Friday, May 27, 2011

we who are your closest friends feel the time has come to tell you that every Thursday we have been meeting as a group to devise ways to keep you in perpetual uncertainty frustration discontent and torture by neither loving you as much as you want nor cutting you adrift

Was fun if subdued, Thursday Night Pints. Also, Siouxsie Sioux is fifty-four today.









  • I am fifty-one years old. That's at least the tenth time in eight years of blogging I've used that joke. I will use it an eleventh. Blerg!
  • John Barth is eighty-one today. If not one of my desert island five, certainly in my desert island ten, and Sot-Weed Factor is in permanent reading rotation (2012 next).
  • Ashbery.
  • Auden.
  • Name that novel
  • A Vida Avida.
  • Retromania!
  • Siouxie makes me think of HBV. I know one other person who loves this song. Once there, listen to the rest of the album, yes?
  • When I think of HBV I think of The Januaries. I do like this Thievery Corporation remix, though someday I'll learn how to take a CD I own, burn it to a PC, and post a song.
  • Pure
  • Bruce Cockburn is sixty-six today.




WE WHO ARE YOUR CLOSEST FRIENDS

Philip Lopate

we who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting
as a group
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift

your analyst is
in on it
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us

in announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves
but since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make
unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your
disastrous personality

then for the good of the collective


10 comments:

  1. No season two at all? Matter of Honor, Measure of a Man, freaking Borg? Damn, old sir, you're picky. Plus, Space Irish! (sure, there's the obligatory Lwaxana episode amidst other crapitude, but hey, drinking game, hold the Nyquil.)

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  2. Two words: Diana Muldaur.

    I hated both the episodes she was in in the original Star Trek. I've never seen an L.A. Law episode, though I'm told she fell into an empty elevator shaft. Yay!

    Don't know why, but she has that effect on me.

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  3. Ugh.

    I foolishly read the comments at Krauthammers.

    One fellow was insisting that we should stop "criticizing Bush and move one", and that Krauthammer had great insight. Apparently the fact that Krauthammer is criticizing the position held by Bush is lost on such folks.
    ~

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  4. You seem to have no comprehension of how profoundly stupid FMLFM is.

    Also. Fuckface (which gives him too much credit) was way better with the mullet. http://minnesotaindependent.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/mullet5.jpg

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  5. I think Seasons 1 and 2 have their charms. But anyway, I love "Time's Arrow"! I mean, it has some embarrassing moments (Jack London), but come on. Love those aliens. And time travel paradoxes. Come on.

    Also, if you think it's the stupidest TNG episode ever, you need to be sat down Clockwork Orange-style with "Sub Rosa" and, god have mercy on your soul, "Cost of Living."

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  6. Maybe stupidest ever is too strong, though it IS the episode when I first thought, jeebus, it's downhill from here.

    And just to prove I'm a grumpy old man, after the 237th dip in the old time travel paradox plot twist (as in Tasha's Romulan daughter who looks exactly like her mother except for the pointy ears), gah. And Mark Twain. Gah.

    But yes, this (and any episode featuring Alexander) sucked, and this (and most but not all Beverly-centered episodes) was fuckawful.

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  7. But if not for Deep Throat as Mark Twain, there would never have been this!

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  8. There are far stupider episodes than "Time's Arrow," and I'll take the cheap and rare opportunity to cheerfully and unreservedly agree with Ethan. "Sub Rosa" certainly would've been my off-the-top-of-the-brain choice for dumbest fucking TNG horseshit ever, hands down, although that late-series one with Deanna's brain being occupied by some terrorist brain entity thing (itself a ripoff of some crappy episode where some alien telepathically rapes her) would be a contender if everything about Gates McFadden weren't so fucking repulsive, with the exception of her not being Diana Muldaur.

    I know you have a special relationship with time travel episodes, and that's to be forgiven, but Data's head in a San Francisco basement? Guinan being worth a shit? Not even a bottom-half episode, dood.

    But it's important for me to remember in these discussions that there are actually people who want to beat the shit out of me whenever I wear my "Darmok" t-shirt.

    While Alexander certainly sucks, and Brian Bonsall's as dead as...oh, crap, Billy Zoom, never mind, where the fuck do I get this stuff?, "This is my laughing hour!" is a staple of communication in my household.

    With Randal on season two, if only because the style/design upgrade over season one is so fucking dramatic and cool in retrospect.

    And finally: why are people discussing the Kraut and Santorum when there's TNG to be dissected? That's just fucking weird. Weirder than calling Rockville Bethesda.

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  9. One forgotten Alexander thing: his mom was one of the scorchingest MILFs ever. Mrowr! But her best role was in a Voyager episode, quite possibly the only Voyager episode worth its ether.

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