Sunday, July 7, 2013

My Ears Begged for Camouflage and the Chance to Go to War




  • Mr Charlie requested that song for Ringo's 73rd birthday today.
  • When verifying date in Wikipedia I clicked on the Barbara Bach date (I was curious how old she was) and read that Ringo's brother-in-law is Joe Walsh. Today's fact you probably didn't know.
  • Mencken on Snowden, Bradley, Assange, etc.... 
  • Of course the NSA is listening to everyone in the world. 
  • More people read The Guardian than the NYT.
  • Why Google killed Google Reader. The latest change that pisses me off: I now have to title posts at DRGDKCLB or I cannot post new content. Then there's the issue I've been wisely advised to not detail here. Then there's motherfucking Google. Then there's the fact that I've asked people to migrate twice already, from blooger to typepad then back to blooger. Then there's the issue that a year or more ago the Update Template button on my blooger dashboard died and I can make no changes to color or fonts if I want to. Then there's the issue that motherfucking blooger is fucking useless at providing help when something breaks. Then there's the issue that Google killed Google Reader and I use bloogers (admittedly excellent) self-updating blogrolls as my bookmarks. Waah.
  • I also think blooger has arbitrarily reduced the font size from Times New Roman 11 to Times New Roman 10, though that might just be a combination of illusion and old eyes.
  • Though without a doubt blooger is getting skeevier.
  • Anyway, if you, or anyone you trust, knows how to work blooger/Google at a far more sophisticated level than me and wants me to buy you (or the person you trust) the book of poetry or CD of your (or the person you trust's) choice in exchange for helping me sort various issues please let me know.
  • Passions of the meritocracy.
  • We are all John Derbyshire now.
  • Maggie's weekly links.
  • { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
  • Einstein's bathrobe.
  • Self-portrait.
  • Someone else like Fennesz.
  • Mahler was born 153 years ago today. If I've lost some mwah for the symphonies my mwah for the Lieder has grown. Hamster, you sent me a playlist once? I'm trying to find it, if I do I'll post it.






THE EAR IS AN ORGAN MADE FOR LOVE

E. Ethelbert Miller

It was the language that left us first.
The Great Migration of words. When people
spoke they punched each other in the mouth.
There was no vocabulary for love. Women
became masculine and could no longer give
birth to warmth or a simple caress with their
lips. Tongues were overweight from profanity
and the taste of nastiness. It settled over cities
like fog smothering everything in sight. My
ears begged for camouflage and the chance
to go to war. Everywhere was the decay of
how we sound. Someone said it reminded
them of the time Sonny Rollins disappeared.
People spread stories of how the air would
never be the same or forgive. It was the end
of civilization and nowhere could one hear
the first notes of A Love Supreme. It was as
if John Coltrane had never been born.



7 comments:

  1. Heh, I also use your updating blogroll as bookmarks.

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  2. I know you put wordy things up there, but they're too small to see.
    ~

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  3. 0)my eyes and ears were touched at seeing and hearing ringo's song "anthem" here on today, his birthday - may he enjoy many more

    1) because of the title - "don't talk - put your head on my shoulder" - i listened to the fennesz all the way through - my ears admitted they were unable to detect any musical connection with the beach boy song of the same name

    2) my ears don't insist that cover versions be identical, but sometimes they like them rather similar to the original - like camper van beethoven's "matchstick men" or tuck and patti's "castles made of sand/little wing"

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M56QwDjE6PQ

    3)turning from the ears to the eyes - making things larger on the screen is really easy these days - although the hands need to do their part - simultaneously pressing the "control" and the + sign keys - this works for all the browsers i have on this machine (firefox, chrome, and windows explorer)

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  4. re: Blooger: you might try logging in from a different browser. i find sometimes that an errant cookie causes some weird quirk. when that happens I try another, etc. and often the quirk vanishes. then, of course, you have to return to your favorite browser and expunge cookies (toss your cookies?). then that can reset other things unless you get just the right one. but you get the flavor of the problem.

    re: obnoxious question yet one entirely in keeping with the tenor of the persona/voice this bloog propounds and one i hope you will deign to answer: why do you think obama allowed the n*s*a info to leak out? and why now? you don't think it was acci- or inci-dental? do you think he's trying to sabotage his own hegemonic grasp? or is he, like yourself, contemplating porting to a new platform, one which meets some apparently incredibly picky standards?

