The Herman Melville Memorial Picnic and Softball Game Shall Be Open to Whosoever of Ye Writes a Poem about Following thy Captain into the Maw of Hell to Kill the White Whale

Friend Richard sent along a link to an article by Rick Moody published July 11, 2012 in NewMusicBox on Pere Ubu's New Picnic Time which Moody calls, his italics, the scariest album ever made. My first response is, any excuse for a Pere Ubu cascade is a good excuse.





Have I ever mentioned that I love Pere Ubu/David Thomas projects here? Love them so much I've given them permanent status as one of three permanent members of My Sillyass Desert Island Five Game, then badgered you repeatedly with song cascades? Eight-plus years? Cause even if I responded point by point to essays - and fuck that - I'm far too immersed in my mwah to respond to this one. By and large it's fair both to the music and to Pere Ubu's history. I've never suggested that David Thomas isn't weird, difficult, Ahab, driven by demons, that he doesn't speak in tongues, a flame above his head.

• Hey, send me links too.
• Red mist of partisanship. 
• Unrestrained savagery.
• OK, one more on Chik-fil-A.
• Sign language.
• Is the Media liberal? Well, to tell from Fox's 24-7 hysterical coverage of white cracker terrorism (and CNN's  and MSNBC's), no. It's a silly exercise, but imagine a brown male with a funny name in a turbin walked into a christer warehouse and emptied an assault rifle.
• Imagine the violations of American citizens' civil liberties and rights by the Federal Government happening this second against militant crackers and christers.
• But not as much as you: Analysts for the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security routinely monitor violent extremist Web sites of all kinds, including those attracting white supremacists, according to former officials of both agencies. But the department’s work on the topic has been criticized. In 2009, conservatives in Congress strongly objected to a department report titled “Rightwing Extremism,” which speculated that the recession and the election of a black president could increase the threat from white supremacists. Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, withdrew the report and apologized for what she called its flaws. Daryl Johnson, the homeland security analyst who was the primary author of the report, said last year that after the flap, the number of analysts assigned to track non-Islamic militancy had been reduced sharply. Homeland Security Department officials denied his assertion and said the department monitored violent extremism of every kind, without regard to its religious or political bent.
• But yes, motherfucking crackers.
• Contrast and compare.
• Revolutionary conditions.
• Historical capitalism.
• Capitalists criticize Obama for capitalism.
• One ambitious dude. POTUS 16, O'Malley v McDonnell?
• Couple of new sites in Becauses Left and Right.
• Gaithersburg versus Rockville! 
• My (and Fish's) future hell before minor salvation. 
• I call bullshit.
• Bethesda is America's 17th coolest city?
• Silliman's always generous lit-links.
• Scarlet Begonias cover.
• Here's a link to complete New Picnic Time.

RULES FOR CAPTAIN AHAB'S PROVINCETOWN POETRY WORKSHOP

Martin Espada

1. Ye shall be free to write a poem on any subject, as long as it’s the White Whale.
2. A gold doubloon shall be granted to the first among ye who in a poem sights the White Whale.
3. The Call Me Ishmael Award shall be given to the best poem about the White Whale, with publication in The White Whale Review.
4. The Herman Melville Memorial Picnic and Softball Game shall be open to whosoever of ye writes a poem about following thy Captain into the maw of hell to kill the White Whale.
5. There shall be a free floating coffin for any workshop participant who falls overboard whilst writing a poem about the White Whale.
6. There shall be a free leg, carved from the jawbone of a whale, for any workshop participant who is dismasted whilst writing a poem about the White Whale.
7. There shall be a free funeral at sea, complete with a chorus of stout hearties singing sea chanteys about the White Whale, for any workshop participant who is decapitated whilst writing a poem about the White Whale.
8. Ye who seek not the White Whale in thy poems shall be harpooned.

Stop Repeating Yourself. You Old Motherfucker. Your Skies Are Bad Enough. [He Looks to the Ground.] A Parody Is Better Than a Pun

Looking for cheap gag for today's monologue I went back to four years ago today to see what I was yodeling. In typepad, since I archived by month rather than weeks, I have to scroll from August 31 backwards. I rarely use the gag - today being an (not the) exception, but I look back often because every one in a while it sparks a Guided by Voices cascade. In fact every Guided by Voices cascade except for Pollard's birthday. Hey, have a complete show which has a serendipitous surprise!





