Eighty-Two Today

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Lordy, things are so noisy I almost forgot.

More below the fold.

Eighty-One Today

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More below the fold.

Eighty Today

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More below the fold.

Hamster Sends Cellos

Beloved Hamster, who knows of cello's (and Arvo Part's) medicinal power, after reading of my desperate need for cellos, sent me (THANKS!):

Arvo Part- Fratres

• Original (12 cellos): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibkseZA9Jpo

• Large ensemble/film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02h6vpPK3dQ

• Cello and piano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkHEjiuYBuM

• String Quartet (Kronos): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApVdPzivhDM

He has arranged it (and allowed others to to do so) for many sets of instruments-- cello/guitar, cello/harp, violin/piano, violin/orchestra, cello choir/percussion, etc. You can poke around the Internet if you are interested. 

Another Arvo Part piece, Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in Mirror). Again, he has arranged this for multiple instrumental combinations but this is a recording of the cello/piano version.

Seventy-Nine Today

Arvo Pärt. Everyday, not just his birthday. Everyday, not just Days of Aargh, though especially Days of Aargh. (He deletes today's post of Aargh.) MSADI5G, innermost circle.

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Which Do You Think the Fixtures Are in the Bathroom at the White House, Gold or Brass?

's 471 (11347.2) 1573 (4146.14) 2529 (1602.59) 16.939
jobs 151 (3637.85) 289 (761.751) 439 (278.188) 14.242
why 85 (2047.8) 75 (197.686) 222 (140.678) 13.623
businesses 70 (1686.42) 75 (197.686) 140 (88.7161) 12.093
that 912 (21971.7) 4629 (12201.2) 19589 (12413.3) 11.936
get 98 (2360.99) 171 (450.725) 300 (190.106) 11.873
i'm 61 (1469.6) 79 (208.23) 136 (86.1813) 10.653
don't 56 (1349.14) 82 (216.137) 137 (86.815) 9.752
can't 44 (1060.04) 54 (142.334) 102 (64.636) 9.161
like 83 (1999.61) 199 (524.528) 572 (362.469) 8.541
we'll 42 (1011.85) 61 (160.785) 98 (62.1013) 8.498
innovation 24 (578.202) 13 (34.2656) 40 (25.3475) 7.982
republicans 27 (650.477) 24 (63.2596) 49 (31.0506) 7.862
kids 28 (674.569) 29 (76.4387) 50 (31.6843) 7.761
college 41 (987.761) 70 (184.507) 128 (81.1118) 7.730
because 114 (2746.46) 399 (1051.69) 870 (551.307) 7.634
what 128 (3083.74) 462 (1217.75) 1282 (812.386) 7.547
companies 33 (795.027) 37 (97.5252) 167 (105.826) 7.471
we've 64 (1541.87) 175 (461.268) 251 (159.055) 7.438
democrats 25 (602.294) 24 (63.2596) 47 (29.7833) 7.434

the 1840 (44328.8) 23017 (60668.6) 133003 (84282.2) -8.955
of 1022 (24621.8) 13939 (36740.7) 86737 (54964) -8.133
must 53 (1276.86) 1583 (4172.5) 2843 (1801.57) -7.308
in 651 (15683.7) 8433 (22227.8) 33474 (21212) -6.237
peace 8 (192.734) 670 (1766) 1736 (1100.08) -5.699
program 16 (385.468) 618 (1628.93) 730 (462.591) -5.244
federal 22 (530.018) 737 (1942.6) 1315 (833.297) -5.216
freedom 8 (192.734) 472 (1244.11) 691 (437.877) -4.922
which 18 (433.651) 1072 (2825.6) 11029 (6988.93) -4.732
economic 21 (505.927) 614 (1618.39) 852 (539.901) -4.655
billion 9 (216.826) 425 (1120.22) 462 (292.763) -4.603
nations 16 (385.468) 601 (1584.13) 1651 (1046.22) -4.560
world 82 (1975.52) 1369 (3608.43) 2239 (1418.82) -4.508
free 17 (409.56) 554 (1460.24) 1166 (738.878) -4.366
national 17 (409.56) 566 (1491.87) 1837 (1164.08) -4.104
programs 16 (385.468) 440 (1159.76) 470 (297.833) -3.937
hope 7 (168.642) 324 (854.005) 769 (487.305) -3.638
be 175 (4216.05) 2499 (6586.91) 16149 (10233.4) -3.585
war 29 (698.66) 652 (1718.55) 2567 (1626.67) -3.449
provide 8 (192.734) 295 (777.566) 641 (406.193) -3.308
policy 8 (192.734) 333 (877.727) 1199 (759.79) -3.305

