Wednesday, October 1, 2014

The Exact Rock Where His Inexactnesses Would Discover, at Last, the View Toward Which They Had Edged





This is true: there are Lindsey Buckingham songs in my head as I type this. This time I checked for his birthday, it's day after tomorrow, so for once YAY ME!

Have three Lindsey Buckingham songs anyway, including the above, which is always lurking in my head and has been and is and will be posted here numerous times each year forever and ever. Also too true of the second one. Also too true of the third. Also too, the fourth. Also too, have I ever mentioned I love Lindsey Buckingham's music? I'll find more day after tomorrow.






   
I get email:

I'm a researcher at Cornell University studying political communication and internet technologies. My colleagues and I have been working on a tool for reading political news online that highlights words and phrases related to framing. We're currently looking for people who would like to test out this new tool, and I think it may be of interest to readers of BLCKDGRD. 
If you'd be willing to, I've included below some text that you can post in whatever way you think would be best.
Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks in advance,
~Eric

---

Are you a political junkie? Addicted to the news? Is your browser's homepage the New York Times or Wall Street Journal? Or maybe it's the National Review Online or the Huffington Post? Ever wanted a deeper look at what's being said between the lines?
 
Our team has developed an online tool that identifies framing in political news articles as you read them. We're currently looking for people who want to try out the tool. Plus, you'll be entered in a drawing for a $200 Amazon gift card. 
If you're interested, please contact Eric Baumer: ericpsb@cornell.edu

I went to cornell.edu and looked Eric up - he is who he claims to be. He found me by an old abandoned political blog aggregator I wasn't aware of, so old he pinged to this blog from the previous iteration of this blog, so it's not like he reads this shitty blog, he's chumming for a research project. This is not a criticism. And at least he all-capped BLCKDGRD. Cause it is all-capped, immodest me. I often get solicitations in mail but rarely a legitimate one. I've warned him I'm nobody, with a small but Kind readership, and I suspect most of you aren't interested in participating but that's only because I'm not interested in participating - I do, after all, assume you like what I like with the same overdraft of mwah. If you do participate, I would be interested in hearing about your experience.

Oh, the Inherent Vice trailer:






  • I am in the middle of my biennial trip beyond the zero to un perm' au Casino Hermann Goering when I'm in the zone and meet the counterforce, I'm not sure if I should read another Pynchon right after this one and I'm not sure I should reread Inherent Vice before rather than after seeing the movie.
  • Eric's email reminds me to thank you for your Kindness. If you are Kinding me and me not you swapping blogspit, please let me know.
  • Where we get our beliefs.
  • post-analytic phenomenology versus market serfdom.
  • This Kevin Drum post was approvingly brought to my attention. I know, she was a friend, I promised I would, I didn't want to, I suggest you not read it. Too late? Sorry. Here are the last sentences: Our politicians are in love with war. The public is in love with war. And the press is really in love with war. It just never ends. As always with the Kevin Drums of the Left, gosh-darn it, he once again forgot the motherfucking Triskelions who are well aware - manipulating opinion in fact! - that politicians, the public, and the press love war, and that war is motherfucking excellent for motherfucking Triskelions.
  • It's been ages since a wrote some version of that sentence, I assume it's duh for you, the free middle square in Clusterfuck's bingo. 
  • The Liberal Club hears the truth. I swear I typed the above before reading that, but you'll either believe me or not, and in my defense, it is a duh.
  • Motherfucking Liberals: But the politics of least resistance is what works for today’s liberals. They place a premium on things like voting, as if the ungodly sums of public money spent on elections would ever allow radicals to take seats of power (as if those seats of power in and of themselves were sought in the first place). They place a value on “having diverse voices at the table,” so long as those voices are not too disruptive. They decry respectability politics when it comes to clothing, naming conventions, and appearances, but have no problems enforcing said respectability markers on communities that conceive of a different means by which they can voice their disapproval of systems that oppress them.
  • I wasn't looking for clarity
  • So yes, now I seem to be in a manic phase.
  • So no, I don't expect to hear back from the guy from Cornell nor do I expect him to read this shitty blog.
  • Gnomic Verses.
  • Tomorrow is an Egoslavian Holy Day also too. Think of a jar in Tennessee.







THE POEM THAT TOOK THE PLACE OF A MOUNTAIN

Wallace Stevens

There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.

He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.

It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,

How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,

For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:

The exact rock where his inexactnesses
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,

Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home.



2 comments:

  1. I don't expect people to read my shitty blog, either. Which is one of the reasons it's mainly just pictures these days. (Another: I like taking pictures.)

    But I've had a post on voting stewing for months, maybe it'll go up someday.
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  2. the lindsay buckingham song i've listened to and watched the video of the most is Big Love

    i was interested to learn that 'gnomic' and 'gnome' are unrelated - the latter, coined by paracelsus, is apparently a blunder - as wikipedia tells us

    >>The word comes from Renaissance Latin gnomus, which first appears in the works of 16th century Swiss alchemist Paracelsus. He is perhaps deriving the term from Latin gēnomos (itself representing a Greek γη-νομος, literally "earth-dweller"). In this case, the omission of the ē is, as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) calls it, a blunder. Alternatively, the term may be an original invention of Paracelsus.<<

    re kevin drum - it is exasperating that he fails to mention the obvious which is apparently unsayable

    war! what is it good for? it is good for business, and for keeping and increasing political power -

    ReplyDelete