beaver

2007-03-17T21:10:00.001-07:00

i. people look up

ii. Three men disrupted church services

iii. Ponds and swamps are becoming eerily silent

iv. In guns we thrust

v. Babylon, Baby Lon, Babble On: our destiny—video loops of women shaving heads. Not on suicide watch. Not on my watch. Get in line now. Here and hear. You can leap off any bridge. Not that you started out with that mind.

vi. God. Bull. Lion. When the currency collapses, springs a leak, can’t find its way back to the street, replace the unknown with the known=hold hands with the red queen. Bring a hammer to the pillars of creation and get to work because work, and work alone with set you free.

vii. These are your sword hands. We are swinging your sword upon the face of the earth. Speak to me in thunder and lightning. Red red rain. There and back again. The way things were before we met. Unraveled by the touch of the Spear of Destiny.

viii. Information overload. Walter Reed Hospital. Stop the thinking, top the thinking, op the thinking, p the thinking, p = thinking. Just top it.

ix. If you have time, think about those choppers and military craft buzzing your home, your neighborhoods. Call the mad matter and see what happens. Most likely the guy who hawks pre-owned furniture will show up on your doorstop and sell you a sleeper sofa. Loafer. Now I lay me down.

x. Now I lay me down to sheep.

Eyes wide open.

What We Need Now

2007-03-17T20:54:00.000-07:00

Apart from semi-sane writers, politicians, decent wages, good healthy foods, fabulous handbags, fluffy cheesecake (the other kind), a shot of campari, people who are competent in their chosen profession (8 hours on hold with tech support for a wireless router? Are you shitting me? Cisco system--I see bad things in your future...), students who can write a sentence without resorting to keyboard shortcuts, students who come to class vaguely excited that today might be the day they might actually learn something new, that something new, never before thought will enter into the soft part of their brain and might find a hospitatable environment there. It could happen. Or not. I could spend 8 hours with tech support in India--both of us talking past the problem--and finally realizing that it might be the router that is "faulty"--meanwhile, I've gotten my exercise getting up and down under the table finding the damn router and the damn modem and the teeeeeeny tiny damn labels they want read back to them at every turn. Saturdays are like that.

However, I did get my garage cleaned out, spotless, scrubbed, and hosed-down. It's too good for cars in there now. I might move in there now. After all, I'm not leaking oil. Not yet anyhow.

Three-Hundred

2007-03-14T13:39:00.000-07:00

The movie critique.

One word: war-porn.

A few more words: vile, fascistic, computer-animated crap.

A poem to suit the occasion by one who can express the whole thing better than I:

The Persian Version

by Graves, Robert

Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon
The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
As for the Greek theatrical tradition
Which represents that summer's expedition
Not as a mere reconnaissance in force
By three brigades of foot and one of horse
(Their left flank covered by some obsolete
Light craft detached from the main Persian fleet)
But as a grandiose, ill-starred attempt
To conquer Greece--they treat it with contempt;
And only incidentally refute
Major Greek claims, by stressing what repute
The Persian monarch and Persian nation
Won by this salutary demonstration:
Despite a strong defence and adverse weather
All arms combined mangificently together.

Lame Duck

2007-03-14T11:55:00.000-07:00

What Is It?

2007-02-18T16:28:00.000-08:00

LET us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherised upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question …

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

etc. etc.

I think that pretty much covers it. They all talk too much. Yap. Yap. Yap. Like toy poodles, freshly groomed on white leather couches. They are useless. They give useless advice. They are mean, part of a vast conspiracy of dumbassery, scaling down the collective narrative talent to absolute zero. Who are "they" -- take your pick: talking/writing heads, everywhere, in the employ of the powers that be, that regulate our lives, that impose rules designed to make their lives more majestic. Preachers of the gospel of prosperity.

Just send me your check, and I'll give you a ticket to heaven.

Void where prohibited.

Good God, What Is It With Poetry?

2007-02-18T14:05:00.000-08:00

Just asking.

Pondering, ya know?

It must be that there is nothing on t.v. or books are too heavy or perhaps cleaning the bathroom does not have the thrill it used to have. I speak from experience.

Perhaps the general race to the bottom has finally reached the poets. Yeah, fuck it. Why not write about menstruation, the view from the window, the first kiss, the last kiss, the trip to WalMart, the little house on the prairie, the sign with the word "greed" (rhymes with street, screed, and read). Yeah, fuck it. Just type something about the fuzzballs on your mom's sweater. Why even try? The balloon heads on t.v. string cliche after cliche after cliche together in a necklace of stupidity that can't even pass for parody. Surely, we can't expect more from "the poets." Ah, fuck it. I'm working on something about my back molar.

Flarf

2007-02-18T14:04:00.001-08:00

...rhymes with barf.

Coincidence?

I report. You decide.

The New Sincerity

2007-02-18T13:58:00.000-08:00

Definition:

The quality or condition of being sincere; genuineness, honesty, and freedom from duplicity.

Sincerely yours. Really. I mean it.

Disambiguating the Cow

2007-02-17T15:07:00.001-08:00

Nobody saw her getting there, yet there she is.
She teeters on the top of the pole, one leg at a time,
A circus act under different circumstances. Right now:
A traffic obstacle. Local and state police worry
About the impact during morning and evening rush
Hours. They think ahead. They make plans. The cow
Mooos, cow shit drops at nearly free fall speeds.
It's unlikely that the sky will roll up
Like parchment one day and that will be that. We have to
Deal with the eventuality of the cow coming down the pole.
Yet, the cow has attracted a substantial gathering of
Onlookers, some even from out of state. Enterprising
Young people have set up admission booths and hand
Painted signs have sprung up all along the highway
Signaling the way to the laughing cow. The cow at the end
Of the pole. News copters buzz ‘round reporting
The news from up there. They report the weather first.
The sky’s blue, with a few white clouds. Weather is
Important and the cow is white with black marks. An observer
On the ground ventures an opinion: a milk cow. Indeed
The udder appears full and tight. Milk time approaches.
Someone should shimmy up that pole and get the job done.
Except the pole’s been greased, thus deepening the entire
Mystery. One news copter swoops in for a close up and
Tangles with the rotor blades of a different network. Both
Explode in a ball of fire and tumble toward earth.
The crew is toast. The cow’s still laughing, shifting weights
And allegiances from hind leg to front and back and
Occasionally kicks the air fills with smoke and fire.

This is the cow of the first tale.
The cow of the second fable was not nearly as accommodating.
The cow of the third fable had her eyes wide open

Elements of Production

2007-02-17T15:04:00.000-08:00

Shaped with an eye toward

Translation into a moving medium

The details are interchangeable

Cogs marching uninformed

Long and gray

If there had been a day like that

Determined, distinguished

In its consumption of the last bit

Vanishing Women

2007-02-17T14:56:00.000-08:00

They turn lighter and lighter, pixilated
By the white noise, paying only scant
Attention to the bugle. We know there will be

At least one bugle. Several reliable
Sources assure us. There are conditions.
Houses reduce to dust. Chores ignored to the last vestige

Of certain varieties of men. These particular
Women demand attention. Highway signs flash
Their names often hyphenated. Occasionally,

I see them. When a curtain is drawn
This certain way. When I’m just
Drunk enough. Never enough

When I see them, I imagine them
On beaches, walking toward the water. One
holds a life preserver. Some can’t tear past the breakers.