Explanation of the two text boxes here: I took X as Barack Obama's five SOTU addresses so far (41,508 "words", as per my tokenization), Y as the SOTU addresses of all other presidents since WWII (Truman through George W. Bush), and Z as the all SOTU addresses since 1790.  I then fed in all the words in SOTU addresses since Truman, Obama included, and sorted the results according to the weighted log-odds ratio. Here's the positive end of the list (i.e. tokens favored by Obama). Each line presents WORD XCount (XPerMillion) YCount (YPerMillion) ZCount (ZPerMillion) SCORE

So, I promised both Arvo Pärt and Swans cascades, here, perhaps for the first time in recorded human history, alternating Pärt and Swans pieces! Instead of watching SOTU, I was here:

• Among the crowd at Carrow Road: Being season-ticket holders and having been to most home games we went to Carrow Road last night to watch Norwich play Newcastle. It was our first evening game of the season and we were looking forward to it. Everything feels different under floodlights: the ground is more theatre than pitch, it's colder, noises arise out of the dark of the terraces, the far end of the pitch looks further away. The rain, which was heavy at times, and the swirling wind were effects we saw illuminated, the dimpling of small pools, the rain swept in this or that direction. The stand is a mixture of rough and delicate music.
• Food links.
• I ordered Miss McIntosh, My Dear from Dalkey last week, received an email from them yesterday, they are out of Volume 2 and there are no plans to publish more, did I want a refund or another book of the same value. I asked for a copy of Elkin's Franchiser, it yours to the first taker.
• A clarification on the typograph from Shohir's Stalin Is Dead posted yesterday. The typographs aren't Shohir's, they are the translator's, Ornan Rotem, as is the note on the typograph.
• Surzhyk.
• In defense of regionalism: Yet there are many ways to succeed as a poet. The California-born Jack Spicer never felt a need to prove himself on the East Coast. In college he encountered kindred spirits Robert Duncan and Robin Blaser, forming the Berkeley Renaissance. Spicer went on to cofound San Francisco’s Six Gallery, where Allen Ginsberg would later present an early draft of “Howl,” and in addition to teaching he informally mentored writers through his Circle sessions in North Beach. Spicer’s West Coast setting is usually obscured by allusion in his work. But his openness to poetry as dictation, as discourse with unruly spirits, reflects a specific cultural landscape. When water is the key motif, the Bay’s ecology surfaces; in “Any fool can get into an ocean…,” Spicer invites us to “Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly / Out in the middle of the poem.”
• Robert Creeley, for those of you who do.
• Re: top Arvo Pärt piece and the poet below the next Arvo Pärt piece - there are many happy accidents here, but sometimes things are done on purpose.
• Have I ever mentioned how much I love Jack Spicer's poetry? Fell asleep reading James Tate, woke up with the Tate poem below in my head, so more Spicer poems tomorrow, days to come.

THE MOTORCYCLISTS

James Tate

My cuticles are a mess. Oh honey, by the way,

did you like my new negligee? It’s a replica

of one Kim Novak wore in some movie or other.

I wish I had a foot-long chili dog right now.

Do you like fireworks, I mean not just on the 4th of July,

but fireworks any time? There are people

like that, you know. They’re like people who like

orchestra music, listen to it any time of day.

Lopsided people, that’s what my father calls them.

Me, I’m easy to please. I like ping-gong and bobcats,

shatterproof drinking glasses, the smell of kerosene,

the crunch of carrots. I like caterpillars and

whirlpools, too. What I hate most is being the first

one at the scene of a bad accident.

Do I smell like garlic? Are we still in Kansas?

I once had a chiropractor make a pass at me,

did I ever tell you that? He said that your spine

is happiest when you’re snuggling. Sounds kind

of sweet now when I tell you, but he was a creep.

Do you know that I have never understood what they meant

by “grassy knoll.” It sounds so idyllic, a place to go

to dream your life away, not kill somebody. They

should have called it something like “the grudging notch.”

But I guess that’s life. What is it they always say?

“It’s always the sweetest ones that break your heart.”

You getting hungry yet, hon? I am. When I was seven

I sat in our field and ate an entire eggplant

right off the vine. Dad loves to tell that story,

but I still can’t eat eggplant. He says I’ll be the first

woman President, it’d be a waste since I talk so much.

Which do you think the fixtures are in the bathroom

at the White House, gold or brass? It’d be okay with me

if they were just brass. Honey, can we stop soon?

I really hate to say it but I need a lady’s room.

