I'm three years away from being out from under a mortgage barring complete reaming by the coming mortgage clusterfuck, but I'm about to go half-a-mortgage under soon when Planet picks an elitist Liberal Arts school, one of which might be Bowdoin or Connecticut College; we're flying this afternoon to Boston then driving to Brunswick ME for an official interview at Bowdoin Friday morning, then driving to New London CT to interview Saturday morning. (We land at Logan Thursday at 7:00PM, probably get out with the rental by nine, then drive into New Hampshire, get a room, sleep a few hours, get up at six and drive north to Brunswick, interview, turnaround and immediately drive south to New London. Montag, I'll wave hi to and from from the 295 overpass over 309.)
I know this sounds callous and complicitous, but my generation of mes probably won't lack for catfood, it's my daughter's generation that will begin hording catfood, it's my grand-childrens' world that need survive the catfood famines, both natural and man-made, but my only child wants to go to Bowdoin or Hamilton or Carleton or any of seven others, we can afford to send her to a school which will credential her to be in a class of Americans who'll risk exposure to tainted catfood almost next to last, and so would you.
I'm still distraught with the certainty I'm leaving my daughter a world shittier than my parents left me, but I fear I've underestimated with my puny hive-mind how many zeroes are multiplying zeroes in cascades of kazillions of totalitarian square-root signs, that my house may be repossessed by square root even after I've paid it off, that my timeline of catfoodery is too optimistic by at least one generation.
REMEMBER! - I've moved HERE. Please adjust your bookmarks and blogrolls and readers. I understand it's a pain in the ass, so many thanks!
Links - I know I promised links here for a week, but I discovered/remembered that some blogs list other blogs linking to a particular post and was mortified (as much as I can be mortified) to see both the typepad and blooger links, and while I thought I was an unabashable blogwhore, apparently there is a threshold beyond which is abashedness.
I hadn't given Axelrod's statement that he was "hoping that with more seats, the Republicans will feel a greater sense of responsibility to work with us to solve some of these problems," much thought, dismissing it as his obamalamely attempt to establish a meme for the 2012 elections, which is the only election that matters to Obamaxelrod, don't you know.
But think why Obamaxelrod lift the moratorium of deepwater oil drilling yesterday when they didn't have to until after the election, have a knee to the nuts, eco-progressives, and you know what? Axelrod may be right: having followed corporate mandate and disabused America's Left that America will ever move Left again, corporate will rein in the hyenas (though not as easily as they think they can) post-election. Obama has done his job. There is a center-right model of middle-American consumer-citizens corporate likes; corporate thinks there's 20 more years of coal in that middle-American center-right consumer-citizen, needs to keep you and me breathing until we motherfuckers can be top-mined for scrap.
REMEMBER! - I've moved HERE. Please adjust your bookmarks and blogrolls and readers. I understand it's a pain in the ass, so many thanks!
Will post links here for the next week or two - though not updated links through the day, which will only appear at THE NEW PLACE.
Paladino: I'm very sorry I called you the disgusting fudge-packers and carpet-munchers you are.
Have more catnip: Every November, all five of The Dobbs Group’s show-jumping horses must be transported from their summer stables in Vermont to their winter stables in Wellington, Florida. The workers are transported to the tropics too, returning to New England with the horses in April. They ride in trucks each way alongside their expensive equestrian charges, tending to the horses’ needs throughout the thirty-two-hour journey. Their return to Vermont marks the start of a new annual circuit of horse shows—an exhausting schedule during the spring, summer and fall months that entails constant travel between their Vermont base and horse shows around the country. At these shows, it is not unusual for the grooms who care for Dobbs’s horses to rise in the middle of the night or in the predawn hours to clean, brush and prepare the horses for a training session or early morning competition. For years, undocumented immigrants from Mexico have been relied upon to meet these labor demands.
Yesterday's abandonment of a Euro Cup Qualifier in Genoa between Italy and Serbia because of Serbian hooligans reminded me of when Elric (whose father is a Serbian) was stationed in Belgrade within the past two years and was strongly recommended to stay away from any bar where Serbian soccer fans drank much less attend matches. Elric, send me the links from your archives, please.
Funny old Booker. I have the Jacobson on my desk. It keeps Hey Sailoring me, and I pick it up and then put it down. It's not so much I don't want to read it, it's that other books keep butting in front of the line.