Pan Paniscus

2007-02-17T14:52:00.000-08:00

Pan Paniscus

I arrived at the landing the first time, the harbor already difficult behind low clouds. All news, new sounds, and not even my hand quite under your shirt. Some blame the booze, I grant them that—it’s good liquor paid for with good money, not nearly heroic away from the screen. Down there, the maggots live to find you. My job was to escort a shrouded corpse to an anonymous grave at the back of a walled prison enclosure. I was one of seven. Rumor had it the dead man was linked to Genghis Kan. In Delhi, these days, jihad brings you new friends—new people to help with the paperwork and the flies—and a new order, and time to wait for you to take a shower, to place a call, to crack a pillbox where all the decisions for all the possible worlds wait in quantum suspension, chicken soup for sniffles and such. You will come back here later, when hunger starves you onto it. You cradle possibility in an open hand, no defense from the rear. I imagine you there, shimmering black in the night, barely ruffling the wind, your arms soft, shadowy valleys and peaks of muscles, half-deflected arrows, burns. Some will sing, some will dance, some will vacuum to the end--I didn’t think the building would fall in upon itself, built before obsolescence shouted it from the headlines. The insurance plans counter with evidence: traces of dust, dna. That goose was cooked. Done, done in. Speaking of colors: you don’t bag a chick that couldn’t get into a good house. That spells trouble down the road. But try to relax. Nobody here’s to judge and whatever trial happens in a year or two (more than enough time to learn the code) will throw off enough cash to fund the whole operation. Nose, eyes, Lipo. All manner of dependency severely limited. There were errors, committed, omitted, prayed over, counter-signed by special courier, blackberry duly stained, loaded into closets held tight behind sliding doors. Some can’t be mentioned in polite society, impact-studies ad infinitum. To no good end. This image should be clear: The super stud captain and the cheerleader getting it on—This instant--in some mutual moment of sex-usual encounter. Hello, I am Rolf, I teach tennis on Wed. My matinee is Sun—confession blurred by the Co-Terminus of several holes in the narrative. You might say it’s an event horizon but you’d need to switch the metaphor. One rumored to have fixed the World Series. Not sure the size of the payout (might have been a good Christmas for me). I’d be wrong not to mention my personal, infrequent run of luck: no one’s been killed, not right away at least. No one’s suffering under the whip of a tyrant. Yet, the milk flows free before children reach a certain age. Flip the switch, and see just which of us is chosen, if there truly is Heaven or Hell. There were errors, committed, omitted, prayed over, counter-signed by special courier, blackberry duly stained, uploaded, into closets held tight behind sliding doors. Some can’t be mentioned in polite society, impact—studies ad infinitum to no good end. This image should be clear. The super stud captain and the cheerleader getting it on: this instant--in some mutual moment of sex-Usual encounter. Hello, I am Rolf, I teach tennis on Wed. My matinee is Sun—confession blurred by the Co- Terminus of several holes in the narrative. You might say it’s an event horizon but you’d need to switch the metaphor. One Rumored to have fixed the World Series. Not sure the size of the payout (might have been a good Christmas for me). I’d be wrong not to mention my personal, not infrequent run of luck: no one’s been killed, not right away at least. There were errors, committed, omitted, prayed over, counter-signed by special courier, blackberry duly stained, loaded into closets: held tight behind sliding doors.

White Wedding

2007-02-17T14:47:00.000-08:00

White Wedding

Western: under construction. The missionary position: land
On top, push through to the bitter end. Whatever
Bride there is leaps into a red convertible

Or onto a sweating stallion. Here comes the bride!
The Hernando Inn in Hernando Mississippi signs tell customers
No refunds, the sheets are wet and the meat is

Raw. Dozens of young women roam the halls, pregnant,
driven, en route to Louisiana where cotton’s waiting.
And then Texas or California, some scabs

That need picking. Gotta keep goin’. My friend tells me
I don’t understand. That there’s a story here, that
Earrings and do-rags are part of the fun. I lean

Into the seat, tap the pedal, then hold about midway between two points: still going
the speed limit.

Purifying the Body

2007-02-17T14:17:00.000-08:00

Bring Back the Beaver

2007-02-16T14:37:00.000-08:00

i. people look up
ii. three men disrupted church services
iii. Ponds and swamps are becoming eerily silent

Oh! So that's what it was......!

2007-01-27T05:20:00.000-08:00

http://healing.about.com/b/a/257746.htm

And there I was...thinking...again...that it may have something to do with

global politics
global warming
global stupiditis

And, continuing to do my public service announcements, I offer this:

http://www.aiht.edu/doorways/angel_door.aspx?adclfr=GGUnderstandingangels#

However, be sure to read the fine print:
"A Course in Miracles or Buddhism may be substituted upon initial enrollment."

So, you gotta ask yourself, punk, ya feel lucky?

Ma Bell’s Watching

2007-01-15T17:18:00.000-08:00

Ma Bell’s Watching

In fact, and I know this will come as no surprise to many reading this, but we are being monitored, watched, tracked, detailed, listed, sorted, categorized, sliced, diced and measured in every possible way. The concept of privacy is dead. Any who would be so naive as to believe otherwise is practicing an act of delusion.

I’m not a newbie. I’ve been around the net since before the Netscape v Explorer episode. But what happened tonight amazed even this seasoned surfer. We use the internet for almost everything. We shop on-line. We do research on-line. We have developed many friends worldwide on-line, even furthered our careers on-line.

Now, everything, and that means everything must be prefaced with the realization that someone is watching.

For your consideration: Having just finished dinner, we received a telemarketing call from Bell South. The young lady on the other end wanted to speak to the person who was interested in the Bell South DSL. My husband asked “is someone here interested?”

To which the young lady responded, “Yes, someone at your address visited the Bell South website.”

“Really?” my husband said.

“Yes,” she replied in a tone he wasn’t entirely in love with, “Yes sir, no matter where you go or what you do, someone is watching you all the time.”

My husband told the young lady he was going to let her speak to the smart one in the family—that was me. Oh, well.

The dialogue repeated itself, pretty much as before. The telemarketer assured me all sites track visitors. Upon my interjection that no site I was familiar with phones back (during family time) to sell goods or services after a visit, she insisted this wasn’t a sales call, just a follow-up to make sure the website hadn’t “…locked up or frozen up while you were trying to acquire Bell South services, as sometimes might be the case.”

Well, that certainly reassured me. Admission of such a possible glitch made me want the service even more. Then I asked her what led her to believe I was ‘trying to acquire’ Bell South DSL? This must have confused her as her until then aggressive, hard driving tone changed to one of uncertainty and disbelief.

Well, that ended it for me. We may be twenty-three years late, but if I’m going to be monitored, watched, tracked, detailed, listed, sorted, categorized, sliced, diced and measured in every possible way then I want it done by confident, hard driving closers and not some namby-pamby twit without a comeback.

Poem To Put Your Mind at Ease

2006-11-23T04:50:00.000-08:00

To generate random data you need a source of entropy, or random input.

Computers are physically incapable of randomness. But perhaps sufficiently random for practical purposes is enough.

When you receive input from an infinite data source, you can achieve perfect randomness.

