Tuesday, December 11, 2012

It Was Sad, Exciting, and Horrible. It was Exciting, Horrible, and Sad. It Was Horrible, Sad, and Exciting. It Was Inviting, Mad, and Deplorable. It Was Adorable, Glad, and Enticing

I'm leaving Momcat topside in daylight for today, headers usually posted between 1930 and 730 give or take. Writing about the ferals is even less popular than bleggalgazing (though this is of course bleggalgazing) or writing about Ishiguro or United. I subscribe to my neighborhood's listserv (or one of many, I'd guess), a recent thread is the vermin feral cats represent. RABIES! Feral cats ripped my flesh, rzzzz, Zappadan and all. Disappearances of goldfinches, did you know Parkwood once was world famous for its goldfinch population, flashes yellow and black summer long, people traveled near and far for Parkwood's famous goldfinches? Join your neighborhood's listservs, find out how glorious your neighborhood once never was in old farts' memories. Someone said the martins disappeared, there's not a house(martin) in Parkwood with more than a quarter-acre lot, all of it wooded, I love martins, there aren't and weren't martins in Parkwood. But I have seen Frankie with a bluejay in his mouth (Earthgirl gasped, Frankie opened his mouth, the jay flew away), seen Frankie with a mockingbird that escaped when I clapped, Momcat with a nuthatch, no playing, just dinner, Napoleon with no birds, asleep on the sofa after all he could eat dinners. I do understand the anger towards ferals of the person whose yard is full of bird feeders, who stands at his window all day with binoculars and camera even as sets them down to type an email to a neighborhood listserv demanding the ferals be trapped and killed like plague-bearing rats. We probably nod and smile and make small talk when we come upon the other on neighborhood walks. As always, fine metaphors abound.




  • Which is to say, thank you, fellow J, for the reminder, it is time to reengage the happy fuckit.
  • Good cop, bad cop.
  • It's wrong to pre-judge, but on the other hand....
  • Bad faithIt's not that I think liberals support torture. No, I think liberals want to be forced to support torture. What liberals want is ultimately to do what conservative hawks want to do, but only after experts and leaders assure them that they have no choice. They want extreme events to make the choice for them. That's why every discussion of torture always descends into some absurd hypothetical where you know that there's a ticking time bomb and you know that a terrorist in your custody has info and you know that you can get that info and stop that bomb if you torture him. They devise these incredibly complex scenarios because they need them to take away their personal choice. That's why writers like Spencer Ackerman exist, to present the proper level of squeamishness and showy moral grappling-- to say that these scenes "can make a viewer ashamed to be American, in the context of a movie whose ending scene makes viewers very, very proud to be American"-- before the torture happens anyway. The key is to go through the moral indigestion but to eventually get to the all-American pride. There's a whole cottage industry, like that, for fretting liberals who want to get to the tough guy routine in the end.
  • How it works.
  • Mr Kristof and his others.
  • Applied anarchy, part three.
  • Martial fucking law.
  • If I were president.
  • When Glen Baxter cartoons go horribly wrong.
  • To know is not to know.
  • Bleggalgazing.
  • Navel gazing, or: why I'm glad I'm bad at subject/object/object/subject....
  • Becoming a redwood.
  • Henry Moore documentary.
  • Poetry versus philosophy.
  • Today's U.S. Route is 36, which can be used to get to Bamgier, where I'll be in ten days, yay!
  • Was going to do a Killdozer cascade today until news of Rosen's death yesterday. Will next post or two. If you've Killdozer requests, let me know. Alternatively, fuck that.
  • Yes, I know I said I wasn't going to do lists, but this one is excellent, not least because their number one is one of my favorites of the year, but also because dig this review of Anaal Nathrakh's VanitasAnaal Nathrakh!!! Anaal Nathrakh!!! Anaal Nathrakh!!! Anaal Nathrakh!!! Anaal Nathrakh!!! Anaal Nathrakh!!! RIP MY FUCKING HEAD OFF AND USE IT AS A FUCKING KICK BALL, THEN STICK IT IN A FUCKING CANNON AND SHOOT IT INTO FUCKING OUTER FUCKING SPACE!!! Anaal Nathrakh!!! Anaal Nathrakh!!! Anaal Nathrakh!!! Anaal Nathrakh!!! Anaal Nathrakh!!! Anaal Nathrakh!!! MY HEAD WILL HIT AN ASTEROID AND REDIRECT IT TO THE EARTH!!!! RRRRRRRRRRRRR AAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MY FACE AND BRAINS AND FUCKING HAIR WILL MOLD AND MELT INTO THE FUCKING ASTEROID THAT IS NOW SPEEDING TOWARDS THE FUCKING MISERABLE PLANET FAIL FUCKING EARTH AND RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anaal Nathrakh!!!Anaal Nathrakh!!! Anaal Nathrakh!!! Anaal Nathrakh!!! Anaal Nathrakh!!! Anaal Nathrakh!!! SEND THIS FUCKING CD TO ME WITH A WARHEAD ATTACHED TO IT!!! FUCKING DIE!!! Anaal Nathrakh!!! FUCKING RULES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • Actually, that's a fan ordering Vanitas, here's the review itself.
  • Of fire and fucking pigs. More later.
  • Helio Sequence.
  • Elliott Carter born 104 years ago today. Click on the Elliott Carter tag for the recent cascades in celebration of his music after his recent passing.
  • Rosen and Carter in conversation.
  • RIP Charles Rosen.