Alright, I think I've successfully blogrolled everyone at THE NEW PLACE who is still alive and who was on the blogroll at the this old place. If you don't see yourself at THE NEW PLACE in the right-hand column under BECAUSE you're in the left-hand column BECAUSE because it makes things easier from a me organizational point-of-view. If you are on the old blogrolls but don't see yourself on the blogrolls at THE NEW PLACE, please send me an email (blckdgrd ampersand gmail dot com), or if you are being Kind to me and I'm not reciprocating, and/or you want to Hey Sailor me, send an email too.
I realize that moving to THE NEW PLACE at a time when I'm getting more hits than ever smacks of self-destructive stupidity, but getting angry at motherfucking typepad was motherfucking unfun and I can find unfun by the motherfucking bucketful without motherfucking typepad's help, and the look there is better and Ba'al bless the updating blogrolls, they're both boon to you bloggers I pimp and a lazy man's dream.
I recognize the inconvenience. Sincere and flattered thanks to friends who've already rewired their bumps to THE NEW PLACE, advance thanks to everyone who will move their bumps and eyes to THE NEW PLACE too.
Links and music will be posted here for at least another week (though not updates and link updates in posts), though no promises.
UPDATE! Though to be a pest, if you want to hear the new Fever Ray cover of Gabriel's Mercy Street that I literally just heard for the first time, go here.
But not the poem, because motherfucking typepad fucks up the line-breaks every goddamn time, and I don't need the arrgh to deal with it. The poem from which the post's title is taken is at THE NEW PLACE.
Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:
Well, here's yesterday's obamapostasy. Today's Columbus Day, so it might not be until tomorrow Obama scolds me for my shallow fealty and selfishness, my blindness at his obamawesomeness, my traitorously irresponsible threats to not vote this cycle.
Speaking of threats: It's happening (go on, look), but it's still in the very early exploratory stage. I haven't yet discovered all the ways blooger sucks, but tell me, old bloogers, is there a way to set links so they open in a new window? That's one thing typepad does that, as far as I can tell, blooger doesn't. That's not a deal-breaker, and I love the self-updating blogrolls (and if I move I'll be pinging some of you less - though reading new content, of course - because I've been using your self-updating blogrolls as a shortcut) (though the work and aargh of creating those blogrolls, both as a conscientious effort of Kind and as pain-in-the-ass time-wise is both mighty incentive and, subsequently, mighty disincentive). I like I can make photos and youtubes bigger and need break long lines in poems less often. I love that if I can find the poem I'm looking for online (so I don't have to type it) it formats in blooger with none of the grief formatting in typepad causes. I dig the url.
I haven't written about tablets here in a while which by no means means I've stopped writing about tablets. I'm a rube for a new tablet, as if it will make better what I scribble in it. I don't think I've ever gone as long between reformating BLCKDGRD's appearance since I switched to this template three years at least ago. Typepad doesn't allow archiving in an old formats when switching to a new format - if I widened the middle column every Fleabus photo fit for the old format will be too small, line breaks in poems will be fucked. I worry about shit like this. But mostly I'm bored and I have a new tablet.
I'll will cross-post both places for at least a couple of months, but if you're inclined to be Kind, those of you who've blogrolled me, bookmarked me, subscribed to me, I apologize for the inconvenience and thank you in advance for your taking the trouble to move with me.
As when a long forgetfulness lifts suddenly, and what
we'd forgotten—as we look at it squarely, then again
refuse to look—is our own
inconsequence, yes, it was
mostly like that, sex as both an act of defacement and—
as if the two were the same thing—votive offering,
insofar as the leaves
also were a kind of offering, or could
at least be said to be, as they kept falling the way leaves
do: volitionless, from different heights, and in the one direction.
Elric moved his stuff out of our basement yesterday and I found three CD racks I hadn't seen the four years and remembered a bunch of bands I hadn't thought of in a while, like this one:
So I log onto motherfucking typepad this morning and there's a new editing platform and it sucks unto blow and blows unto suck. Compare the space between the above Fleabus photo and the text of this post with the space between the Fleabus photo and text in this post. An eighth of an inch of motherfucking aargh, and there's no fucking fixing it.
