Wednesday, July 6, 2011

All Peoples Are at Times Cat in Water with This Language but It Does Promote International Bird on Shoulder

There are two (non-crisis, one sweet, one bad) real life news items dominating my thinking but I can't talk about them onblog no matter how much I dang, which is as it should be. Have three questions for a Wednesday after a three day holiday weekend during the Blog Days of Summer in Rustbelt, Blegsylvania:


  • Like the new header? I was bored thinking of something to write about besides what I want to write about (or rather, what I've written, what I'm writing about but I won't publish here). I'm not sure I do like this header, whether I like any header at all, and if I do decide to use a header should I pick a permanent one or rotate them? If I rotate them, how often? Does anyone know how to set up headers so that a designated set of headers come up randomly each time the blog loads? Onandonandonandon.
  • I've asked this before: is Windows 7 getting sketchier re: everything, but especially the internet regardless Firefox, IE, Google Fuhrer, whatever?
  • Reading Age of Greed reminds me there are reasons Cassandras are ignored: there's always another clusterfuck, the worst since the last one and the worst until the next one, which isn't a question as much as to note the human need to believe in the exceptional nature of one's lifespan (in as loud or quiet or greedy or generous or proud or humble or any either/or you choose). Clusterfuck as prime mover, the catalyst of the necessary processes of what daily grinds.













THE NEW HIEROGLYPHICS

Les Murray

In the World language, sometimes called
Airport Road, a thinks balloon with a gondola
under it is a symbol for speculation.

Thumbs down to ear and tongue:
World can be written and read, even painted
but not spoken. People use their own words.

Latin letters are in it for names, for e.g.
OK and H2SO4, for musical notes,
but mostly it's diagrams: skirt-figure, trousered figure

have escaped their toilet doors. I (that is, saya,
ego, watashi wa) am two eyes without pupils;
those aren't seen when you look out through them.

You has both pupils, we has one, and one blank.
Good is thumbs up, thumb and finger zipping lips
is confidential. Evil is three-cornered snake eyes.

The effort is always to make the symbols obvious: 
the bolt of electricity, winged stethoscope of course
for flying doctor. Pram under fire? Soviet film industry.

Pictographs also shouldn't be too culture-bound: 
a heart circled and crossed out surely isn't.
For red, betel spit lost out to ace of diamonds.

Black is the ace of spades. The king of spades
reads Union boss, the two is feeble effort.
If is the shorthand Libra sign, the scales.

Spare literal pictures render most nouns and verbs
and computers can draw them faster than Pharough's scribes.
A bordello prospectus is as explicit as the action,

but everywhere there's sunflower talk, i.e.
metaphor, as we've seen. A figure riding a skyhook
bearing food in one hand is the pictograph for grace,

two animals in a book read Nature, two books
inside an animal, instinct. Rice in bowl with chopsticks
denotes food. Figure 1 lying prone equals other.

Most emotions are mini-faces, and the speech
balloon is ubiquitous. A bull inside one is dialect
for placards inside one. Sun and moon together

inside one is poetry. Sun and moon over palette,
over shoes etc. are all art forms--but above
a cracked heart and champagne glass? Riddle that

and you're starting to think in World, whose grammar
is Chinese-terse and fluid. Who needs the square-
equals-diamond book, the dictionary, to know figures

led by strings to their genitals mean fashion?
just as a skirt beneath a circle means demure
or a similar circle shouldering two arrows is macho.

All peoples are at times cat in water with this language
but it does promote international bird on shoulder.
This foretaste now lays its knife and fork parallel.


10 comments:

  1. Does anyone know how to set up headers so that a designated set of headers come up randomly each time the blog loads?

    This guy does.
    ~

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  2. 'arry! I say keep it up 'cause it's wonderfully creepy. I didn't hear about the Anthony gig until recently either.

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  3. Sorry to hear there's bad news, glad to hear it's not a crisis.

    I like the header. It's enormous.

    I also had never heard of Casey Anthony, except now I think I might have seen a tabloid cover the other day.

    Yay Eliane Radigue!

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  4. Geriatric issues on the in-law side. Hard on Earthgirl: none of the plausible options are happy. Growing old sucks but for the alternative. (There may be something more somewhere read by five of you in a day or two.)

    Do check out Bryce's show and listen to the archives and scan the playlist at the link in the post.

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  5. Muchas gracias on the linkage!

    Your paragraph about Age of Greed sounds similar to what Naomi Klein was rambling about, at least partly (by Klein, I mean) in "Disaster Capitalism." I wonder if Klein's take on it is as complete as yours, given her Canadian citizenship etc. Her own country doesn't provide as ready an example and by not living here she doesn't get to see the same things from the same perspective. I wouldn't dare tell Canadians how their country is behaving but that's not a problem for her. HAH!

    Anyway, dovetail what you said about Age of Greed with the RSA animation of Barbara Ehrenreich's bit on optimism-as-religion and you have a good explanation as to why in the face of an Obvious Fuckup of Capitalism, the Capitalists rush to make excuses for the Fuckup's occurrence and "optimise" the situation with the cliche of "when life gives you lemons...."

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  6. I like your header precisely as much as I like all of your other photographs that are sized as a deliberate fuck-you to design, usability, aesthetics, and people who might like to read your blog. Not that you should give a shit about the last, actually. The rest? Uhm, if you don't give a shit about them, why publish anything?

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  7. Nice to see Toy Love here.
    Chris Knox is still doing it tough after his stroke. His friend's blog about it all

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  8. I would love to build you a new template..gratis of course. You know my site, so you know what I am capable of. Your header is much too large, but its a GREAT photo nonetheless.

    So many linkies..so little time here on the left coast in the land of Redneckistan. But I will attempt to slog through them as you have excellent taste and knowledge of all things important and interesting.

    Hope the medical issues are resolved in everyone's favor..but knowing the health insurance industry..its a stretch.

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  9. OMG..the poem: Misled,
    misused, lied to and cheated,
    certainly. Still, for that
    little while, we visited
    our possible life.
    It really hits home w/this ole broad.

    On the Jokes..numero tres is the best of the bunch!

    I already read wsws..glad to know you do too.

    rest..later..gotta run..hugs dude..hang in there!

    ReplyDelete