So, August 6, 2008, I posted.... um, a lazyass August Blog Days of Summer linkful placeholder, what a motherfucking attention whore I was am and will always be. Hey, look what I found looking for August 6:

• We all had our stop-drop-and-roll assumptions on the motives of the latest mass American shooter down, especially when the victims are brown, yes?
• Don't try this at home, kids.
• Two faces of the police state.
• The power of propaganda.
• Three stooges.
• Last thing I'll post on Chik-fil-A.
• Commence rightwing shitstorm.... now.
• Late-summer reading list. The Jameson, the theorist, not the whisky, was required text in one and a secondary text in five of twelve of my grad classes. Van Gogh's boots, yo.
• A critique of Polanyi.
• Myths of human nature, part two.
• Please throw Arthur the coins in your pocket then read his reflections on Vidal.
• Maps as public art.
• Maps?YYY haven't aged well, I saddened to say.
• Now! at Whole Foods! There's a Whole Foods in Rocketville? The one in Congressional Plaza moved to what is Rocketville but is rebranded by CoC death threat North Motherfucking Bethesda. Does some Whole Foods spox need eliminating?
• Walking poem.
• Yes, it's that time again.
• 700 cats.
• Glenn Gould, craft witch.
• New Order stash. Not long ago there was always a New Order song in my head. Not so much anymore, I am saddened to say I'm not saddened to say. Still love.
• Prunella's latest playlist.
• Holyfuckedness.

HELEN: A REVISION

Jack Spicer

zeus: It is to be assumed that I do not exist while most people in the vision assume that I do exist. This is to be one of the extents of meaning between the players and the audience. I have to talk like this because I am the lord of both kinds of sky—and I don't mean your sky and their sky because they are signs, I mean the bright sky and the burning sky. I have no intention of showing you my limits. The players in this poem are players. They have taken their parts not to deceive you [or me for that matter] but because they have been paid in love or coin to be players. I have known for a long time that there is not a fourth wall in a play. I am called Zeus and I know this.

thersites: [Running out on the construction of the stage.] The fourth wall is not as important as you think it is.

zeus: [Disturbed but carrying it off like a good Master of Ceremonial.] Thersites is involuntary. [He puts his arm around him.] I could not play a part if I were not a player.
thersites: Reveal yourself to me and don't pretend that there are people watching you. I am alone on the stage with you. Tell me the plot of the play.

zeus: [Standing away.] Don't try to talk if you don't have to. You must admit there is no audience. Everything is done for you.

thersites: Stop repeating yourself. You old motherfucker. Your skies are bad enough. [He looks to the ground.] A parody is better than a pun.

zeus: I do not understand your language.

[They are silent together for a moment and then the curtain drops.]


* * *

And if he dies on this road throw wild blackberries at his ghost
And if he doesn't, and he won't, hope the cost
Hope the cost.

And the tenor of the what meets the why at the edge
Like a backwards image of each terror's lodge
Each terror's lodge.

And if he cries put his heart out with a lantern's goat
Where they say all passages to pay the debt
The lighted yet.


* * *

The focus sing
Is not their business. Their backs lay
By not altogether being there.
Here and there in swamps and villages.
How doth the silly crocodile
Amuse the Muse

* * *

And in the skyey march of flesh
That boundary line where no body is
Preserve us, lord, from aches and harms
And bring my death.

Both air and water rattle there
And mud and fire
Preserve us, lord, from what would share a shroud
and bring my death.

A vagrant bird flies to the glossy limbs
The battlefield has harms. The trees have half
Their branches shot away. Preserve us, lord
From hair and mud and flesh.

United 1, Columbus 0

So yay and all, but something is off-key if not outright wrong (though in fairness everything everywhere is off-key if not outright wrong so it might just be me). DeRossario seems extra slow, extra petulant, extra divey, doesn't play nice with Boskovic. See, it is me. Maybe DeRossario doesn't like playing withdrawn, maybe it's mileage and lingering knocks and not his head, but it's been games since he even flashed more than one or two hints of the dominating player he's been (and who he has to be for United to make a run).