Motherfucking typepad has always sucked, dropping colors, dropping fonts, dropping links, dropping margins, dropping formatting, eating text, eating posts, and now it sucks more with a motherfucking upgraded editor? I'm paying $150 a year for this motherfucking suck? Fuckity, I can get all the motherfucking suck I want in this world for free (though if we want the 5% discount on next year's United season tickets we need to get it in by November, though I'm buying that motherfucking suck one way or the other).
Well, this is the last year I'm paying motherfucking typepad for the suck unless it's not. If I migrate I'll migrate slowly (I have eleven months of paid-for suck remaining), and once I figure out and format Blooger (which I'm told is still suckful though far less suckful than when it pissed me off in 2006, plus it has those cool self-updating blogrolls) or Wordpress, I'll cross-post both here and there for the first couple of months as I hassle you to update your bookmarks and blogrolls, though, knowing me, I'll probably spare you and me and just stay here and pay for and eat and spit my aargh for my daily aargh.
Notice how the above is properly spaced from the text but is slightly off-center. Motherfucking typepad allows me one or the other. Oh, and they have no live-chat or phone help.
Men are legally allowed to have sex with animals,
as long as the animals are female.
Having sexual relations with a male animal
is taboo and punishable by death.
As long as the fish are female
saleswomen in tropical fish stores are allowed to go topless.
Adultery is punishable by death
as long as the betrayed woman uses her bare hands to kill her husband.
Saleswomen in tropical fish stores are allowed to go topless,
but the gynecologist must only look at a woman’s genitals in a mirror.
The woman uses her bare hands to kill her husband,
then his dead genitals must be covered with a brick.
The gynecologist must only look at a woman’s genitals in a mirror
and never look at the genitals of a corpse—
these genitals must be covered with a brick.
The penalty for masturbation is decapitation.
A look at the genitals of a corpse
will confirm that not much happens in that region after death.
The penalty for masturbation is decapitation.
It is illegal to have sex with a mother and her daughter at the same time.
To confirm what happens during sex,
a woman’s mother must be in the room to witness her daughter’s deflowering,
though it is illegal to have sex with a mother and her daughter at the same time.
It is legal to sell condoms from vending machines as long as
a woman’s mother is in the room to witness her daughter’s deflowering.
Men are legally allowed to have sex with animals—
why it’s even legal to sell condoms from vending machines, as long as
everyone’s having sexual relations with a male animal.
The number 41 greatest music act according to KEXP's silly-ass fund-drive gimmick list happens to have made another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:
Hah! Stereolab was #164 Kate Bush was #165 and Peter Gabriel was #166 in KEXP's stupid-ass voter countdown of the "greatest artists of all time" as a gimmick for their Fall 2010 Drive (which, fuck it, give to), and I had nothing to do with it, I didn't vote! Hah! The odds they'd be in a row! (I'll post the list if and when KEXP posts it after the countdown, but for now, if you don't believe me, you'll have to go to their playlist and scroll through days and hours....)
As I type this they're down to #128 and still no Peru Ubu. To spare myself an emotional aneurysm when Arcade Fucking Fire is either one, two or three and Pere Ubu doesn't make the list:
First sentence of a Frederick Post article on the president of the Frederick County Maryland Islamic Society: Counter to stereotype, Mudusar Raza, president of the Islamic Society of Frederick, speaks perfect English. Devious bastard.
Vargas Llosa wins Nobel. I've read Conversation in the Cathedral and Feast of the Goat and War of the End of the World, all for classes, and they didn't change my world but OK, no complaints.
UPDATE!MOE TUCKER, TEA-PARTIER!?!Bwahahaha! Worlds tilt! (As long as it's not Cale in front of that microphone my paradigms are fine, yo.)
It's not just busy, but Blegsylvania seems to be dying, Kind is still wonderful Kind but unKind wins too often, I'm in conversations of sorts with three friends who've bouts of blogangst, and I'm fighting off another case of bleggalgazing. Hope this cures it. Doubt it.
AUTONOMIANISM,
my ass! Breaking the law of man - say, reasonable sanctions against murder - is OK as long a God approves it? Problem is, which means: a man interprets God, unpacks God's book, a man insists other men accept this interpretation. This happens because God's expository writing lacks lucidity and He or His scribes often write sloppily. He seems torn between tearing out a sinner's bowels and bestowing eyeballs on the eyeball-less. We all know His job is irksome, ceaseless, everybody knows His subjects are unprincipled imbeciles, all of His subjects this way, all be the ones who say God says they are not.
