Sunday, January 11, 2015

The World's as the World Is





  • While I do like Ben Seretan's music, the reason he's here today is I fell asleep last night and dreamt of To Tell the Truth (w/Peggy Cass and Kitty Carlisle), sponsored by Serutan, a laxative, it's Nature's spelled backwards.
  • Though I think the true order of the event is Bodah played Seretan on his show Friday night and that put Serutan in my head (as if my head needs a laxative for allusions) and that put To Tell the Truth into the dream.
  • Did you know that John Cale was on I've Got a Secret, and knock-off of To Tell the Truth? Yes, yes, I've mentioned it here before.
  • And for all I know it was Geritol that sponsored To Tell the Truth.
  • Yes, I've avoided talking about the Charlie Hebdo shootings. First, I had never heard of Charlie Lebdo until the shootings, second davidly and Silber and Tarzie and others have taken the time to say by and large what I would say, but mostly because I feel safe sitting out this week's OMFG! brought to you by Clusterfuck! knowing that there will be another, whether legit or false flag doesn't matter noise-wise, next week, and the week after that, and forever and ever, Amen.
  • This week in panic-stricken commentary.
  • And yesterday's BLURT! I must confess was a commentary on the latest OMFG! brought to you by Clusterfuck!
  • OK, one more: trifles for a massacre: I believe in satire; sometimes I even try to do it myself. But I also believe that satire only works when it punches up, that free speech is only really a freedom when it threatens power, not when it becomes the cruel laugh of imperial sadism. The Interview didn’t do this, neither did Charlie Hebdo. Nobody should be killed for this. But they mustn’t be applauded either.
  • OK, this reminder: the emotion that never gets mentioned guiding Islamophobes at violent Muslim resistance is envy.
  • Maggie's weekly links.
  • { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
  • The Death of Fredneck. Blaine Young is a motherfucking turd.
  • Blogfriend Jacob (a different Blogfriend Jacob than IOZ) has a novel being released in May!
  • Robinson Jeffers was born 127 years ago yesterday. I didn't have a cascade in me, sorry.








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....




2 comments:

  1. speaking of 'to tell the truth' - it was as a child, watching that show, that i first encountered bess meyerson - the following is from the national enquirer, published jan. 5, 2015:

    First Jewish Miss America, popular TV game-show panelist and politico, Bess Meyerson, 90, has died.

    The Bronx-born Bess died after a long battle with dementia, Reuters reported.

    She died Dec. 14 at her Santa Monica, California home, Los Angeles County assistant chief coroner Ed Winter said today.

    In 1945 Bess became the first Miss New York to win the title of Miss America. She also was the first - and thus far the only - Jewish Miss America.

    Her varied career included such panelist for the TV game classic "I've Got a Secret," commercial pitch woman for Ajax and other brands and New York City's first consumer affairs commissioner, appointed by then-Mayor John V. Lindsay in the 1960s.

    Bess also ran unsuccessfully for a New York U.S. Senate seat in 1980 but lost the Democratic nomination to U.S. Representative Elizabeth Holtzman.

    Serving as NY Mayor Ed Koch’s commissioner of cultural affairs, Bess was indicted in a bribery scandal involving her boyfriend, sewer contractor Carl Andrew Capasso. He was accused of bribing a judge by offering his daughter a job in Bess’ NYC department.

    After resigning from her city posts Bess was ultimately acquitted.

    Amid the media frenzy, she also faced charges of shoplifting $44.07 worth of merchandise in Pennsylvania in 1988.

    Au revoir, Bess.

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  2. What an amazing pick!! John Cale on IGaS! Wow. Completely made my day. (Like FZ on the old Steve Allen show playing a bicycle symphony).

    Satie is one of the few composers whose (easier) work I could ever attempt to not just play but interpret on piano well enough to enjoy myself. The notes themselves are quite simple to play, but the intonation is SOO HARD.

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