THIS IS A PARKING LOT TEST (it is a little ashamed of itself)
In a square of side 100, randomly "park" a car---a circle of
radius 1. Then try to park a 2nd, a 3rd, and so on, each
time parking "by ear". That is, if an attempt to park a car
causes a crash with one already parked, try again at a new
random location. (To avoid path problems, consider parking
helicopters rather than cars.) Each attempt leads to either
a crash or a success, the latter followed by an increment to
the list of cars already parked. If we plot n: the number of
attempts, versus k: the number successfully parked, we get a
curve that should be similar to those provided by a perfect
random number generator. Theory for the behavior of such a
random curve seems beyond reach, and as graphics displays are
not available for this battery of tests, a simple characteriz
ation of the random experiment is used: k, the number of cars
successfully parked after n=12,000 attempts. Simulation shows
that k should average 3523 with sigma 21.9 and is very close
to normally distributed. Thus (k-3523)/21.9 should be a st-
andard normal variable, which, converted to a uniform varia-
ble, provides input to a KSTEST based on a sample of 10.

But something as seemingly random as user input can be predictable, and it better be, because we have choices to make: Analog implies a continuous signal in contrast with digital, which breaks everything into numbers. All the smart money’s on digital, with some high rollers banking on plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose—and indeed, why not? Feudal, medieval, of course, it made perfect sense: the whole notion is outside of time and context, possibly even cathartic in the way Drano is to plugged crappers—so come on. With the program, you’ll take home ninety percent of the whole thing. At least in theory. And eventually, the checks stop coming and then it’s hello sailor, where’s the war when you really need one. Current t.v. is happening, right now, on the frontlines, white flag attached to full body armor—constant communication, because communication is good, because talk is good, because some things have to be said and then again, because we are really not smart enough to keep up with all that, so, to be perfectly honest it was the right thing to do. And good for the bottom line: with all the old media squeezing into the landfills, something far larger and far more relentless than that crawled into our beds: internal quality control mechanisms in a centralized way at some damp place before you in infinite datasets you had no way of accessing, let alone understanding. Besides, don’t we have that already, this way of setting the seen--

The Pope confronts Islam

2006-11-19T18:50:00.000-08:00

Slowly it begins to become my property: the hacking
Cough, the bionic knee. Everyday I’m hustling hustling
Getting to the phone in the nick of time. The gender bending
Fruit flies fight like girl. First reports from the front, all
Four of them, to be truthful, weren’t good. More troops.
The money shot landed several of the town’s leaders
On front pages of national rags and then the perp walk,
Hands folded behind, still in worship mode, because you never
Ever did what they said you did. It hadn’t even crossed
Your mind. Unrepentant to the end, the generals are now
Screaming for warm bodies to fill the broken supply lines.
They’ve absconded to suck off gay hookers at the local
Denny’s – I’ll leave that out of the report – but you, my friend
Are not doing your duty. We are in the process of willfully
Upgrading the human species. Your part: it’s not enough
To leave well enough alone. The training manual calls
For mind uploading 101 (we are nothing if not spiritual)
And several rounds of weapons’ training (the real kind)
In swampy conditions. I still mind the downtimes, the
Moments in red fuzzy socks, leaving red fuzzy sockball
Traces. Young people in developed countries unhappy,
Survey says, but I hardly believe him, because that’s an
Essential survival mechanism: unhappy people will ensure
The gun will fire and the rope will hold and gas line will
Provide years of flawless service. It’s a quality of life
Issue. Now it’s about dissenting global climate experts,
One’s quite handsome in that academic smartass kind
Of way. If we had to live off the land, say on Mars, extracting
Water in that time-honored pioneer way, you’d want someone
Else. If some African virus gets to your mainframe
Call central services. Your estimated wait time is
Your final theory, your scientific legacy.

Disaster!?!

2006-11-18T19:34:00.000-08:00

No, no, what I meant to say was...uhm...clusterfuck, ah....uh...well, not really that either. More like, mistake of epic proportions. The stuff of movies. I love Hollywood!

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/11/18/061118191126.gfcbmuyt.html

Really, guys, believe me: just a slip of the ole tongue. It's a slippery thing.

Jesus Loves Me

2006-11-17T06:48:00.000-08:00

...for the talking doll tells me so...

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/17/jesus.doll.ap/index.html

Didn't I read something along the lines of You shall not make for yourself an idol...

somewhere?

America, by R. Creeley

2006-11-16T07:43:00.000-08:00

...no linebreaks...better this way...

America

America, you ode for reality! Give back the people you took. Let the sun shine againon the four corners of the world you thought of first but do no town, or keep like a convenience. People are your own word, you invented that locus and term. Here, you said and say, is where we are. Give back what we are, these people you made,us, and nowhere but you to be.

A Non Thought

2006-11-16T07:38:00.000-08:00

Words are symbols for what's hidden from the mind. They are inherently without meaning. We create meaning not from thoughts, but from the symbols thoughts evoke.

New Sin

2006-11-11T13:19:00.000-08:00

I started running again, nights mostly because hunger does not skip
a generation of tacky sentiment, attachments, in other words,
to things. This world’s asleep at this hour, even the burger joints
and gas stations, dark, behind live Oaks, trees so territorial
their branches hug the ground, coil round the mailbox. Dark
what emanates here—exhaust fumes, asphalt for the morning
crew, ditches deep with water and water-loving snakes. I run
over, past and around all that until I reach the end of the line
for civic duty: no more street lanterns. A new dark. Just the moon
now, stars if I’m lucky. My wife doesn’t know her constellations,
her sign, she’s asleep, sleeping in a bed designed by NASA for space
travel—the intended consumer, not us. But anything that conforms
like that to your body is nearly irresistible, and I believe in good
equipment: solid shoes with arch support. No point in doing this
badly too. I drink too much during the day and feel guilty,
having scared my students with the admission
that most writers are nuts and drink too much. They look at me
with that studied cocked face of cool alertness. They’re not worried
I might snap, just that the grade needed to jettison them into grad
school receded to possibility rather than probability.

We have an understanding they and I: I
tell them what to do, and they do it. If they do it well, well, that’s that.
They wouldn’t understand running, jogging even less. My wife doesn’t either.
Is it a health thing, she wonders. No, I just can’t sleep. But we got this
new mattress. NASA. I know. Now I feel guilty for not being able to sleep
on beds engineered to the highest technical demands of our National Space
Agency. It clearly is a personal shortcoming of mine. Perhaps
it’s the foam. Foam was implicated in the Shuttle disaster
some years ago. My conscience wouldn’t let me rest
as long as my head is on that foam. Arguing that it’s different
foam is not fruitful. It might be logical to run from the light
because the dark—the delta, the omega. Those Greek letters spell
the start of something, here on earth, that’s best kept under wrappers,
between legs. And sooner or later the return journey is attempted:
dark to light—a movement away from the salty, moon-sanctioned coming
together of flesh. And the light, it comes so soon, so very soon—nobody is
ever ready for it. I come prepared with a small torch illuminating
the flesh, the teeth, the hair. In small doses and right angles,
the light can befriend the dark—not necessary willing partners, but partners
in a convincing show of togetherness. It’s good to have a family, some place
where the original position is known.