Dan
is going to put Charlie to sleep if I cant find him a home. DOES ANYONE
HAVE ANY IDEAS?? Please write or call whomever you can that might be
able to help -- Charlie's days are numbered. his new family -- with two
small kids -- dont like charlie and charlie doesnt like them. the kids
are too young and loud noises and loud commotion bother him.
I
would take him but he doesnt like me. He wont come out of his kennel
when around me. AND He hates my neighbors and their kids so they cant
help me walk him when I am not home. so I dont know what to do.
Anyway
-- let me know ASAP if you can think of an idea yourself. this dog has
major mental problems from being negected and abused by his last house.
But, with training, he might be able to be socialized. I found a trainer
that would take him in but it would cost approx $1200 a month. he is
used to living around other dogs, cats and parrots.
Ideas? Anyone has Ideas?
Yes, no-kill rescues, and I sent her links. And fuck motherfucking puppy mills and the motherfucking crackers that support them because they hate the Humane Society.
An acquaintance told me he and his wife have found a new apartment, one where they can have pets, they're getting a purebred terrier and a bluepoint cat from reputable breeders, and no, I didn't ask had they considered rescues because what would asking have served beyond satisfying the scold in me.
I’m not sure Gibbs has a coherent idea of what he means by the “left,”
but if opposition to permanent war, extrajudicial assassination of
American citizens, boundless state secrecy, and unlimited corporate
bailouts constitutes “leftism,” then so be it. True to their Clintonian
principles, President Obama and his advisors have spurned the Democratic
Party’s liberal base and have sought to govern by appropriating the
policies of the Republican right. Just as Bill Clinton enacted NAFTA and
destroyed welfare, Barack Obama has pushed through a health-care
program that was inspired by the Heritage Foundation and largely written
by the insurance lobby—and he shows every sign of being willing to
vandalize Social Security in the name of deficit reduction even though
the program has nothing to do with the federal budget deficit. Obama has
embraced the Bushite war on terror and has refused to roll back the
unconstitutional executive usurpations that so outraged his supporters.
And yet Democrats expect liberals to toe the line and shut the hell up
lest the Republicans take advantage of their dissent. In fact, for the
most part, the “professional left” of policy intellectuals, public
interest advocates, and opinion journalists have done just that.
All good and fine, but then he adds:
What’s fascinating about the Democrats is how consistently they have
squandered enormous political advantages. The party’s leaders have
apparently internalized Republican propaganda to the point that they
feel they do not deserve to rule; consequently, when Democrats come to
power, they always negotiate with themselves prior to meeting their
opponents, make the tough-minded decision to betray their most loyal
supporters, and profess shock and anger when the GOP—which never makes
the mistake of publicly spurning its base—refuses to accept the
purported bipartisan compromise. What results, of course, is that the
Democratic Party, over and over again, enacts some version of the
Republican agenda.
And that sums up the rube I try but fail to finally shed, the rube who gets screamed at because I don't quite want to shed it enough, the rube who gets lectured to by my dearest mentors who remember when progress (defined in their case by the civil and labor rights won post-Depression) was not only demanded and expected but achievable, the happy, fat, and domesticated rube who likes to play at being feral.
Napoleon is a wonder cat, Frankie the funniest cat I've know.
Give to a rescue. Get your next pet from a rescue. Please.
Ngugi wa Thiong'o now odds-on-favorite to win Nobel. I read and liked a lot but promptly stopped thinking about Wizard of the Crow. (Cormac McCarthy is now second favorite.)
It's Fall Drive week at KEXP. If you listen, throw them some tribute. This drive's gimmick? They asked listeners to vote for their top music acts, solo or band, ever. Who will be number one, Beatles, Radiohead or Arcade Fire?
I sit on the tracks,
a hundred feet from
earth, fifty from the
water. Gerald is
inching toward me
as grim, slow, and
determined as a
season, because he
has no trade and wants
none. It's been nine months
since I last listened
to his fate, but I
know what he will say:
he's the fire hydrant
of the underdog.
When he reaches my
point above the creek,
he sits down without
salutation, and
spits profoundly out
past the edge, and peeks
for meaning in the
ripple it brings. He
scowls. He speaks: when you
walk down any street
you see nothing but
coagulations
of shit and vomit,
and I'm sick of it.
