Monday, October 22, 2012

His Fiery Death's Renowned, but Don't Look Now, Someone with a Camera's Drawing Down on You



  • So. The above on US 36 heading into Delaware Ohio, the below the creepy avatar for the Ohio Wesleyan University Fighting Bishops. Anyone know how to take a folder of photos and create a rapid slideshow that can play like a youtube. I've two folders full of Earthgirl photos that'd each be a good movie.
  • Though it needs be said that other than the loyalest of loyals, these travel posts are wildly unpopular, easily the least read posts here, even taking into consideration they are posted mostly on weekends. They're my favorite.
  • And while I'm bleggalgazing, I'd love to give you links, but Blegsylvania is quiet. Dead even. Happened in 2008 too in weeks before the election. This seems completely counter-intuitive to me, but I'm a dope. Anyway, I've saved the few I have for today, will post tomorrow with new ones if there are new ones.
  • Twitter's been weirdly slower, quieter too. Freaking weird.
  • BTW, since two of you asked, Planet is registered to vote in Ohio. She's going to vote for Obama. Yes, we talk about it (three of you have asked). I tell her what I think, not what she should think. She thinks it cool that her vote counts more there than it would at home. And yes, Prunella, the Obama Kills Coal (or whatever varying language) signs up everywhere.
  • As for Ohio signage, all the counties we were in other than Franklin (Columbus) voted McCain heavily in 2008, Romney signs outnumbered Obama 10-1, which means nothing.
  • Oh, on watching Fox News yesterday morning with a room full of hunter in the breakfast lounge of the Holiday Inn Express in Zanesville Ohio. Fox went full bazooka on Obama and Libya, the hunters goddamn Obama-ing, expressing praise for Darrell Issa (who of course is a mendacious shitsmear) for blithely sacrificing the lives of brown men working for American imperial interests by releasing documents on the Benghazi clusterfuck to advance Republican election prospects. I say this not to support brown men who work for American imperial interests but to reiterate what a motherfucking mendacious shitsmear Darrell Issa is.
  • So expect Romney to go all-in on Benghazi at the debate tonight I'll not be watching.
  • Expect everyone to reach the conclusions post-debate they had pre-debate regardless of hwat happens at the debate.
  • Fuck blaager, btw. I'm sure some % of the new deadness in Blegsylvania can be attributed to people confronting the new motherfucking blaager interface and saying fuck it.
  • But yes, it's not that I don't care about POTUS 12, it's that I'm interested different. 
  • And yes, I am enjoying it more than I think I am, I bet.
  • This is true: when eating at Bun's we were boothed next a table with a dozen of Delaware County's elderly white members of the Delaware County Republican Party who gathered to eat and discuss the election. They smiled at us, wished us pardon when the needed to squeeze by, and visa versa. They wished us a good night when we left.
  • Adding, THANKS! Robert for The Necks CDs. Awesome.
  • So, more tomorrow. Or not.





THE TRUTH ABOUT SMALL TOWNS

David Baker

1. THE TRUTH ABOUT SMALL TOWNS

It never stops raining. The water tower’s tarnished   
as cutlery left damp in the widower’s hutch.

If you walk slow (but don’t stop), you’re not from nearby.   
All you can eat for a buck at the diner is

cream gravy on sourdough, blood sausage, and coffee.   
Never lie. The preacher before this one dropped bombs

in the war and walked with a limp at parade time.   
Until it burned, the old depot was a disco.

A café. A card shoppe. A parts place for combines.   
Randy + Rhonda shows up each spring on the bridge.

If you walk fast you did it. Nothing’s more lonesome   
than money. (Who says shoppe?) It never rains.

2. GRAVEYARD

Heat in the short field and dust scuffed up, glare   
off the guard-tower glass where the three pickets   
lean on their guns. The score is one to one.   
Everybody’s nervous but the inmates,
who joke around—they jostle, they hassle   
the team of boys in trouble and their dads.   
It’s all in sport. The warden is the ump.
The flat bleachers are dotted with guards; no
one can recall the last time they got one   
over the wall. The cons play hard, then lose.   
And the warden springs for drinks all around—
something he calls graveyard, which is five kinds   
of soda pop poured over ice into
each one’s cup, until the cup overflows.

3. COUNCIL MEETING

The latest uproar: to allow Wendy’s
to build another fast-food burger shack
on two acres of wetlands near Raccoon Creek,   
or to permit the conservationist

well-to-do citizenry to keep their green   
space and thus assure long, unsullied views   
from their redwood decks, picture windows,   
and backyards chemically rich as golf greens.

The paper’s rife with spats, accusations,   
pieties both ways. Wendy’s promises   
flowers, jobs. The citizens want this, too,   
but want it five miles away where people

don’t care about egrets, willows, good views.   
Oh, it’s going to be a long night: call   
out for pizza, somebody brew some tea.   
Then we’ll all stand up for what we believe.

4. CHARMING

The remnant industry of a dying town’s itself.
Faux charm, flaked paint, innuendo in a nasal twang.   
Now the hardware store’s got how-to kits to make   
mushrooms out of plywood for the yard,

and the corner grocery’s specialty this week
is mango chutney, good with rabbit, duck, or spread   
for breakfast on a whole-wheat bagel fresh
each morning at the small patisserie across

the way from the red hotel. Which reminds me.   
Legend has it that the five chipped divots   
in the hotel wall—local lime and mortar—
are what remains of the town’s last bad man.

His fiery death’s renowned, but don’t look now   
Someone with a camera’s drawing down on you.


6 comments:

  1. It's bugging the hell out of me that the Fightin' Bishop reminds me of a character that I can't place, Jimmy Durante? A post-diet Popeye?

    And to hell with the masses, thumbs up for travel posting.

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  2. That third part of that poem reminds me of the brouhaha when Wal-Mart wanted to build in Oberlin, and eventually settled for being further out in the boonies of the county so it wouldn't sully the bucolic bohemian college town scene. Also, Oberlin tried to get an Indian restaurant from me and Randal's decidedly uncool hometown to relocate there but they refused.

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. Let's just say if I seem quiet-ish on Notes From Underground, that is merely because I am putting 60 hour work weeks most weeks. I may not be fond of the new Blogger interface, but back when I had time on my hands that would have never been a deterrent - it's not a deterrent now. Unless I figure a way to get back to a 40 hour week, the days of daily blegging are over with for me. But not to worry - I do figure something to say almost weekly. :-)

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  5. Yes, you're a school teacher. Ain't no such thing as a 40 hour week.

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