Heard that first on a WFMU DJ's show, she plays terrific music but enjoys her mic-breaks more than the music she plays, in a three hour show she's talking when not whining about her life a minimum a sixth of that time, thank goodness for archives so I don't need listen live and can skip over the mic-breaks, every single one of them. Revolution, yo. Imagine, a problem I can solve on my own without counting on Jeffrey Epstein's emails to save me. Yesterday was Andy Partridge's 72nd birthday, XTC one of the rotating bands in my moribund if not abandoned My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game, and this song off either my third, fourth, or fifth most listened-to album of my lifetime:
The clusterfuck is like the wound on the inside of your lower lip caused by an accidental bite that swells so much that you keep biting it, making it worse each chomp, it's that or go hungry or drink your shitty meal through a straw and fuck that, you keep biting your inner lower lip and pretend that's resistance. Time to go hungry for a day or two, I think, then eat, ouch. Shakey, who is beloved but not in the inner or outer circle of rotating musicians and bands for the three non-chaired seats in My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game, is eighty today
CITY AFTERNOON
John Ashbery
A veil of haze protects this
Long-ago afternoon forgotten by everybody
In this photograph, most of the now
Sucked screaming through old age and death.
If one could seize America
Or at least a fine forgetfulness
That seeps into our outline
Defining our volumes with a stain
That is fleeting too
But commemorates
Because it does define, after all:
Gray garlands, that threesome
Waiting for the light to change,
Air lifting the hair of one
Upside-down in the reflecting pool.
today a book came into my hands - it had been inscribed by the author in denver, 3/17/24, to elissa slotkin - the most prominent elissa slotkin, or someone else by the same name? in any case, it's not in very good condition - water damage, apparently - i bought it used from thriftbooks - a summary of the book states
ReplyDeleteIn "Homo Ecophagus: A Deep Diagnosis to Save the Earth," published in 2022, physician Warren M. Hern delivers a chilling verdict on humanity's impact. He renames our species "the man who devours the ecosystem," arguing that we've evolved into a global cancer—relentlessly turning nature's resources into human biomass and infrastructure. This malignant process, driven by millennia of adaptations, spells doom for most life on Earth, including our own, unless halted.
Hern's book diagnoses the problem, details its spread across ecosystems—from Amazon villages to oceans—and proposes policy fixes. Drawing on vast data and his fertility research in Peru, he spotlights toxic waste, biodiversity loss, urbanization, and population booms as symptoms of this "ecophagic imperative." This urgent wake-up call revives the population debate, urging leaders and the public to grasp our self-destructive culture. Only by changing it, Hern warns, can we avert biosphere collapse and human extinction.
DeepSeek's Dr. Seussian voice puts it - i've added the asterisked footnotes
ReplyDeleteOh, the places you’ll go for a book!
The curious things that you’ll find if you look!
This book, it arrived! It came into my hands!
With scribbles and scratches from far-distant lands!
From a fellow named Warren, a Doc with a pen,
In a city called Denver, way back who-knows-when,*
Signed to Elissa, a Slotkin, you see!
The one Elissa Slotkin**? Or some other she?
Well, that part’s a muddle, a bit of a mess…
But the book itself, also, is more or less less.
It came to me bumpy! All wumpulous-warped!
Its pages were wavy, all pullulated and corped!
Not soggy and wet, but still not feeling grand,
A well-traveled book from a Thrift-Booky land.
It’s a bit of a wreck, it’s a bit of a sight,
But the words in it holler with all of their might!
The book has a title, a long, scary name:
Homo Ecophagus!*** (That’s the beast that it blames!)
It says we’re a species, the worst of the bunch!
A gobble-gulp-monster who eats the whole lunch!
We’re munching the forests! We’re chewing the seas!
We’re turning the whole world to US, if you please!
We’re growing and spreading, without a good reason,
Like a Gluppity-Glupp on a terrible teasin’!
This Doc, Warren Hern, with a very deep frown,
Says our whole planet is a Sick-Patient-Town!