I suggest suicide;
he prefers murder,
and spits again for
the sake of all the
great devout losers.
A conductor's horn
concerto breaks the
air, and we, two doomed
pennies on the track,
shove off and somersault
like anesthetized
fleas, ruffling the
ideal locomotive
poised on the water
with our light, dry bodies.
Gerald shouts
terrifically as
he sails downstream like
a young man with a
destination. I
swim toward shore as
fast as my boots will
allow; as always,
neglecting to drown.
This was in my head yesterday afternoon as the 102 degree fever was crashing. counterstream has been playing a lot of contemporary choral music lately, so you are forewarned, though I've listened to Monk for years and this is one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:
Seen those commercials for the Halloween costume stores, those companies that sign short-term leases at favorable rates for empty storefronts from near-bankrupt commercial real estate brokers? The first child doesn't appear until the tenth, eleventh second. Carnival as sanctioned transgression is old, but increases in opportunities and intensity are indicative our overlords are preparing us for increased Lenten penance.
No one talks about Bakhtin anymore, so institutionalized, so celebrated, so prevalent is carnival it's like oxygen. Who is more useful to the elites than Jon Stewart? Than NFL football, Glenn Beck's reality show and tent-revival? It's everywhere big, it's everywhere small. This shitty blog, for instance. Yours.
Hillary! (And yes this is bait for you, C, but the idea that Clinton would pursue policies different than Obama is wrong; his presidency is a justification and (they hope) valedictory success of Clinton policies. If you want to argue that she might have been better implementing those policies, that's a different and more interesting question. xoxo.)
UPDATE! Speaking of fucksticks, Ben Wetmore, which I post because the fuckstick's last name means something treasured as an ancient feud against fucksticks to exactly two of you.
Was CNN waiting for an excuse to fire Rick Sanchez?
Thomas Wolfe was born 110 years ago yesterday. Haven't read in decades, but when I was 20, Look Homeward, Angel stunned and amazed me. Wolfe is for the young.
Has any author's reputation fallen faster than Dostoyevsky's? I haven't read any since rereading Demons (in the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation) x-years ago, but when looking for something else in my bookshelves a couple of weeks ago I opened Karamazov to a random page and read for three minutes and I can't imagine myself desiring to read Dostoyevsky again. Dostoyevsky is for the young.
Bakhtin, of course, is as famous, if not more, for his work on Dostoyevsky than for his theories on carnival.
Serendipitously, two days before seeing the above link about Dostoyevsky, I read this about Coetzee's novel about Dostoyevsky circa writing Demons. I remember reading the Coetzee, though I remember nothing about the novel.
UPDATE!New Roth reviewed by Kakutani, which means the review is useless, but Nobel announced this Thursday, he used to get mentions. I used to feel obliged to read each new Roth, did so through his late 1990s trilogy-of-sorts, but no longer do. Maybe it's because if Wolfe and Dostoyevsky are for the young, Roth is for the old, but respecting an author is different than liking an author.
He loves modernist fiction. Serendipitously, of that list, which I saw first yesterday afternoon: last week I mailed The Tunnel to a friend (who it turns out has already read it, but I needed a CD jewel-box), this morning I mailed JR to a friend, two days ago I noted Wallace Stevens birthday here, and five days ago I linked to posts re: Blood Meridian.
Biblioklept is still on a Blood Meridian spree. Go.
I'm not familiar with Steve Stern. Good thing I have access to a university library's stacks.
UPDATE! I'd never heard this Kate Bush cover until five minutes ago. The original is the opening track of one of my favorite albums ever. Love love love.
New Neil Young. Underwhelmed so far. With Lanois producing, I guess I thought it'd be, what, more atmospheric? Well, that's on me. More listens needed, though I do like the new one down below poem.
UPDATE! Spent the morning with it. Growing on me. Angry World.