The Picture Show

2006-11-11T08:10:00.000-08:00

Could not have ended differently; a certain line had been crossed. Moral, ethical, high-toned tomes bombed back and forth. Christ caught it in the ribs, three cracked, and now on permanent total disab. Plus, and this is the grand plan, a verdict in his favor with the emperor, meaning now his word would be gold again, gold and purple. There is a singer in one of the bands that can’t stop talking because someone put an energizer bunny up her ass—we have been known to be crueler, so please don’t be too insulted. You should start to exercise your insult muscle develop it; you’ll need to punch us halfway around the world. All things work out in the end. Except this one: where did everybody park and is it possible to impound all the abandoned articles into the city’s budget, to fold them under so to speak, express a humble figure of submission, and depending on the prevailing moods of the queen you can be expected to perform in rapid succession between two girls and four businesswomen who’ve been coming to come here forever. That’s because we provide an essential part of the job. We are nonnegotiable. I tell y’all. Self righteous at any age is prodigious: we should speak to an expert before committing to lengthy commitment. Spoken like an angel. Then it was night again, and we decided, now certainly older by sheer will power, that we would walk through that door in nothing but stripper hose and four inch heels. Woe the man who gets in the middle there. He would have to be somebody who could swim, hang from trees. Strange fruit.

For the Last Bus

2006-11-11T08:08:00.000-08:00

It smells vaguely grapey: in a high socialist agenda publication, it would be the smell of the class enemy. See, we kinda tricked them. A certain strategy book, no, really just about all proved to be singularly useless. This was when you’d not even been heard of, let alone in. Unless you are on the last bus, you won’t get the first schooner to the coast—at any cost, the coast this year about ten times better than Marlowe would do for free. And he’s whine, and he’s bitch until one of us just whacks him and that lets him rest for a few minutes to get his bearings back. And once gotten bought--this’ll never hold up in circuit court--but it’s not like we are pitching to giants. Yea, just some people. I was on before, I changed that as soon as I did. It felt good there. You know we have to understand the keyboard like you would an expensive black coat. There. Safe, now constructing the sleeve. Which I imagine to be a fairly non-artistic craft. Me, on the other hand, I am writing down what can be seen with a different account of evens that are a more presentation of what I can with my hands. My hands are better for folding clay but this letter thing my hand can do. I warrantee that. My brain has in pre views encounters been most accommodating, maybe take break from work and become a missionary. I’ll see you next week.

Next week, I’ll be there, no doubt. The trekking I have undertaken in all manner of the one true devotee, why not go and life alone, why drag two people into this? Is it for the two’s better than one, and besides we, my gums may also get some side effects what with Mr. Mann so far away, what shall go before you, Mrs. Florsheim. Once formed, it strives me toward this true cross of Gold—even without the l, though a lot less hip.

The last bus takes everybody back to The Azaleas. The last bus is always ten minutes late out of respect for traffic and the other small inconveniences Nobody really believes in them anymore either, but it makes o.k. lifefearlife, I don’t know why god decides to speak through me, no idea. And I really don’t want it widely known, it’s just that some understanding must be reached and before Friday. His little godproction is simply not interesting enough. I have elephants and even stranger tongues. We know you dig the exotic fruits -- you should go there for a while, get it out your system, then come back to the iambic, the pure gold of it, where the heart is. Bullshit, the heart is nothing you’ve got to have a head. No head, no ideas….nananana. Banana. Not goo.

And I bring you spinmistress kittycat. Don’t let the name fool you. She’ll de-fur you in less than five seconds and have time to manicure your nails (you always had wanted to get them ripped out, right?) Oh, yeah, tons. Yes, it is really sadly the only thing we have in common. I should choose better friends. It was typing that “frinds” – see, still something missing. Probably the holy part of it. We should be able to rebuilt it. We all seen the airships go up….up there the one, the only possibility rested, like the perfect snowflake—and then she knew they would spend many winters like that. Away from anything resembling church or work, Barabbas decided to forego all this tralala and tribulation and gored the major on public teevee. Datz not good in any situation. Datz futzed. The chicks so smooth about getting us over there. Their mental acuity is much higher than hours and we need to find ways to puncture their holes.

Would you puncture our holes? What I mean that she is a snapshot of the system around us and should be a possible zone of defense for at a few of the younger and less harboring in grounds of discontent. Unpleasant those. Always griping. Escalating. Three weeks later war! I mean, I had a holiday wedding planned at the equator! And that ass will have to reimburse at least the fucking diving lessons. Man!

Don't Cry For Him, Rick Santorum

2006-11-07T18:56:00.000-08:00

Casting Out Demons

There were errors, committed, omitted, prayed over, counter-
Signed by special courier, blackberry duly stained, uploaded
Into closets held tight behind sliding doors. Some can’t be

Mentioned in polite society, impact—studies ad infinitum
To no good end. This image should be clear:
The super stud captain and the cheerleader getting it on—

This instant--in some mutual moment of sex-
Usual encounter. Hello, I am Rolf, I teach tennis on Wed.
My matinee is Sun—confession blurred by the Co-

Terminus of several holes in the narrative. You might say
It’s an event horizon but you’d need to switch the metaphor. One
Rumored to have fixed the World Series. Not sure

The size of the payout (might have been a good Christmas
For me). I’d be wrong not to mention my personal, infrequent
Run of luck: no one’s been killed, not right away at least. No one’s

Suffering under the whip of a tyrant. Yet, the milk flows free
Before children reach a certain age. Flip the switch, and see just
Which of us is chosen, if there truly is Heaven or Hell.

Elections tomorrow!

2006-11-06T17:56:00.000-08:00

and the money is on
and the other money is on

and your money is on
and their money is on

and the money, being money, close quarters, sort of queer that way, in agoodway

my money, no money, mo' money, honey...

the ace for the dough on way of the either ether is

Have you donated to the cause of your cause 'cause it matters this time

the country's divorced, all the way down to the middle.

good luck with all that praying--how's that going?

A Great Sense of Mastery in those Days

2006-11-06T05:41:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0nPomu7PVM&NR

My Secret Life

2006-11-06T05:36:00.000-08:00

My Secret Life

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8_JgJSFBMk

It’s a game, a muscling in and over and under, a noncomplex Theory of Almost Everything. It was kids’ clothes, mostly, by the looks of it: pink, blue, aqua color schemes wandering about, muttering over salt, fat and carbohydrates—anything to distract the monkey-brain. The crushing desire for fame comes with it, anything for people to associate a name with a face and that with inimitable action or thought. The action that buys—and long ago, fashioned—the pen operates the same scam on whatever drippings emerge. Pre-cum sludge. The vanguard, to some the forlorn, but you got to go there in spring when the women still pretend to be virginal. Anything later than July, you’ll end up with pack mules aligning themselves near the impossible vector of the job. And a job it doubtlessly is. Even with the interruptions, the incessant reminders of a previous failure – and if you have a good memory, it’ll serve up scene after scene of conspicuous destruction. It gets sucked up quickly enough. Some sort of curse falls over the whole thing. Nothing connects, nobody gets the bonus. I came here for the long-left waters, cave-drawings made visible now to all non fish. That is an evolution, followed by an election (we choose to cull the herd some). Not even minor murmurs of indignation. The bar is set impossibly high. What is to be done yields answers nobody has prepared for. Even if the winter isn’t nearly as cold this year, thousands will die while whole families pack into the Chevy for their weekly Wal-Mart run. On one stretch of the highway they will come face to face with one and one another. It looks perfectly safe from up here. Behind the bullet proof glass and enough meth to make the final game a real howler. What is to be done then, right there at the end where the game hangs in the balance—could go either way, but never does because at some level, these guys never win. GM cars can’t be given away, and now the brilliance of shucking off the creation of all creative energy on the consumer, who, clearly confused now, wonders about hi/her role in this drama. Not too late, he asks for script approval and dressing choices—especially the 19th century ripe pickings there. It helps him concentrate—besides it’s the outcome, not device that got your there.