Dudar's best game for United, good game for McDonald too (whom I'm told I rag too much on), steady game from Korb (who's a minor revelation), poor game, first in a while, for Woolard who was surely concussed and now gone for games. Jakovic on the left defensive line? Oh shit. Najar will be back from the stupidass Olympics for next Saturday's important game at Kansas City; suppose he'll start left back if Woolard is eskandarianed. Salihi has been frankonealed.

Here's Goff, here's Shatzer, here's Webb, here's the video. More iawon.

Currents Worry Themselves Coiled

• Woke up with that in my head. So, string quartets today.
• My apologies, I by no means meant to suggest that I would, or you should, regardless even if you think it the yummiest sandwich ever, eat at Chik-Fil-A and give the motherfucking christercrackerpig (and by no means did I mean to suggest the motherfucking christercrackerpig isn't a motherfucking christercrackerpig) money to motherfucking christercrackerpig front groups. What I was suggesting: I mentioned Uncle, my favorite person at hilltop, a conservative economist and an academic department Cold War vet, and when he gives me shit it's about a Rahm Emanuel not only censoring speech but suggesting legislating against speech Rahm Emanuel doesn't like. I know visa versa. So here's my problem: playing the visa versa.
• Now, whether or not local governments can deny licenses to Chik-fil-A based on their business practices (as opposed to thought crimes) is another and far more complicated issue.
• Why is McDonalds in my twitter timeline promoting its crap as Food of Olympians? Rhetorical question, that.
• But don't forget: on America's descent to Britaingreeceserbia, on the matter of your future catfood allowance measured against the Empire's estimate of your minimal caloric sustenance needs versus your usefulness to the Empire, our Overlords, regardless of which tribe they play for, are in complete agreement.
• Alternatives don't exist.
• Obama the pioneer.
• Police state.
• YMOBMC.
• YMOBMC.
• Landru and Ilse. after their visits to each other's in-laws stopped in Asheville, visited the Biltmore, the Vanderbilts' monument to themselves. Earthgirl, Planet and I visited seven years ago (I had just bought my Matrix, it's a 2005) on our way home from the Smokies, we, like hundreds of thousands of peasants, paid money to see a robber baron's family honor the legacy of their family's robber baroncy. Capitalism, bitches.
• Figures with meat.
• Another book from his generation's greatest academic fraud - I say that admiringly.
• Grammar of the real.
• So, the aargh: it's eased in four of five places, in the fifth it hasn't so much eased as been resigned: I won't go into details here (though up the road, who knows), but my MiL received her death sentence, three to six months. Both a good and sad thing. She and I reached an armistice a decade ago. We like and respect each other begrudgingly. Gonna be tough on Earthgirl. 
• I've always wanted to suspend my native English fluency for five minutes to hear what English sounds like to a non-English speaker.
• I didn't listen to Payne and Olsen on Kojoshow, because what the fuck else is Payne going to say.
• Home game tonight. I'd like multiple primal screams at multiple beautiful goals, please. 
• Why cats are better than people. When I said it was both a good and sad think, I was of course thinking about my MiL when we needed to euthanize Sarah. What is quality of life worth?
• The painter dreaming in the scholar's house.
• I'd forgot about This Heat.

IN MEMORIAM MAE NOBLITT

A.R. Ammons

This is just a place:
we go around, distanced,
yearly in a star’s

atmosphere, turning
daily into and out of
direct light and

slanting through the
quadrant seasons: deep
space begins at our

heels, nearly rousing
us loose: we look up
or out so high, sight’s

silk almost draws us away:
this is just a place:
currents worry themselves

coiled and free in airs
and oceans: water picks
up mineral shadow and

plasm into billions of
designs, frames: trees,
grains, bacteria: but

is love a reality we
made here ourselves—
and grief—did we design

that—or do these,
like currents, whine
in and out among us merely

as we arrive and go:
this is just a place:
the reality we agree with,

that agrees with us,
outbounding this, arrives
to touch, joining with

us from far away:
our home which defines
us is elsewhere but not

so far away we have
forgotten it:
this is just a place.

Where My Studebaker Takes Me

Real life busy good, busy blah, busy sad, busy suck, busy shitty. Back soon, or not. Think, it's been forty years since Roxy Music's first single. Holyfuck, we're old. Also too, have live Crooked Fingers.