THE DOG
Michael Ryan
The neighbors’ baby died age one month so they’re off to Big Sur “to celebrate her life” and I stupidly agreed to feed their dog— a twelve year old wire-haired mix, half blind, half dead itself, its gum lines receded to a rictus grin. What was I supposed to say when the husband asked? “Your baby’s dead, but I can’t be bothered. I don’t really know you. Ask someone else. I don’t like your dog. I think it’s hideous. What if it dies while you’re away? I’m supposed to call and tell you that? I don’t want to touch it. What if your misfortune is contagious?” But I said “Be glad to,” and he embraced me, this Kurt or Kirk, I’m not even sure which. “Siobhan”—that’s his wife—“can’t stand to kennel her,” he sobbed into my shoulder, his eye rims moistening behind his clownish owlish oversized glasses he knocked askew against my clavicle. It startled me so much I couldn’t guess who “her” referred to until I got he meant the dog. All her’s: the dead baby, the wife, and now the dog.
I don’t like the dog. It stinks. It needs a bath. Who washes a dog during a month like that? But I’ll be damned if I’m going to do it— dried dogshit or worse matted in hair the color and texture of rusted wire caked with rotted moldy drywall. The dog howls all day—and I mean all day— as if these were the feelings left inside the house. From outside all month the house had been silent except the one time early on the paramedics came so the neighborhood knew a disaster was happening. I never doubted for a moment there was wailing inside, including the baby’s, which must have been constant. But the dog didn’t howl until everyone was gone.
Siobhan has to be forty-something— They supposedly did a doula water birth at home, her husband assisting, no doctor, no amnio, no genetic testing—I think they belong to some megachurch where the pastor the size of a fish stick from the bleacher seats projects fifty feet high with his bleached teeth and they sing-along upbeat Christian music ten thousand strong, as loudly as they can. “To celebrate her life”: the pastor’s phrase, I bet. If that helps them bear it, fine. All I know is I have their dog to deal with. One thing I’m not doing besides wash it is walk it, so I called a franchised service that sent a Belarusian with a crescent nose stud (God knows what his story is) who rang my doorbell after half an hour. “I can’t walk dog,” he said. “It won’t go. It won’t leave house. I think it sick. You better take it to vet.” So I did. Again I picked one from the phonebook, who charged me eighty bucks to find a loose tooth, although he offered a thousand dollars worth of tests. “The dog is old,” he said. Oh. Thanks. Then I tried at home pretending the dog was mine, actually petting it (a bit) and talking in goofy baby tones while giving liver chips and buddy biscuits and playing fetch, but, while I napped, it scratched off the front door paint and started gnawing its way out. After I gated it back in the neighbors’ kitchen with its blanket and bowls and dried bull pizzle, it began howling again, which is what it’s doing now.
Maybe there’s something in the house still. Maybe tiny syringes and bandages upstairs the dog smells. It would be too odd to go up there where the baby was, into the baby’s room, with the neighbors’ hopes there as furniture, pink bunny or smiley angel or kiddie Bible wallpaper. It would be like being inside their privacy, their intimacy, their monthlong nightmare. Maybe I have to call them after all. I hate to call them—they should have peace to grieve enough to live again in a house that no matter what they believe or understand will never be for one moment as they thought. I don’t know what else to do but call them. Their dog—their ugly old dog—is howling for them and will not stop.
Looking through Totally Wired, the new Reynolds book I grabbed at the library yesterday, I saw Peter Hammill's name. I was stunned and embarrassed to not remember the last time I though about Peter Hammill, much less listened to him.
Elric, who was the Van der Graaf Generator advocate that we knew? Bent Brates? I know he was Hillage, Daevid Allen.
It was a girl who turned me on to the solo stuff:
Saw shows, bought music, listened on and off over the years and then... off. He was never dear, but to forget is unlike me.
To plagiarize myself from comments, this post and this post demonstrate the gov't can put drugs in you to make you stop, but you can't put drugs in you to make you go.
Re: yesterday's post - as always, thanks for the Kind. I need to chill on the unKind (which wasn't the email - that was noted for its cowardice; most of my hate mail is signed).
Reminder: live in Maryland, don't drive and use your hand-held cell-phone starting today. They'll be looking.
Someone bought Bromark's father one of those forks for a birthday once.
No talk about the Nobel in the litblogs I frequent, but British bookmakers have made Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer odds-on favorite. Despite comments in 2008 from the prize's top jury member Horace Engdahl
that American writing was ignorant and insular, US writers have a
relatively strong chance of winning this year's Nobel, according to
Ladbrokes – Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates and Thomas Pynchon are all at
18/1 – as do Canadian women, with Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood given
the same odds to take the prize.
