Friday, January 17, 2014

Sometimes, in Desperation, He'd Look Toward a Mannequin or a Window Dresser with a Penchant for Parsing





Andy Kaufman was born 65 years ago today. Rest in peace, Mae Young. I fully confess the manic twice a day postings are 97/100ths an attention-slut's desperation to make up for lost pings now that I don't yodel motherfucking this motherfucking that like I used to at peak ping. Why I think putting out more of what those who visited for the motherfuckering don't want will increase pings falls under rules of self-fulfilling prophecy and its satisfying negative rewards. 1/100th is the freedom of the new template, the escape from the green prison, another 1/100th is simply fuck you fuck me fuck this, but the last 1/100th is that I'm finding myself desperately, frighteningly angry at





  • for instance, frighteningly enraged, finding myself desperately sad, alarmingly crazed, I thought not motherfuckering would help but it doesn't, I find myself thinking of what the fuck actions I can take and then recognizing their futility (like the ineffectual futility of posting twice a day) had I the guts to enact them, find myself imagining the world my daughter will need survive when she's my age in 2047...
  • I stopped paying attention to professional wrestling once the motherfucking McMahon's won, and fine metaphors abound.
  • Onism.
  • How do you see yourself?
  • The ambient special you didn't ask for.
  • A review of Obama's spy speech before Obama's spy speech.
  • Just because I don't motherfuckering as much doesn't mean I won't link to others motherfuckering, though admittedly, by design, there's less and less of that too.
  • Radical notions: on creating the enemy one seeks.
  • Living with power.
  • Joseph Conrad's An Anarchist.
  • Anxiety and writing.
  • On the above.
  • Counting and telling. More stuff that makes me wish I'd been born a linguist.
  • What Earthgirl and me are doing February 22nd, anyone wanna go? dinner before at the great Hillandale Indian joint? or maybe down to Tiffin or Udupi in Langley Park? Email me by Sunday, I'm buying tickets Monday, I'll buy your ticket, you buy us dinner.
  • Kenneth Koch, for those of you who do.
  • Margaret Drabble, for those of you who do (like Earthgirl).
  • I've read 17 of the 25, tried the Johnson and failed and probably won't try again, tried Proust and failed and may or not try again, tried the Levin and will try again, and I've never heard of Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.
  • A related phenomenon to the change in blooger readership has been the change in twooter readership since I've stopped motherfuckering as much there, watching those who followed for the motherfuckering drop away, seeing those who actually like the music and poetry join up. Thanks!
  • Lunch Poem.
  • Prunella's latest playlist.
  • My current favorite obsession:






IN LOVE, HIS GRAMMAR GREW

Stephen Dunn

In love, his grammar grew
rich with intensifiers, and adverbs fell
madly from the sky like pheasants
for the peasantry, and he, as sated
as they were, lolled under shade trees
until roused by moonlight
and the beautiful fraternal twins
and and but. Oh that was when
he knew he couldn’t resist
a conjunction of any kind.
One said accumulate, the other
was a doubter who loved the wind
and the mind that cleans up after it.
                                           For love
he wanted to break all the rules,
light a candle behind a sentence
named Sheila, always running on
and wishing to be stopped
by the hard button of a period.
Sometimes, in desperation, he’d look
toward a mannequin or a window dresser
with a penchant for parsing.
But mostly he wanted you, Sheila,
and the adjectives that could precede
and change you: bluesy, fly-by-night,
queen of all that is and might be.



4 comments:

  1. Sorry, bdr, but Udupi Palace ain't pumpin'. I believe it was plowed under for a Walgreen's. Tiffin is the same owner, though, and I am pretty sure is is still hanging on.

    I will get back to you on the concert.

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  2. Found a 1st edition of Miss Mac at Gotham Book Mart back in the 90s. Cheap. Still sitting unread on my shelf. Just finished "A Naked Singularity", longest novel I've read in quite some time. Wish he'd better differentiated his characters, esp. their dialogue, but the book has its rewards. Hey, where's Gravity's Rainbow? It totes deserves to be on that list.

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  3. I came for the motherfucking and stayed for the music and poetry.

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  4. this blog is so full
    of a number of things
    i am sure we should all
    be as happy as kings

    ---with apologies to robert louis stevenson

    ReplyDelete