Not Actually Inherent in Substances

>>>Deleted bleggalgazing<<< >>>Deleted clusterfuckblarging<<< Instead, yes, I know Herman Melville was born 193 years ago yesterday.  Time to re-Confidence Man, re-Pierre, Moby Dick's xteenth rereading due 2014, every World Cup year, makes scheduling easier. From Moby Dick:

Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them; and though, while the valiant butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving each other's live meat with carving-knives all gilded and tassled, the sharks, also, with the jewel-hilted mouths, are quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the dead meat; and though, were you to turn the whole affair upside-down, it would still be pretty much the same thing, that is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties; and though sharks also are the invariable outriders of slave ships crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently buried; and though one or two other like instances might be set down, touching the set terms, places, and occasions, when sharks do socially congregate, and most hilariously feast; yet there is no conceivable time or occasion when you will find them in such countless numbers, and in gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm whale, moored by night to a whale-ship at sea. If you have never seen that sight, then suspend your decision about the propriety of devil-worship, and the expediency of conciliating the devil.

• Motherfucker, I still can't help getting mad. Stupid me.
• Motherfucking Obama.
• Either would be excellent from a giggle's point of view.
• Go Jill Stein.
• 1943 = 2012.
• The perversion of scholarship.
• Gore Vidal.
• Eat Mor Chikin if you want. Don't if you don't. I was talking with a friend who was griefing me for griefing her for advocating gov't banning of new franchises, it dawned on me what scared her when I said, you give the guy grief for being a capitalist and yet he deliberately chooses to throw away one-seventh of his potential profits by closing on Sundays in the cause of his belief.  He acts on his faith more than she acts on hers.
• Because, also too. Stupid motherfucking liberals. And by that I mean me, not in this case, but elsewhere.
• Boatload of sillyass Star Trek allusions.
• Things you might have missed.
• I had a friend who lived on Moxley Road. Is it Clarksburg, is it Damascus? Automocoblogography, yo.
• Kevin Payne and Ben Olsen on Kojo Nnamdi show today at 1pm EDT.

Melville, Moby Dick

Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows- a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues- every stately or lovely emblazoning- the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtle deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge- pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?

Once in a While You Get Shown the Light in the Strangest of Places If You Look at It Right

Jerry Garcia was born seventy years ago today. Yes, the above is a cover, but I listened to all of Europe 72 yesterday and I hadn't heard this in a decade. I see people writing - I've been writing - about the pathology of nostalgia as signature key of the clusterfuck, and a run of High Holy Days provokes from me the pangs I program it to, I'm a fucking romantic, I'm predisposed to the disease in good times. Anyway, I loved The Dead unto a lifestyle, fell away when I needed leave that lifestyle to save my life, cold-turkeyed to the point of self-disdain: Hey, what did the two Deadheads say to each other when the dope ran out? Hey Man, this music sucks. No, it doesn't.

• But yes, my response is always more self-indulgence.
• And yes, lots of Dead does suck, it always reminded me of baseball games, you sit through eighty shitty (versions of Scarlet Begonias) games for the one that abounds fine metaphors.
• Hegemony, nationalism, doxa.
• Tyranny of the synthetic.
• The Obama enabler's big lie.
• Panderer to plutocrats.
• Oligarchy.
• He's hip, her's cool, he's a libertarian.

• That was a buzz topic in Stringtown yesterday, the title of the post made me think of the KITH skit. The skit is posted for no other reason that my self-indulgence of my love for free association. Few things suck more than Definition: The Game. King of Anarchists is one.
• Had a conversation yesterday with Uncle, one of my favorite Hilltoppers, my favorite conservative economist, was reminded of the basic distinction between those who put a to after freedom and those who use a from.
• RIP Gore Vidal.
• RIP Gore Vidal.
• For the record.
• RIP Gore Vidal.
• UPDATE! Bad Vidal.
• RIP Gore Vidal.
• Vidal versus Buckley.
• Vidal and Cockburn.
• Bruce Cockburn.
• Oopsy.
• Visual sound.
• A great authors curriculum.
• Jack Spicer reading.
• New Deerhoof!

• Black Peter.
• St Stephen.
• Althea.
• Bertha.
• Dire Wolf.
• He's Gone.
• Not Fade Away.
• Cold Rain and Snow.