Friday, March 7, 2014

Coax the Detonation from the Static



 
  • Yes, a return to my most favorite color, my beloved noxzema bottle blue. Hence this post headed by this shitty blog's Theme Song!
  • Planet flies in early evening! and tomorrow is United's home-opener! so there will certainly be a United post Sunday with RFK photos - and, yes, stanchion porn - not sure what else the rest of the weekend.
  • Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics: The reality of the crisis is identified as neoliberalism’s aggression against the structure of class relations that was organized in the welfare state of the eighteenth and twentieth centuries; and the cause of the crisis lies in the obstruction of productive capacities by the new forms capitalist command had to assume against the new figures of living labor. In other words, capitalism had to react to and block the political potentiality of post-Fordist labor.
  • In which out self-proclaimed hero explodes himself, part one: Omidyar knew what he was buying when he hired Greenwald, Scahill, and the rest. He was buying a collection of journalists who would burnish his image of himself as a crusader for "privacy" and against government surveillance (although even that is very strictly limited in a manner most people appear not to grasp, as we shall see), as well as generally bolstering his PR campaign to portray himself as a "good" billionaire. He also bought one more thing: journalism that would never threaten his own interests in any way that need concern him.
  • Ab hoedis me sequestra: The state grows under conservatives, and it grows under liberals. The difference is only a matter of emphasis, and frequently not even that. The truth is that these marriage traditionalists were perfectly content with state intervention in and support of their sacred institution when it hewed, more or less, to their membership requirements. Only when a bit of money and a bit of politicking rendered it a bit less restrictive, only then did those same agencies of the state become dangerous and a touch tyrannical.
  • Why he blogs: For seven-and-one-third years this blog has weighed on my brain like a digital nightmare. Apart from a six month break in 2007 and 18 months 2011-12, I've been writing or thinking about writing content. Even when I took a leave of absence words, phrases, screeds of 500 words or more often tangoed across my eyeballs when the shutters came down at night. As our minds have allowed social media technologies to colonise and structure our perceptions - how many times have you thought of a real-life in terms of an instagram snap or a sharply-observed tweet? - so mine finds half-digested ideas immediately suited to bloggable form.
  • The steampunk future revisited, or: more bleggalgazing: One of the things I’ve noticed repeatedly, over the nearly eight years I’ve been writing this blog, is that I’m the last person to ask which of these weekly essays is most likely to find an audience or hit a nerve. Posts I think will be met with a shrug of the shoulders stir up a storm of protest, while those I expect to be controversial get calm approval instead. Nor do I find it any easier to guess which posts will have readers once the next week rolls around and a new essay goes up.
  • Have I ever mentioned I love Archers of Loaf?





  • It's true.
  • Here's today's monologue: Last weekend a systems fuck-up at eNom, who I pay for my domain name via Blooger, made any website with an eNom domain name someone tried to view via Comcast internet serviece unviewable, with language in the can't load page suggesting the website had been disappeared. I only found out about this through twitter after the matter had been resolved, but I sat on my sofa and didn't fucking freak out when this shitty blog wouldn't load. I consider this progress, especially when remembering back to the domain name clusterfuck of this past summer. I created both a now dead Wordpress blog and now abandoned Blooger back-up blog in panicked reaction. I'm not sparing you why this development delights me and what it signifies when I say I've not liked anything I've written about it. I'm less incoherent than I was when I wrote a similar sentence a week or so ago if only because now I know I need to know what I want to do if I want to change the mission statement.
  • This is the 1503rd post since moving here from the typepad site three and a half years ago.
  • The Inaesthetic, II: In other words: The sanctioned suspension of the standard protocols, but only for this occasion. Because the project -- no matter how noble (only connect!) its intentions -- is vastly subsumed by the context in which it appears, the same institution and hierarchies hold. Sure, this time you're allowed to touch the art, even "be a part of it"; but you're still in the same setting where normally there’d be someone there to remind you not to touch or lean in too closely when looking at the art, or to ask you to please pipe down if you get a little too heated while talking about what you’re looking at, as you can expect will be the case next time you visit
  • Purple Line
  • Why kits will suck at this summer's World Cup: England will not wear their traditional kit at this summer's World Cup after bowing to demands from FIFA, reports the Daily Mirror. The Zurich bureaucrats have urged nations to wear a single-coloured kit to improve the quality of HD pictures from Brazil meaning that England will wear white, not blue shorts with their white shirts when they run out in Manaus, Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte. Brazil are believed to be sticking with their yellow shirt and blue shorts combination, but Germany have already caved in and they unveiled their all-white kit last month. Spain will be all-red, Italy all blue and Portugal all monotone as well.
  • More people have said they liked the old new look (the grey static) than have said they disliked the old new look, though those who dislike it hate it more than those who like it like it. Long-timers can vouch this shitty blog ain't a fucking democracy. 
  • PERU UBU NEWS! David Thomas on the album in progress: Assume, for the sake of this explanation, that Pere Ubu refocused rock music in the 70s. In the alternate universe that yields the new album, ‘Carnival of Souls,’ Pere Ubu refocused progressive music instead. Before I began, I listened to ‘Pawn Hearts’ on endless repeat for nearly 2 weeks, every waking moment. The album doesn’t sound anything like VDGG and it’s likely no one will ever make the connection but it’s there. Keith is also a huge fan of 70s prog, so that had been in my mind as well. Something to make him happy. Along the way I determined that I wanted to synthesize Kraftwerk and Suicide into one band, one methodology and one sound. I wanted to work with a balance of digital and analog sound, confusing the boundaries. I had the notion of turning the band into a synthesizer, a machine comprised of human beings but with a Midwest personality.
  • Bleggalgaze: yes, the bleggal diddling can legitimately be considered a bleggal mid-life crisis, though with the return of noxzema blue I think the major diddling will stop for a while.
  • And have more Archers of Loaf, dammit, it's been a while.