Banned

2006-11-05T19:39:00.000-08:00

Banned

Can’t get into Adlon in Berlin, Die Vierjahreszeiten in Muenchen, and most definitely not into the Ritz. Following the rules couldn’t get it done. Pissing on them revealed abarely visible stump through the zip teeth. Options, we agreed were slim and none, but had worked to other people’s advantage, and not wanting to appear wussy or beat, we signed on the line: from this day forward, for better or worse. It got better then. The yearly floods became manageable. The guestworker program in India works great. We’re still working on Cat 6 hurricanes. All models predict Armageddon. Sometimes, it’s a lot for a single person to carry these many demands, dreams, if you will allow a certain inbuilt obsolesced mentality of benign neglect. How many children I will carry from the fire to the safe tent depends entirely on higher authority – I have no say in the matter. Fortune conspired with fame and wealth—how lovely the three harmonized to the batterment of the group, the harmony—and decreed in this production the guilty party would be allowed to run free, provided she was able to outrun the stain on the ceiling (obviously shaped like a crescent) and the 28 men who were fine specimen of animals bred in order to breed into the tribe the ability to run faster than any man or woman alive.
But running quickly fell out of fashion and fleet feet and legs with it. There’s still Armor, but he’s gone to the cute side and nobody speaks to him, at least not when anyone else is looking. It is a thankless task because you get it wrong about half the time. Even statistics can’t help now. He slumps around here, quiver in hand, arrows too. He’s bored, I know. And I offer history, a brandy, a hunt of wild bore. He’s concerned with his legacy I can tell but that all water under the bridge, no use crying over spilt (I know it must be more than milk)…whatever it was that was spilt, didn’t matter much in the end. In the end, we took the high county and fought them to repeated stalemates. They gave us their women then, to do with as we saw good and proper. Generous these people, hopefully ascribing the phallus the generative properties. They had that to work with. And they may deliver on their promise. And when they do, close your eyes, and start taking dictation. Because ever so briefly will you see the one really in charge. Quick! You might miss it. There she went: skirt hiked over her breasts, top already in mid air, already slumming with the over-eager fellas. If you want to preserve what you say you do, now’s the time to burn down the construct, pick up an intimidating arsenal of handguns. Work on soundbites to bring half the populace to its knees. If the other half rises, the margin calls gonna go nuts. More phonelines. And tell those managers to only use military corners on those sheets.

Late, Again

2006-11-05T14:29:00.000-08:00

But I'm sure there's room for more than one.

It's probably not a proprietary model.

I'm confident it can be replicated w/o violating international law.

After all, this is what writers are looking for; no different than anybody else.

A taste for immortality, a chance to propound on various messianic leanings, vomit on about suffering and disease--all yours for a nominal fee.

(taxes and license, overrides, commissions, and volume incentive bonus extra)

And the tits, my god, the tits!

http://secondlife.com/

When You Know You Have Lost

2006-11-04T13:19:00.000-08:00

...you should just quietly open the latest IE, fall to your knees, and offer praise to the genius that has brought you to this place.

Pussy-Blogging For My Husband

2006-11-01T18:15:00.000-08:00

...who said that "putting pictures on your blog ain't gonna make it interesting."

Things I Learned --Again-- This Week

2006-11-01T18:10:00.000-08:00

Kerry can't/shouldn't tell jokes.

If the discussion about the joke becomes the primary driver of the discussion, surpassing the discussion about the war (yes, that war), then we have absolutely gotten the government we deserve.

And as supposed grown-ups we can suck it up or spit it out.

Must Read

2006-11-01T15:12:00.000-08:00

...and somehow must "get" ...

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1101-33.htm

Ein Prosit!

2006-11-01T15:02:00.000-08:00

Well, I don't know if it'll work or not, but I'll drink to it:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/conditions/11/01/fat.fightingwine.ap/index.html

Lonely Guy

2006-10-29T08:12:00.000-08:00

Must be tough

thank god we have
planned ahead

that land deal in SA--mmm...
enough make a man smirk...

The Good German

2006-10-29T07:39:00.000-08:00

What's not to like?

Germans doing bad things, serving

as bad examples...relevant examples in the new world

order

and

out.

My Tits Doing Well

2006-10-29T06:55:00.000-08:00

Leaving nothing
to the imagination which in
previous incarnation had been
blue

for lack and frost

and possibly because the devil in Renaissance depictions of him

was blue

so so very blue

The State of Education in my State

2006-10-28T19:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/10/26/degree.value.ap/index.html

Minnesota, Utah, Montana, New Hampshire and Alaska had the highest proportions of adults with at least a high school diploma -- all at about 92 percent.

Texas had the lowest proportion of adults with at least a high school diploma, about 78 percent. It was followed closely by Kentucky and Mississippi.
Connecticut was the state with the highest proportion of adults with at least a bachelor's degree, nearly 37 percent. It was followed closely by Massachusetts, Maryland and New Jersey.

Nearly 47 percent of adults in Washington, D.C., had at least a bachelor's degree.

West Virginia had the lowest proportion of college graduates, at 15 percent. It was followed at the bottom by Arkansas, Kentucky and Louisiana.

It's enough to make a grown woman groan.

Language Lessons in Plain English

2006-10-28T07:46:00.002-07:00

I'm not your man.

No, indeed. That should read: I'm not your step-and-fetch BOY!

Is anybody still believing this charade?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/10/28/iraq.main/index.html

Damn right, you don't own me!

A Cautionary Tale

2006-10-27T16:06:00.000-07:00

All you writers out there...if you have ANY possible notion in your head that one day you MIGHT run for public or private high office, be sure to start editing out all of your racier passages. In fact, it would be best if you didn't even start writing at all. Writing is a gateway drug.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/10/27/webb.allen/index.html

Must Not See T.V.

2006-10-27T14:11:00.000-07:00

Another example of our left-liberal media!

Outrage!!

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117952760.html?categoryid=14&cs=1

Book Review: Gravity's Rainbow

2006-10-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

I've tried.

God, I can honestly say I've tried.

Twice, so far.

I'm on page 87 now. Nearly 20 pages further than the first time.

I like carrying this book around. It's heft provides excellent muscle strengthening exercises.

Book Review: Stones From The River

2006-10-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

Ingredients needed for the worst novel of all times: a dwarf, the raping of a dwarf, nazis, a river, stones from the river, a heaping helping of a style of writing that will your teeth on edge, a dash of reference to The Tin Drum (note to aspiring writers: avoid comparison of your subject matter with earlier/better version of same thing), a spoonful of banality, a handful of stereotype, a bit of uplifting/inspirational babble (don't forget this was an Oprah selection!), a tin ear for dialogue, an instinct for describing crushingly boring scenes in self-conscious mode, and saccarine, lots and lots of that.

Stir. Let come to a boil. Lance. Publish pus.

Same as it Ever Was

2006-10-27T08:03:00.000-07:00

There died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization...

I Was Just Thinking...

2006-10-26T08:09:00.000-07:00

...everybody's doing poetry reviews these days.

I should get into that.

But I don't want to read all that...

O, sweet dilemma.

