Tuesday, September 17, 2013

The Moxy of a Junior Vampire




  • New Sebadoh. Time to go back and listen to old Sebadoh. Cats and tablets, who the fuck does cats and tablets?
  • So, a mass shooting, this time three miles from the cubicle in which I was sitting at the time. Snore, this will be forgotten by Thursday, just another day in America. Re: our conditioning - more and more, nature claws back turf gained by nurture.
  • Dr Rosen and the Snowden Effect.
  • On the second anniversary of Occupy Wall Street.
  • Yapping at front desk today, econ professor says Summers jumped, govt professor says he was pushed. There's a Richard Thompson song that gets played here at this point every time.
  • Two blogfriends attended Oberlin - either of you there when Dan Bodah was there? More importantly, Dan had a live set from Richard Younges on his show last night. By the way, for our next field trip in Ohio Planet has asked to drive to Oberlin to revisit for fuck's sake and then up to Vermilion for dinner at one of the best restaurants we ate in on the college visits and that I can see exactly where it is and what it looks like in my mind but fuck if I can remember the name and fuck if I'm doing research.
  • Hell goes round and round.
  • The grumpy publisher.
  • There is a William Carlos Williams cascade in your afternoon's future.





CAPITALISM

Nyla Matuk

That strange flower, the sun,
Is just what you say.
Have it your way.
—Wallace Stevens, “Gubbinal”

Three hundred times as heavy as our sun.
The Bubble Observer scientists report
buzzing and whizzing and gesturing in a ball
of swollen crimson gas burning standing
like a braintrust of firebrands and cake batter.

See the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
for updates, they say. This gubbinal—R136a1—sits around the house,
a rich tanned coot at the corner of Magellanic Cloud
and Shalimar’s Dowry, 165,000 light years in mystery
beyond the Milky Way.

The CN Tower casts its ex-cathedra shadow by day,
recently suited with LED lights, red and purple.
With the moxy of a junior vampire,
they stroke the shaft with abandon;
that is, aggregating the infrared of the city

and taking possession even as markets drain
the sweet sad drainage of abandoned wives.
A motive pure as sunrise, sure as sunset.
Watch the flick of green and greedy gold on a deerfly:
a glittering buzz we still don’t understand.



9 comments:

  1. re the title of nyla matuk's poem 'capitalism' -

    browsing around yesterday i came across a phrase that stuck - leftists often think that capitalism does what capitalists tell it to - but it's really the other way round

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  2. No, it won't be forgotten by Thursday. A mile and a half from where I was. Friends and loved ones. Survivors.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm choosing to interpret that our host means that the lessons of the incident, like the lessons of so many similar, will be forgotten, and that he's therefore advocating a return to Miller-era interpretation of the Second Amendment (and the Militia Clause), rather than the more crazy-flavored interpretation with which he's associated himself by association since...uhm...whenever.

      Because otherwise, I pretty much have to believe that he's posing too hard, and that's not satisfactory.

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    2. I hope you're right. It took me this long to push the upset down far enough to respond. Just sayin'

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  3. I really love the art museum at Oberlin, which is free. I like hanging out there for the day but always feel like the biggest square ever, and also really poor. I should probably save the other observations for other means of correspondence. It's also worth checking to see what bands their student life is bringing in.

    If you get the chance up by Vermilion, I think it's near apple season and the Melrose up that way are pretty amazing.

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    Replies
    1. We visited Oberlin and was impressed most by the art gallery (and students being able to rent a piece of art for $5 a year to put in dorm) and the giant rocks on the quad you could paint. We were unimpressed with the interview process (they were snotty to Planet, the worse of all schools we visited) and the tour guide, who was a pop-up polo shirt snob. The next day we visited Kenyon and it wasn't even close. She didn't even apply to Oberlin.

      But the drive between the two was pretty, and Vermilion was nice, and the dinner was great, and we like long drives, so apples next time.

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  4. with intention to commit mass murder, a guy 'going postal' apparently brought weapon(s) through the navy yard gate - this raises serious questions about security procedures

    without quoting it in full, because that would seem to be making light of a tragic event, i am reminded of a famous line from a movie set in a washington military facility - gentlemen, you can't _____ here, this is the ___ ____

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  5. Replies
    1. Ack! In my mind's eye, the WCW post and this one ran together. Sorry about that.

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