THE PLANET KRYPTON

Lynn Emanuel

Outside the window the McGill smelter
sent a red dust down on the smoking yards of copper,   
on the railroad tracks’ frayed ends disappeared   
into the congestion of the afternoon. Ely lay dull

and scuffed: a miner’s boot toe worn away and dim,   
while my mother knelt before the Philco to coax   
the detonation from the static. From the Las Vegas   
Tonapah Artillery and Gunnery Range the sound

of the atom bomb came biting like a swarm
of bees. We sat in the hot Nevada dark, delighted,   
when the switch was tripped and the bomb hoisted   
up its silky, hooded, glittering, uncoiling length;

it hissed and spit, it sizzled like a poker in a toddy.   
The bomb was no mind and all body; it sent a fire
of static down the spine. In the dark it glowed like the coils   
of an electric stove. It stripped every leaf from every

branch until a willow by a creek was a bouquet   
of switches resinous, naked, flexible, and fine.   
Bathed in the light of KDWN, Las Vegas,
my crouched mother looked radioactive, swampy,

glaucous, like something from the Planet Krypton.   
In the suave, brilliant wattage of the bomb, we were
not poor. In the atom’s fizz and pop we heard possibility   
uncorked. Taffeta wraps whispered on davenports.

A new planet bloomed above us; in its light
the stumps of cut pine gleamed like dinner plates.
The world was beginning all over again, fresh and hot;   
we could have anything we wanted.



7 comments:

  1. Love the blue static. Of course, I love 'scuba dog' and 'free saucer ride' too. Now, with that out of the way, two questions:

    1) Now that VW has abandoned the Uniteds [sic], which corporate logo will the lads be sporting this weekend?

    2) Mission Statement? What Mission Statement?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Leidos (pronounced lie-dose), a gov't contractor, is the new shirt-sponsor.

      http://www.dcunited.com/news/2014/02/leidos-becomes-official-sponsor-of-dc-united

      Mission statement - was just a figure of speech.

      Delete
    2. "figure of speech": That's maybe the funniest thing I've ever read here. Absolutely made my day.

      Have a blast tonight! Best to L'andru. Go Blck&Rd!

      Delete
    3. Landru, when he's not working 60 hours a week, spends the rest of his time being a taxi for his teenage sons, so his attendance at RFK this year will be a la carte rather than seasonal. Just me and SeatSix this year.

      This season can't be as dreadful as last year.

      Delete
  2. I loved the U.S. kits earlier this week. The collars RAWK! A not-so-fond farewell to the Hoops, I hope.

    It is good to see Kirk have pride of place. Say howdy to Planet for me. Let her know I am sad to see Art Blerg dormant.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You can tell her yourself when you see her at dinner next week, when and where TBD, but think Wednesday or Thursday - depends on when the Field Marshall gets back from Sucktucky.

      Delete
    2. He'll never be back. Sucktucky is a black hole.

      Delete