Making The Light

2006-10-25T08:37:00.000-07:00

It’s the beginning of something, out of darkness, off course, on a sleigh but two years late and mutating quickly toward absolute null: the natural bent to keeping the domestic chaos in check and telling anybody who’d listen they’d better get in line, on the right side of the line and actively reciting uplifting verse. The training events necessary can be tax deductible and some of the clipboard chicks may offer double duty, if you know what I mean. Of course you do. It’s a timely tale of revenge, confusion, resolution through talk, then action. In none of the previous versions does Christ actually admit to anything. It’s a positive development, recent, for sure, but not surprising considering the upticks bots kept reporting. Eleven birds, leakage reported up north, bondage near the equator – my god, it was hot there – we’re up for a break in the action. The weapons will get the day off, official prayers will be conducted all over the globe. Refreshments served. We’re still on for Monday, but today, by Zeus, today is Tuesday, and that means, must mean, to interpret this very literally, we will talk about secrets. It is secret day. This day does not really exist. It’s made up. It’s that secret. The exoteric nature of the day forces unnatural rituals: belt-tightening ‘cross ribcages. The popping sounds of champagne corks accompany this most delightful sound. There’s a natural grace rising from these actions, these offers for forbearance we bring to this day. Too bad nobody’s here to receive the gift. Tuesdays are not good for anything here; I’m sure the Guardian addressed that. We have labour problems on Tuesdays—not that it’s any better any other day, just Tuesday, dear, if you only knew—I myself never rise before noon, such a gentlemanly hour.

Cup of tea, don’t mind if I do and it wouldn’t if you did. Whatever. Whatever I’m trying to say is that today is not good. We had planned to move today. Or go to a movie. Plant something in the backyard. Something with fairly sharp leaves. You’d asked to help, but you’d be cut from head to toe. Those plants don’t fuck around. They do it for everybody, but don’t get on their bad side. Dig? None of that. They like the roots by themselves, not touching—they’re funny that way; no, not funny ha-ha—what do you think they are? Queer. Not a gay one in the bunch. They wouldn’t know happiness if it kicked them in the ass. Patrizio stole the plane again. He’ll sit for years this time. You don’t do this shit on Tuesdays. It had to be done, you understand? It might give other kids ideas. There’s too much politeness about this whole topic: skins of whole animals serve to record the outflow of the tide. Yes, we still had tides then. On Tuesdays, naturally, on all other days reactor-fired. It really did make much more sense. Random violence against construction worker is up again, most remarkable, one having gotten hit by a Tupperware filled with piss. Life lesson to be learned here: some people produce too much urine and are excreted from the system. They’ll never catch a glimpse of the Götterdämmerung over Bayreuth (which nearly every dictionary in the world recognizes) and not even a whiff of the finest Kobe ribs that dumb animal can suffer to do without. Women are generous that way, they forgive you as long as you have the potential to be better than you were. And it’s called faith. And we have that on Tuesdays too. You have to get up kinda early, before sunrise, some major hike’s involved too. It’s for cleaning or something and along the way you are rubbed with salt in a very nearly painful way. This is more Sparta than Spa. The literature should reflect that. Consensus is that a Hepburn type might pull it off. We definitely loose the Brittney and Garbo crowd. Lunatic fringe, who cares. The Hepburn type was gotten and good in the required superior way. And we woke up and it was Wednesday and already almost time. For what we weren’t sure of, but most certainly not any endeavors that would force us to adopt a whole new war-drone. The cut, the color, the sheer sheerness of this one is beyond compare. It is what it is, a masterpiece, perhaps peaked a tad before its prime, but good and willing to learn and stand on the right side of the line, face forward, arms slightly touching the sides of your legs, and your chest out a little, just so one could almost mistake it for spine.

Final Jeopardy: US History

2006-10-24T18:52:00.000-07:00

Prez Bush signed The Military Commissions Act on the exact day of the 135th anniversary of the day that President Ulysses S. Grant had signed the suspension of habeus corpus for only the State of South Carolina. The reason for Grant's suspension of h.c. in S.C. was to facilitate the quashing of the Ku Klux Klan and to help enforce the rights of newly freed slaves.

The Possibility of Language

2006-10-24T10:11:00.000-07:00

One of the attributes of language is that language is a complex system.

Probably infinitely complex.

Therefore, given to breakdowns in the most unexpected, yet delightful, ways.

Language represents reality stuck in a Newtonian world view, in the binary of subject v object. That’s not a bad thing or a defect (it’s just the limit of the system) and allows for poetry to become a sort of antidote to received notions of reality. In other words, the writer has the freedom to decide which sort of syntax he/she should deploy to fold transitive and intransitive notions into one, thus transcending (and yet not) the binary.

That’s the sort of fun one or two or more can have with language. Wittgenstein was right about language games. The rule/r/s have to be well understood and then be broken—hung upside down in worst case scenario cases—if necessary.

Playing with language requires rules, because any successful game has rules. Without rules, the game is no fun—playing tennis without the net. Some game rules are stupid—unnecessary roughness in football? What the hell is that about? How can anything in football be unnecessary roughness?

So, anyway…

Once the writer appreciates the duality of light as wave and particle, the whole synchronicity of the thing itself, any dialectical approach a la, say Brecht, is going to be problematic. Besides, authentic socialist art is somewhat of a downer anyhow, what with the educational and preachy elements in it. Totally antithetical to play which is generative, unpredictable. Socialism, like any other totalitarian philosophy: goal-oriented and dead from its inception.

The Possibility of a Conversation

2006-10-23T18:23:00.000-07:00

So, I was sitting there tonight, with my husband, on the sofa.

T.v. was on. Monday Nite Football.

And we were discussing literature. Writing. Good writers. Bad writers.

And so I asked, why can’t women write The Great American Novel(tm)?

To which he replied because they don’t have a penis.

He’s right. I got nothing. Looks like America’s team's gettin’ spanked tonight.

Land of the Afraid

2006-10-22T16:01:00.000-07:00

http://realestate.msn.com/Improve/Article_forbes.aspx?cp-documentid=1037966

Yup. I'll get me one.

I got mine, goddamnit, and I'll protect it.

Ford (history is bunk) Tough.

Bork Me, Baby!

2006-10-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

"One evening at a hotel in New York I flipped around the television channels. Suddenly there on the public access channel was a voluptuous young woman, naked, her body oiled, writhing on the floor while fondling herself intimately. Meanwhile, a man's voice and a print on the screen informed the viewer of the telephone number and limousine service that would acquaint him with young women of similar charms and proclivities. I watched for some time - riveted by the sociological significance of it all."

Robert Bork, Slouching Toward Gomorrah.

Oh, I know EXACTLY how he feels...

Coming Back To Bite You In The Ass, or How I Stopped Worrying And Loved PoMo

2006-10-22T11:20:00.000-07:00

The people who are leading our nation currently, and some others as well, are fond of hyping "values." I like values, too. The McDonald's Value Meal always gets my vote.

These folk also like ethics. Black and white, not situational ethics. No. No. Not those!

And, so, they have made a big deal out of saying what you mean and meaning what you say. The good ole values. Being true to your word. Not flipflopping. Not chasing polls. Nope. Just good ole John Wayne, by gosh, by golly.

And so, with increasing amazement, I've come to realize that these folk are much more PoMo than I ever dreamed of being.

To wit: http://thinkprogress.org/2006/10/22/bush-stay-the-course/

Hell, it just don't matter what I said yesterday. Foolish consistency and all that.

Was geht mich mein Geschwaetz von gestern an!

Yeah, baby!