FUCK THE ASTRONAUTS

James Tate

I

Eventually we must combine nightmares
an angel smoking a cigarette on the steps
of the last national bank, said to me.
I put her out with my thumb. I don’t need that
cheap talk I’ve got my own problems.
It was sad, exciting, and horrible.
It was exciting, horrible, and sad.
It was horrible, sad, and exciting.
It was inviting, mad, and deplorable.
It was adorable, glad, and enticing.
Eventually we must smoke a thumb
cheap talk I’ve got my own angel
on the steps of the problems the bank
said to me I don’t need that.
I will take this one window
with its sooty maps and scratches
so that my dreams will remember
one another and so that my eyes will not
become blinded by the new world.

II

The flames don’t dance or slither.
They have painted the room green.
Beautiful and naked, the wives
are sleeping before the fire.
Now it is out. The men have
returned to the shacks,
slaved creatures from the forest
floor across their white
stationwagons. That just about
does it, says the other, dumping her bucket
over her head. Well, I guess
we got everything, says one,
feeling around in the mud,
as if for a child.
Now they remember they want
that mud, who can’t remember
what they got up for.
They parcel it out: when
they are drunk enough
they go into town with
a bucket of mud, saying
we can slice it up into
windmills like a bloated cow
.
Later, they paint the insides
of the shack black,
and sit sucking eggs all night,
they want something real, useful,
but there isn’t anything.

III

I will engineer the sunrise
they have disassembled our shadows
our echoes are erased from the walls
your nipples are the skeletons of olives
your nipples are an oriental delight
your nipples blow away like cigarette papers
your nipples are the mouths of mutes
so I am not here any longer
skein of lightning
memory’s dark ink in your last smile
where the stars have swallowed their train schedule
where the stars have drowned in their dark petticoats
like a sock of hamburger
receiving the lightning
into his clitoris
red on red the prisoner
confesses his waltz
through the corkscrew lightning
nevermind the lightning
in your teeth let’s waltz
I am the hashish pinball machine
that rapes a piano.


10 comments:

  1. Best header ever.

    Re: the Thrakh: I prefer their older stuff. No, seriously, Codex Necro is EEE-VUL. Oh, Weapon, what happened? What happened is what always happens with Canucks, they get nice.

    FISCAL CLIFF FISCAL FUCKING CLIFF BLEARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH

    ReplyDelete
  2. Applicable to all lists: I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU LEFT X OUT YOU SUCK. Okay, everyone in every genre posts a top 30, 40, 50. Am I the only person who somehow wanders inside a dozen albums (at most) and then just hangs there? Do people really spend quality time with 50-75 hours worth of new music especially since plenty of folks can't listen to tunes at work? Yeah, 68% rhetorical.

    Damn your occasionally closed commentary boxes.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oops, meant to close a different one. Oh well.

    I can't believe it took me fifty-three years to get metal. My sixties are going to MWARG!

    ReplyDelete
  4. BDR,
    Kristin Hersh is going the way of the hesher as well, I think you're in good company. She's light years heavier pushing 50 than she was as a wee lass.

    Couldn't get into Mieville either, I tried that one and one of the others, it just didn't do it for me.

    I got stuck watching a Yes cover band on a date last weekend and while I dig 'Fragile,' I don't know if I can listen to 2 hours of keyboard wankery and falsetto for another few years.

    that Quietus review you excerpted is priceless.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I got stuck watching a Yes cover band on a date last weekend

    What have we learned, P.V.?

    DON'T GO ON DATES.
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  6. "To know is not to know" cited Funes the Memorius, which reminded me of Borges' story about the ethnographer -

    http://wtf.tw/ref/borges.html

    And then there's the anecdote of my own in-person dialog with Robert Nozick - after which I quote Erich Fromm -

    see http://tinyurl.com/c2mvhre

    ReplyDelete
  7. Time to reread Borges. Sincere thanks for the reminder, not to mention the deserved and, I hope, Kindly delivered heh! to the face.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Have you read any Calvino? I haven't done his novels yet but I'm kind of in love with his short stories.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I read *Invisible Cities* and *Baron in the Trees* for an undergraduate class and remember liking them but not as much as I remember disliking the professor's over-enthusiasm for Calvino ("greatest, most under-appreciated novelist of the 20th C," and on and on), which makes my memories of reading Calvino unfair. I'll check out the short stories.

    ReplyDelete