Saturday, January 11, 2014

The World's As the World Is



  • I would rather discuss the silliness of the above than talk about Chris Christie or play tug-of-legacy with Ariel Sharon's corpse and I don't want to discuss the silliness of the above. 
  • Mentioned because once I would have eagerly yodeled about all three.
  • No contest: While a great deal of attention is paid to the NFL’s attempts to placate those concerned about the game’s tendency to produce traumatic brain injury, its rule manipulations are about creating a more profitable product. The present iteration of the game is geared toward faster and higher-scoring games because fast, high-scoring games have the most universal appeal. In pursuing this change, the NFL has sought to alter the reality of the game it sells. Consider that a professional football game can take about three hours to play despite containing only 11 minutes of actual football. The takeaway is that the NFL is making an obscene fortune on the back of (unguaranteed) player contracts and still wants more. This is the same ur-capitalist psychosis that remade the global economy into a pyramid scheme built on abstract chaos math equations. Owning the system wasn’t enough, the system had to be remade into something even more profitable, and it had to be done in time for the next quarterly financial report. The NFL is no longer concerned with what happens beyond that.
  • The collapse of almost everything.
  • Assessing assessment with an assessment rubric about assessment.
  • Dead Bloggers Society reading list.
  • There are four new additions to Newest Gag blogrolls, please check them out when they float to the top.
  • Bleggalgazing.
  • Proposal for a strike of science fiction writers.
  • RIP Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka.
  • Prunella's latest playlist.
  • Major Egoslavian Holy Days coming on 15th, 16th.
  • When I posted Morton Feldman yesterday it was because I needed Morton Feldman. It was only today I rediscovered that tomorrow is Morton Feldman's birthday which is why you're getting links today (in case there are no links tomorrow) and why you're getting more Morton Feldman today. 
  • Similarly, when I posted Robinson Jeffers last week I hadn't yet rediscovered he was born 127 years ago yesterday.






NIGHT WITHOUT SLEEP

Robinson Jeffers

The world’s as the world is; the nations rearm and prepare to change; the age of tyrants returns;
The greatest civilization that has ever existed builds itself higher towers on breaking foundations.
Recurrent episodes; they were determined when the ape’s children first ran in packs, chipped flint to an edge.

I lie and hear dark rain beat the roof, and the blind wind.

                                                                                       In the morning
   perhaps I shall find strength again
To value the immense beauty of this time of the world, the flowers of decay their pitiful loveliness, the fever-dream
Tapestries that back the drama and are called the future. This ebb of vitality feels the ignoble and cruel
Incidents, not the vast abstract order.

                                                          I lie and hear dark rain beat the roof, and the night-blind wind.

In the Ventana country darkness and rain and the roar of waters fill the deep mountain-throats.
The creekside shelf of sand where we lay last August under a slip of stars
And firelight played on the leaning gorge-walls, is drowned and lost. The deer of the country huddle on a ridge
In a close herd under madrone-trees; they tremble when a rock-slide goes down, they open great darkness-
Drinking eyes and press closer.

                                              Cataracts of rock
Rain down the mountain from cliff to cliff and torment the stream-bed. The stream deals with them. The laurels are wounded,
Redwoods go down with their earth and lie thwart the gorge. I hear the torrent boulders battering each other,
I feel the flesh of the mountain move on its bones in the wet darkness.

                                                                                  Is this more beautiful
Than man’s disasters? These wounds will heal in their time; so will humanity’s. This is more beautiful....at night....



5 comments:

  1. The world still is the same, you never change it

    Dean Martin - You're Nobody 'Till Somebody Loves You

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrBd2e3vd5c

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  2. Roger's gonna add more teams and the Clowns will still finish a month's worth of games out of the playoffs and we still don't know what a catch is but at least a future Subpar Bowl will be held overseas. I hope Qatar.

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  3. I'm late with this, but for all of your railing against the NFL, did you see the tackle where Newcastle's Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa deliberately tried to break Samir Nasri's leg, and pretty much succeeded (trashed knee ligaments), without getting sent off?

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    Replies
    1. I saw the disallowed Toon goal and heard Alan Pardew call Manual Pelligrini a "fucking old cunt* but I missed the tackle so I got a brace but missed the hat trick.

      Delete
  4. Where da Natty Boh be at, Hon?

    ReplyDelete