The Possibility of an Island

2006-10-22T10:49:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned before that Michel Houellebecq's The Possibility of an Island is a fabulous book. Can't recommend it highly enough. For the science-minded crowd, I recommend, alongside of it, Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes by Alex Vilenkin: "Analysis shows that the boundaries of island universes expand faster than the speed of light. (Einstein’s ban on super-luminal speeds applies to material bodies, but not to geometric entities such as the boundary of an island.) It follows that, regrettably, we will never be able to travel to another island, or even send a message there. Other island universes are unobservable, even in principle."

Heavy, dude.

Sabotage

2006-10-19T19:16:00.000-07:00

I still have a number
Of pills to take before I’m allowed
Outside again although the old place was news
To me. Even to me, I should say,
Because who, in the right mind plants
Crepe myrtle in the middle of summer.

No matter. Certain scans on my brain
Reveal what my eyes perceive. I am one
Of the newer models. There are still kinks:
Sudden aggressive tendencies against grout.
Marketing efforts have started in all locales,
Women in tight shorts and lots of spandex

(honestly, I can’t believe anyone still falls
for that) put me through my paces. I’m not
a prophet but I see mostly black, declines,
burned buildings, arms reaching from pavement
to a gray sky. I own a copy of that piece
in my living room. Trendy chairs surround it.

I can see it happen: first the unimaginable, then
The possible, then the real—and the consequences too:
There has to be a higher standard of planning
And control. From the very top. Once
We find the guy he’ll do the work: forgetting
Everything, ripping pages from other pages.

There's a Certain Light

2006-10-19T18:31:00.000-07:00

But it grows smaller,
Fear replacing imperial orders

Trees-- Were the first to go. They served a good lesson There’s a certain sleight of hand that captures like the weight of conscience

Step out of the way or step into step.

And like It. Sing and drink to it. Design a piece of cloth.
Don it, and go on. Go on. On all fours if you have them
On all forms on all functions from here on out Howling all the way

This way you reach This way you reach

The point of no This way you reach

The point of no.

Uno, Dos, G‘suffa

2006-10-19T18:24:00.000-07:00

and with predictable outcome as always when booze is involved...

I would like to know what happened to that other leg, the right one, the one that suffered so much already.

Just Lookin' Out For You Again

2006-10-18T19:43:00.000-07:00

I guess that means enter at your own risk; I can't be held liable for any cognitive accidents you or your offspring might suffer, which may include, but is not limited to, of inconsistent beliefs, infinite loops or mistaken perception, as well as violent paradigm shifts and unrelieved boredom. Take one for the team, buddy!

I Hope You Are Gettin' Ready For This!

2006-10-18T05:36:00.000-07:00

Yes, I am talking to YOU! You!!!

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/10/20011023-23.html

You Really Haven't Been Banned Until You Have Been

2006-10-17T19:56:00.000-07:00

Gettin' My Christmas Wishes Out Early

2006-10-16T18:58:00.000-07:00

Christmas and good cheer and friendly faces

to all whose lives' touches are gentle and kind

The rest...screw 'em

God Bless!

Three Hours, More or Less

2006-10-16T18:45:00.000-07:00

Three Hours, More or Less

It all happened in Houston. We weren’t ready. No gloss, no gel, no nothing
To stiletto the fine line of a proper brow. Nothing to do in this postmodern
Temple of speed walkers, takeoffs, landings, miles and miles (or so

It seems) of shopping, a couple of rib joints and some tee shirts. Not wanting
To bring up a new subject. He was waiting to connect to LA. LAnd of hot chicks.
All like this (a wave of my hand). He nodded, like one might when one wants

To avoid talking. His eyes had their measurements ready, seen them wet,
With a dripping towel round their tummy, puddles on wet tiles, men mopping
After. He offered a small miracle (who could resist a miracle). We give it go. Bang,

There they were. Bags, none lost or misdirected: our stuff. Free to spend the night
In Houston, in Texas, in its odd mystery Texas comes first. Football, women
Adoring wide receivers and tight ends and the average Joe who thirsts after

Both. The quotient, sex or otherwise, is sky-high, like the audience sucking down
Beer or whiskey or cigarettes just to make it past this last day of summer, if
The calendar is right and why would it not be. It’s hot. And every body’s in hot

Dog mood and beer mood and kick the other team’s ass mood, even though
We have a better chance to miss as we do to win. The other team fields second
String cheer leaders. Both teams are chanting now. Not just chanting, wailing--blaring

Blasts of despair as if the complete and utter annihilation of their future was about
To unfold. And it was. And after that, the cleaning crew made easy work of their
Time shoveling piles into neat little corners for pick up Monday next.

Cluster Blooms

2006-10-16T18:42:00.000-07:00

Cluster Blooms

We’re after max efficiency, that’s what the gods
approve. These gods don’t communicate with us
directly only with our pleasure center—don’t
experience long wait times there—busy as they are,

they appreciate the well oiled machine, the machine that
says thank you ma’am. The machines can’t get drunk, neither
can the gods if it’s a match made in heaven. Lots of white—
fluffy, gauzy wide angle sheets of the white. I do

something with mirrors, not much ceiling to work with
after the carpenter quit. Well, he didn’t really quit as much
as they more or less turned him back into light. The grass was
apparently greener in spite of the heat. They drape your legs

round your tummy and carve suspicious slogans in your flesh.
It looks vaguely Aramaic and you worry over security
for security’s sake. It’s not like that and the uniforms mismatch
the boots. The gods promise us a taste of heaven.

Ducks in a Row

2006-10-16T18:37:00.000-07:00

And quacking loudly, quacking without permit after dark, and quacking not in any way natural after dark. We have to find a way to shut them up. First fatten their livers. Oranges on the side. The French have name for it. We sort of mumble it under our breath, there’s a certain danger attached to being out here this early. City folk are still sleeping. The first duck looked fired up for the game and soon after the whole row erupted into action. Rudder hard right, we’d gone through the trouble of repainting the entire side after the last crash and even kevlared (five times stronger per weight than steel) the hulls. In pre-game interviews we’ve asserted our superior firepower. None of this should come as a surprise. The fencesitter jobs have all been taken. The fencebuilder
contracts directly manifest in two forms: friction and impact, the latter having a tendency to predominate. Significant wave activity orders the projection of sight: the high blue sky, the wet green of grass, the sheer magnificence of the sun thru your skin, all the way to bone, to connect energy with energy, to derive a profit, to make, if we want to be honest about it, a buck or two coiled and dormant. The possibility exists to make an exit, a way across the border, sand, river, boat—all manageable. Even supply lines and payments worked out in advance. I’m seasick; there’s pill for that. Sacrifices must be endured, and whatever the ducks decide to say after all should be dismissed out of hand as the unhinged ramblings of animals with webbed feet. Not that I had wanted to bring this into the discussion: ducks have snakes in high places. Don Carlos still writes me, he’s still writing me once a month on the workers’ collective, its progress (slow to none) and the room next to his, no windows, no doors, just several feet of concrete. He knows the room next to his is empty but he likes being closer to water and counting the days.

Zen and Something Else

2006-10-16T18:33:00.000-07:00

A reviewer here indicated he had read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values and wasn't exactly gung-ho about the book. I must say, I wasn't either. I wasn't surprised about my dislike of the book since the author's note is clear: "What follows is based on actual occurrences. Although much has been changed for rhetorical purposes, it must be regarded in its essence as fact. However, it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information relating to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles, either." There you have it: fiction. Take what you can, leave the rest. In the case of zen and something, I suggest: Zen in the Art of Archery. Might come in handy when we have to go back to hunting with bow and arrow after that big asteroid hits earth at the end of the month.