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  5. I've said that while I think this episode is a pain in the ass for Power's fork-lift operators it ultimately helps Power by routinizing surveillance as a daily assumption.

    Obama's a pimp. I should have been clearer.

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  6. Jim H. asked

    why do you think obama allowed the n*s*a info to leak out? and why now? you don't think it was acci- or inci-dental? do you think he's trying to sabotage his own hegemonic grasp? or is he, like yourself, contemplating porting to a new platform, one which meets some apparently incredibly picky standards?

    my own opinion, freely given even though not specifically requested:

    obama is more like a spokesmodel, not a pimp - he's more like the show's mc who speaks to the public onstage, not the producers making the decisions behind the scenes

    and i don't think the mc or the producers "let" the info leak - i think they were surprised when snowden did it on his own initiative for his own reasons, which he has stated in a fairly forthcoming way - i am naive and idealistic enough to think that snowden is sincere

    as powerful as they are, the MICFiC are neither omniscient nor omnipotent - they can murder presidents and peasants, it is true, and blow up anything, anywhere, with relative impunity - they bribe and threaten and operate Big Lie noise machines - but their power reaches only so far

    in speaking of the limitations of power, the following quotes use theistic language, but non-theists are invited to reword them as they wish (how would Thomas Paine have expressed these ideas, for example?)

    from the Gospel of Thomas, Logion 100:

    They showed Jesus a gold piece and said to him: Caesar's men demand tribute from us. He said to them: What belongs to Caesar, give to Caesar; what belongs to God, give to God; and what is mine, give it to me. [Blatz translation]

    Gerd Ludemann writes of this passage: "In contrast to the Synoptics, it is the disciples and not the opponents of Jesus who show Jesus a coin; this represents a further development. The whole logion has its climax in v. 4, which is without parallel in the Synoptics. Evidently 'Jesus' expects of his disciples their own offering, i.e. in the framework of the Gospel of Thomas, that they should be aware of their own sparks of light and thus become one with Jesus, the personification of light." (Jesus After 2000 Years, p. 638)

    Jean-Yves Leloup says, "To render unto Yeshua what is his is to discover him as a bridge between humanity and divinity, between Caesar and God." (The Gospel of Thomas, 1986/2005, p. 203)

    May the Creative Forces of the Universe stand beside us, and guide us, through the Night with the Light from Above (metaphorically speaking, of course)



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  7. re: pimp: all capitalists are de facto pimps. question: what exactly is being pimped? and who are the johns? in your metaphor. my point was that if we believe that all that happens in the u.s. is obama's fault then this too must be. think of the leak as diversion, psy-op, dis- or mis-information campaign. and then as one designed by the tyrannical. if so, to what end? is PRISM = windows97 now? is the leak out there to put the chinese and russians and others on notice that we know what they're up to and when they take evasive action we have yet other means to divine that that hasn't been leaked?

    re: mc: yes, the face. but to personify the producers (as BDR does Power & Corporate in obama for whom there is no Serendipity) perhaps goes too far. institutional interests and pressures are indeed at work, but are larger than any one person, incl. cheney or rumsfeld. taming these or directing these or purposing these is the best one can hope for at this point in our history. deconstructing these: is it tantamount to suicide? the competition is intense—germany, russia, china all want to play this game. this is the age of the information arms race, now that nukes have been back-burnered. we've yet to show our hold cards, if you ask me. snowden's "leak" is merely of our show cards.

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