Thelonious Monk, born ninety-seven years ago today, pieces via a Hamster playlist and requests from readers over the years. I don't know as much jazz as I should and want - I've only two ears, so many years - but I do know Monk because, you know, piano.
- On the cultural ideology of Big Data.
- Panpsychism?
- The strawmen are coming and they look like you.
- Pablo Neruda: I Want to Talk with the Pigs.
- Patrick Modiano?
- Who the hell is Patrick Modiano?
- Patrick Modiano?
- The joy in twitterdom upon imagining Philip Roth's head explode as he lost again to someone little no one has heard of was perfect example of why twitter and why not twitter.
- How to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
- Szymborska, for those of you who do, for those of you who should.
- I'll read this: on The Stranglers.
MAD LIB ELEGY
Ben Lerner
There are starving children left on your plate.
There are injuries without brains.
Migrant workers spend 23 hours a day
removing tiny seeds from mixtures
they cannot afford to smoke
and cannot afford not to smoke.
Entire nations are ignorant of the basic facts
of hair removal and therefore resent
our efforts to depilate unsightly problem areas.
Imprisonment increases life expectancy.
Finish your children. Adopt an injury.
‘I'm going to my car. When I get back,
I'm shooting everybody.'
[line omitted in memory of_______]
70% of pound animals will be euthanized.
94% of pound animals would be euthanized
if given the choice. The mind may be trained
to relieve itself on paper. A pill
for your safety, a pill for her pleasure.
Neighbors are bothered by loud laughter
but not by loud weeping.
Massively multiplayer zombie-infection web-games
are all the rage among lifers.
The world is a rare case of selective asymmetry.
The capitol is redolent of burnt monk.
‘I'm going to my car. When I get back
I'm shooting everybody.'
[line omitted in memory of _______]
There are two kinds of people in the world:
those that condemn parking lots as monstrosities,
‘the ruines of a broken World,' and those
that respond to their majesty emotionally.
70% of the planet is covered in parking lots.
94% of a man's body is parking lot.
Particles of parking lot have been discovered
in the permanent shadows of the moon.
There is terror in sublimity.
If Americans experience sublimity
the terrorists have won.
‘I'm going to my car. When I get back
I'm shooting everybody.'
[line omitted in memory of _______]
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