Keeping The Fire Lit

2006-10-14T06:33:00.000-07:00

Keeping The Fire Lit

Keeping the updates upped and dated

Keeping the wisteria in check I must tell you, it never did

it was un checked
branches leaves,

green and moist, cascading one over the other,
a wild mountain,
a come closer here and loose yourself aahhhhhhhhh just what the doctor ordered: a mystical encounter

With wisteria the task at hand, and now, no wisteria

The disappointment was palpable

A real downer. The attending band hummered Ring of Fire, not at all appropriate at this moment. But it’s good to let that go. There are places the reader will not remember having been and others he can’t forget but wishes so. He’s send to unreading camp for a week. After that, good as gold or rain. You might be more of a rainmaker. Did I mention there are some fields that need plowing, set thy bronzeshimmering muscularextenstions of thy body to the task of plowing.

Stay strong through this.

You may find yourself in a field of much advantage. The Russian’s strong, heavy hair, cleavage that leaves noone out. Until right to the end she wished she could see his face like I could. I held his face in my hand and then nothing happens for a long time. The Russian wants you. I want you. And the people that constantly walk up and down here want you too. I hope you don’t get conceited. A conceit would be superfluous on this bus.

Or are we at sea already.

Let’s just imagine we’re there. We can save gas and other money and a flatscreen. I sure hoped my life would end differently than stretched long in a pose of abject ennui -- sure there are drowning kids in NO or that place down south where they don’t hear our language—it’s tough to get good servants these days.

Some Notes to Self

2006-10-14T06:30:00.000-07:00

Czeslaw Milosz, Ars Poetica?

The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.

What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.

We never wholly understand our words, we never wholly understand the word understand; and we are never in a position to authoritatively interpret them. Because of the unconscious, one could say crudely, we never quite know what we are on about. And it is perhaps incidentally of interest that Freud claimed to have got his idea of free-association as a therapeutic method from one of the favorite authors of his youth, Ludwig Borne. In 1823 Borne had written an essay entitled 'The Art of Becoming an Original Writer in Three Days', in which he wrote:

Take a few sheets of paper and for three days in succession write down, without any falsification or hypocrisy, everything that comes into your head. Write what you think of yourself, of your women, of the Turkish War, of Goethe... of the Last Judgement, of those senior to you in authority - and when the three days are over you will be amazed at what novel and startling thoughts have welled up in you. That is the art of becoming an original writer in three days.

Free association: this is the democratization of inspiration; inspiration and originality for everyone. From inspiration to free-association as the route to, or the sign of originality (for Freud, what is original about oneself is one's history: which is not entirely to one's credit). Not trying to understand what you are writing - indeed, not being able to understand what you are writing - as the way to write.

The way to speak is not to choose (or over-choose) your words.

The method of free-association is about what happens when people don't try to understand each other; or rather, when understanding is deferred. If, as Borne suggests, you write down 'without any falsification or hypocrisy, everything that comes into your head/ you are simply following wherever your words take you.

And the implication is that this is something we do not usually do, indeed that we might work quite hard to avoid doing. As though to follow our words wherever they may go is surprisingly dangerous.

And that the ordinary act of trying to understand what we are saying - the wish for discernible meaning - may be a kind of anxious vigilance. That - at least sometimes - we interrupt ourselves with what we call understanding.

The pressure to turn themselves into something someone can understand is off, at least for the time being. It is assumed by both writers that the pressure to make sense -to be recognizable as something other than enigmatic - is considerable; that we live under the tyranny of not being too puzzling, both to ourselves and others

The words that matter most are the words we don't understand. If previously we have believed that words can only matter when we, at least to some extent, understand them, in what way might they matter to us when we don't? We are, after all, rightly wary of the cultivation of mystery, of the curators of secrecy.

Good writing seems to free something in us. It is as though mobility has sprung from paralysis; but only once we start moving do we realize quite how stuck in we had been. The picture in our minds, in our language, is usually of blockage and release. We, or some thing in us, are trapped or constrained.

All poetry is absolutely amoral. What is the moral of Hamlet? What is the moral of Mozart's Twentieth Piano Concerto? These are nonsense questions. Even when a work of art becomes "literary," like much Renaissance painting, using biblical subject matter, it lies beyond the reach of religion. Poetry is eternally out of favor with all forms of authority not because it is antagonistic to authority (only inferior poetry battles against society) but because it does not recognize the reality of authority as it is practiced in society. All art is polarized toward some humanistic point of view, on the one hand, and toward some nonauthoritarian mystique on the other. Thus it is always close to "the people" and always slightly beyond the reach of the authorities. Poetry dedicated to the "elites," the authorities, is degenerate, moralistic, authoritarian poetry.

It is true that poetry represents not only the periphery of language but the periphery of a certain kind of consciousness. The poet or artist explores this consciousness constantly until it becomes habitual with him. Robert Graves puts it this way: "The function of poetry is religious invocation of the Muse—its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites."

11 Elves, Abductions, and Hyper-Dimensional Portals

2006-10-12T09:15:00.000-07:00

11 Elves, Abductions, and Hyper-Dimensional Portals

Not that order, necessarily, not necessarily led here by my imagination or someone elses. But someone planed that bird straight toward the highrise, and all the conjecture, confusion, congress—sweet grass, green green grass of home—working its way to one inescapable truth: gravity. It’s just waiting. It gots time. Lots and lots of time. Sooner or later, without that later, sooner, shit’s gonna go down. Conjecture and hearsay and hypothetical hypodermics will come out, will be brought to your table for you to choose from: a blue pill, a red pill. Chose you must; there’s no choosing to choose. You have arranged your life to this point with all its causes and condition into the semblance of a pretzel, slightly salty but in any event not suitable for nourishment or philosophical backbone. Remote control was engaged at some point in the flights, some ointment delivered just so the young man or woman—we do equal work for equal pay—could slide the joystick forward, push with those gleaming shoulders and those well-defined benefit packs. All the toothpaste has left and oozed far from it original prison, has found necessary traction on marble, could make a break for it. Missiles is exactly what is needed here. A missus missile. Deadly from any angle. It’s end of the world as we know it: people have finally grown so fat they can’t comfortable fit on earth and earth’s springs and squealing and earth’s rotations are slowing and earth seems to fall from favor with the sun and suddenly the deceleration picks up speed and earth drops though our milky way (we stop for shake), bounces past orion, escapes the event horizon (whee, that was close) and just keeps dropping thru world after world, universe after universe, nothing stands in the way—this is how exploitation should work! These are all ours. We can breed here in place and peace, and grow and multiply. We’ll have to study hard and learn the new sky, and how up is down, and how cold it is most of the time here

Write Your Own Caption

2006-10-10T13:45:00.000-07:00

Home of the Bold

2006-10-07T09:04:00.000-07:00

Does This Guy Make Me Look Fat?

2006-10-06T19:55:00.000-07:00

"If they throw Denny Hastert off the sled to slow down the wolves, it won't be long before you'll be crying, 'Hey, you've got to throw somebody else over because they knew about it too,'" Baker said.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2536113&page=1

Nah. I think, looking at this Hastert guy, the wolves will gnaw at him for quite a while.

One of these Things is not like the Other

2006-10-06T11:28:00.000-07:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15078635/site/newsweek/?GT1=8618

College = car

Got it?

Someone call the GRE peeps and tell 'em to make some changes on the verbal section, pronto.

Nothing to See Here, Move Along

2006-10-06T10:18:00.000-07:00