He says we’re a cancer, a growth that’s not right,
That gobbles the day and then gobbles the night!
We’re paving the prairies! We’re poisoning plankton!
From Amazon villages to fish in a tank, then!
It’s all an “Ecophagic” and terrible spree…
A gobble-gulp-feast for you and for me!
But this book doesn’t just grumble, it doesn’t just shout!
It says we can stop this! We still can get out!
We must change our gobbling! We must make a fix!
Before all the world is a pile of bare sticks!
Before the last Who-bug lets out its last chirp!
Before the last Grickle-grass finally goes burp!
So we must stop the Gooble-Gob! We must make a new plan!
Or the whole wobbly world will be gobbled ... by Man
*inscribed 3/17/24 - book published 2022
**Senator from Michigan
***subtitled A Deep Diagnosis to Save the Earth
further footnotes
Delete1/book itself gives publication date as 2023, not 2022 as in summary above
2/this blckdgrd post begins What if no Senate Democrat - on the date handwritten in the book, a person named elissa slatkin was not a senate democrat - but rather a u.s. house of representatives democrat
3/the kevin bacon number for dr. hern and political figure elissa slatkin - if the book is indeed inscribed to that person rather than someone else with the same name - is 3 - dr. hern knows timothy werth, formerly u.s. senator from colorado, who has had an opportunity to meet former congressperson/now senator slatkin
3.1/on the book's cover:
"Homo Ecophagus is a comprehensive and in-depth view of the global problems we face as a species. Hern, a highly respected and brave physician and humanitarian, offers an alarming diagnosis of our planet’s self-inflicted pathology that we must understand and treat immediately."
Timothy E. Wirth, U.S. Senate, Colorado (Ret.), President Emeritus, The United Nations Foundation
3.2/not on the book's cover - a clear statement of why dr. hern is controversial and the circumstances of his bravery - see the wikipedia article about him for more about that
3.3/not on the book's title page - an indication of whether dr. hern inscribed the book to elissa slatkin in her presence, or at the request of some other person who intended to convey it to ms. slatkin
3.4/we don't know if this book ever physically entered the presence of ms. slatkin, nor how it came to be sold on thriftbooks - the water damage is not sticky or tinted, so it probably was simply water, not coffee or coca-cola
3.5/we do know that we paid - with state sales tax and free shipping - $17.37 for this book, in "good condition"- at amazon the most endorsed reader review of the book says
" OMG. The LEAST expensive version still costs more than $30!
Reviewed in the United States on May 21, 2023
If this book was really intended to help humans respond more appropriately to climate change, surely it could be made more affordable and available!!! But then, he who devours the earth... "
1/slotkin, not slatkin - sorry, for my repeated mistake - slatkin surname is estimated to have a frequency of 223 in the u.s., whereas slotkin's estimated frequency is 283 - each is always used as a last name - respectively, 85 thousand and 79 thousand more surnames are more frequently used - my own IRL surname - also never used as a given name - is similarly uncommon
Deletehttps://www.mynamestats.com/
2/this book is interestingly autobiographical, at least at the beginning - it turns out that retired senator wirth, whose blurb is quoted supra, and retired doctor hern met on a road construction crew as college boys on a summer job, and formed a lasting friendship
3/i think it unlikely that a lower price point would make this book more widely read and/or influential - but anyone looking for a more affordable treatment of some of the same issues is invited to download, for free, tom murphy's textbook energy and human ambitions on a finite planet
3.1/in general, seekers after truth need to inquire into many things indeed - somebody said that
3.2/one translation of the Gospel of Thomas's Saying 2 is
Jesus said, "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will reign over All.”
3.3/ personally, in my journey through this world as a wayfaring acquaintance, i believe i have got to the "troubled" and "astonished" parts, but am not able to be more specific about what might be meant by the last phrase
Knew you were referencing Michele before I ever hit the link.
DeleteLaugh, it could apply to others too. I'm an advocate for Bryce mic-breaks (which he is still doing over at East Village Radio)
Delete