Tuesday, February 24, 2015

We Here at Progressive Health Would Like to Thank You for Being One of the Generous Few Who've Promised to Bequeath Your Vital Organs to Whoever Needs Them




 ↑ New from Earthgirl ↑


Not our house, by the way, a neighbor's, though Earthgirl and Planet did Giftmas ours with electric bulbs on stair-rail too. Unrelated, every time I remember I look for new Will Oldham songs and news of tours. I looked yesterday. His tour dates are at Drag City. I got there by googling Bonnie Prince Billy, clicked on his page, clicked on tour and.... the page defaulted to this Spring's Six Organs of Admittance tour, Sunday April 26 at DC9, and I thought HOLY THE FUCK! Bonnie Prince Billy with Six Organs of Admittance (who have appeared on this shitty blog often over the years) opening! One person can vouch. He's the guy who found the below video with Ben Chasny (who is Six Organs of Admittance) on guitar. Though O fuck, no Will Oldham, but yes, I'll go seehear Organs of Admittance. $12. Let me know by a week from today if you want a ticket.








  • Dead Blegsylvania: I am an avid fan of Mark's wood_s_lot. I brazenly steal links from him often. Every time I am there I randomly click on one of the sites in his generous blogrolls. The last dozen or so times every single one that I've clicked is either in hiatus, hibernation, or died. Forgive me, this fascinates me, both why Blegsylvania is dying and why I can't let myself die too.
  • I need contact, that's why. Once again, if you tumblr instead of bleg these days, please send me your address.
  • Broken Promises: another in Tom's heartbreaking Palestine posts.
  • You, like me, assumed there were Black Sites in America. There are people on twitter who seem genuinely surprised. Jeebus. 
  • Sex is serious.
  • short note on racism.
  • Living in Bizarro World.
  • Another rat leaves the bad ship Omidyar.
  • Rats exonerated, gerbils implicated.
  • Fort Asshole.
  • The Labradoodle Racket.
  • UPDATE! It's just been pointed out to me that not everyone, especially those new here, knows that EARTHGIRL is my wife and PLANET is my daughter.
  • It occurred to me a few days ago that in both episodes of ST:TNG that featured the lameass Tasha Yar's daughter it apparently occurred to no one to run a simple genetic scan on her to prove she was Tasha Yar's daughter. "Nothing in my experience suggests what you are saying is true," or something like that says Picard. What he doesn't say: Dr Crusher will run a simple genetic scan to verify your story. Why would the writers not? It's fucking up the whole series for me.








PROGRESSIVE HEALTH

Carl Dennis

We here at Progressive Health would like to thank you   
For being one of the generous few who've promised   
To bequeath your vital organs to whoever needs them.   

Now we'd like to give you the opportunity   
To step out far in front of the other donors   
By acting a little sooner than you expected,   

Tomorrow, to be precise, the day you're scheduled   
To come in for your yearly physical. Six patients   
Are waiting this very minute in intensive care   

Who will likely die before another liver   
And spleen and pairs of lungs and kidneys   
Match theirs as closely as yours do. Twenty years,   

Maybe more, are left you, granted, but the gain   
Of these patients might total more than a century.   
To you, of course, one year of your life means more   

Than six of theirs, but to no one else,   
No one as concerned with the general welfare   
As you've claimed to be. As for your poems—

The few you may have it in you to finish—
Even if we don't judge them by those you've written,   
Even if we assume you finally stage a breakthrough,   

It's doubtful they'll raise one Lazarus from a grave   
Metaphoric or literal. But your body is guaranteed   
To work six wonders. As for the gaps you'll leave   

As an aging bachelor in the life of friends,   
They'll close far sooner than the open wounds   
Soon to be left in the hearts of husbands and wives,   

Parents and children, by the death of the six   
Who now are failing. Just imagine how grateful   
They'll all be when they hear of your grand gesture.   

Summer and winter they'll visit your grave, in shifts,   
For as long as they live, and stoop to tend it,   
And leave it adorned with flowers or holly wreaths,   

While your friends, who are just as forgetful   
As you are, just as liable to be distracted,   
Will do no more than a makeshift job of upkeep.   

If the people you'll see tomorrow pacing the halls   
Of our crowded facility don't move you enough,   
They'll make you at least uneasy. No happy future   

Is likely in store for a man like you whose conscience   
Will ask him to certify every hour from now on   
Six times as full as it was before, your work   

Six times as strenuous, your walks in the woods   
Six times as restorative as anyone else's.   
Why be a drudge, staggering to the end of your life   

Under this crushing burden when, with a single word,   
You could be a god, one of the few gods   
Who, when called on, really listens?



2 comments:

  1. poem reminds me of the related monty python's the meaning of life movie scene, which includes 'the galaxy song' - eric idle singing this is paired with hubble galaxy photos at

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1w76csYYs4

    i have recently seen an assertion that ISIS is harvesting and reselling organs, but i wonder if they really have the skills and equipment necessary to do so successfully

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  2. The best thing about that ST:TNG Tasha Yar episode is how many times they say "Tal Shiar" during it. Or was that the other ep?

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