UPDATE! OK, now that this is in my head, fucking-A it's going to be in yours:
ALCOVE
John Ashbery
Is it possible that spring could be
once more approaching? We forget each time
what a mindless business it is, porous like sleep,
adrift on the horizon, refusing to take sides, "mugwump
of the final hour," lest an agenda—horrors!—be imputed to it,
and the whole point of its being spring collapse
like a hole dug in sand. It's breathy, though,
you have to say that for it.
And should further seasons coagulate
into years, like spilled, dried paint, why,
who's to say we weren't provident? We indeed
looked out for others as though they mattered, and they,
catching the spirit, came home with us, spent the night
in an alcove from which their breathing could be heard clearly.
But it's not over yet. Terrible incidents happen
daily. That's how we get around obstacles.
Dear Cowardly Emailer clever enough to send an email without return address (not that I'd have emailed you; I remark only on your cowardice),
Why yes, this blog does suck, thank you. I've always said so. I don't know what I want this crappy blog to be, funny or serious, happy or angry, light or heavy, conciliatory or accusatory, open-minded or parochial, honest or disingenuous, coherent or incoherent, rude or ruder, loud or louder, self-aggrandizing or self-scourging, informative or white noise, etc.... but I do know that I don't want this blog to be either funny or serious, happy or angry, light or heavy, coherent or incoherent, conciliatory or accusatory, open-minded or parochial, honest or
disingenuous, rude or ruder, loud or louder, self-aggrandizing or
self-scourging, informative or white noise, etc...
These are the funniest, most serious, happiest, angriest, lightest, heaviest, most in need of conciliation, most necessarily accusatory, most open-minded, most parochial, most honest, most disingenuous, most coherent, most incoherent, the rudest, loudest, most self-aggrandizing, most self-scourging, most informative, the most static-filled white-noised days of my life. I'm canary, I'm weathervane, I'm Cassandra, I'm Fool. That you took the trouble to tell me this crappy blog sucks is a sign this crappy blog is suc(K)ceeding at some level. My thanks are not either/or either.
Ambulance-fee back on ballot. If anyone blegs a passionate post detailing the reasons to vote against the fee, I'll link. Alternatively, if that person wants to find his passionate comment detailing the reasons to vote against the fee downblog, I'll link to that.
What are books good for? "My best answer is that books produce knowledge by encasing it. Books
take ideas and set them down, transforming them through the limitations
of space into thinking usable by others. In 1959, C.P. Snow threw down
the challenge of "two cultures," the scientific and the humanistic,
pursuing their separate, unconnected lives within developed societies.
In the new-media ecology of the 21st century, we may not have closed
that gap, but the two cultures of the contemporary world are the culture
of data and the culture of narrative. Narrative is rarely collective.
It isn't infinitely expandable. Narrative has a shape and a temporality,
and it ends, just as our lives do. Books tell stories. Scholarly books
tell scholarly stories."
Against the Day. I've found myself thinking about it more than I thought I would when I finished my second read a couple of months ago, mostly about Cyprian Latewood, his entire story but especially his epiphany in Bulgaria. The more I think about it, for all the Vibes, Traverses, Rideouts, Chums, and Highcourts, Cyprian may be the key character.
UPDATE!Heh! Damn, now Jim's pissed at the realities of the world. Those of you guitar players who read this shitty blog, can The Situation's CD release be far away?
To live each day as if it might be the last Is an injunction that Marcus Aurelius Inscribes in his journal to remind himself That he, too, however privileged, is mortal, That whatever bounty is destined to reach him Has reached him already, many times. But if you take his maxim too literally And devote your mornings to tinkering with your will, Your afternoons and evenings to saying farewell To friends and family, you’ll come to regret it. Soon your lawyer won’t fit you into his schedule. Soon your dear ones will hide in a closet When they hear your heavy step on the porch. And then your house will slide into disrepair. If this is my last day, you’ll say to yourself, Why waste time sealing drafts in the window frames Or cleaning gutters or patching the driveway? If you don’t want your heirs to curse the day You first opened Marcus’s journals, Take him simply to mean you should find an hour Each day to pay a debt or forgive one, Or write a letter of thanks or apology. No shame in leaving behind some evidence You were hoping to live beyond the moment. No shame in a ticket to a concert seven months off, Or, better yet, two tickets, as if you were hoping To meet by then someone who’d love to join you, Two seats near the front so you catch each note.
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