With My Hemophilia, I Needed the Water to Bear the Weight of the Leech

I was listening to Dave Mandl's show Sunday night and he played Robert Wyatt. After the song I found Wyatt on my iPod and fell asleep listening and woke up with in my head and posted Wyatt songs yesterday as a result. It wasn't until lunch yesterday while I was looking for today's birthdays that I discovered that Robert Wyatt is sixty-nine today. Like winning one of the tiny lotteries that renews ridiculously and knowingly foolish embraced false hope in winning large lotteries.

• RIP Pete Seeger.
• UPDATE! Thunder requests Banks of Marble.
• UPDATE! Hamster sends along these Seeger links.
• UPDATE! Landru has songs.
• On the state of The State of the Left: This is the real problem with the current leftist infighting: rather than being too vicious, it’s not vicious enough. I’m not going to make prescriptions about how this stratum of contest can be reformed; it’s a useless husk, and its uselessness is affirmed by how seriously everyone involved takes it. Calls for unity and pleasantness in a State of the Left already clotted into paralysis miss the point entirely. If anything, more splits, more divisions; everyone knows that communist cells reproduce asexually. But if we are to have a pointless squabbling sideshow to left activism, the very least it could do is make itself interesting.
• Scenes from the Midwest.
• The four principles of prosperity.
• The other Las Vegas.
• I'd watch the motherfucking Grammys before I'd watch the motherfucking SOTU and I'd kill myself before I'd watch the motherfucking Grammys.
• The role of the poet-critic. Logan has never sung to me though I haven't given him a chance for over a decade at least.
• Here's the promised typograph from Shohir's book:

• The notes say: The immense red letters (migdal) are erected on Babel. Migdal translates as tower, but the word itself is derived from 'big' hence its literal meaning is something like 'an immensity.' The four letters of migdal are jumbled up, confused one is tempted to say, and lurking inside the tower, though clearly visible, are many other words, among which are: become larger or grown up, sickle, wave, meagre, fish, bear, heart, flag, dub, segregate, blossom, skip, roll up, confound.
• I like that on this silly map of state stereotypes Pennsylvania's is haunted, cause it is.
• Arvo Pärt interview. Now you know about tomorrow's music, or the next day, or the next day depending on whose birthday tomorrow I find at lunch today.
• NEW SWANS! Now you know about tomorrow's music, or the next day, or the next day depending on whose birthday tomorrow I find at lunch today.
• That was a gag, I posted about the new Swans last night, the Swans cascade will be the day after Arvo's pieces depending on birthdays I find at lunch in meantime.
• Anyone else's iTunes and PC get skeevied by the latest iTunes upgrade?
• The Pixies played Strathmore last night. Ponder that sentence.
• Prunella's latest playlist. 
• That's Wyatt singing lead on this Phil Manzanera song:

   
OBSERVANCES UPON RETURNING

Christopher Bolin

I

The bats, in the hold of the ship, crossed back and forth, picking fruit-flies
from above the crates of food,

though only the few, eating lice from the stowaways' hair, would survive.

II

I remember the wall of your home, casting a bamboo skiff
across the water of the paddy

and freshwater mussels, unable to attach to the mere significance
of the world above, littering the bottom.

With my hemophilia, I needed the water to bear the weight of the leech.

III

How high were the terrace walls?                         The black necked cranes disappeared.

And our children will not believe that they existed here. They will say surely
you mean the cranes were carved on the temple stairs (as they were) and never
made a sound (as they had) and this is why you could do nothing to save them:
there was nothing to save.

And there was some wisdom in this, though it had not come to pass,
and we were happy we had raised such children.

Secretly Each Is Devoted to the Conviction that It Is Irreparably Different from All the Rest - in Fact, It Is This in Which They Are Most Fundamentally Alike

• No Egoslavian Holy Days this weekend, barring kaboom I'm squelching jones until Monday. Or not; or not.
• Against the Death of the Novel.
• Which spurred this post.
• Danto's The Artworld.
• Art thieves and gurus.
• Game theory and The Price is Right.
• There are new places in Newest Gags First and Second, please check them out as they float to the top. Thanks for the Kind to those of you who've floated me recently on yours. As always, if you are Kinding me and me not you please let me know.
• Neruda, for those of you who do. 
• Vollmann: self-images of a cross-dresser. 
• Return of Scuba-Dog.
• Melville's secrets. (h/t wood s lot, who you should ping daily)
• I confess I may not have given Franz Wright a fair chance because of who his father is, but "book of our time?" That's today's edition of thank Baal I have access to a university library's stacks.  
• Pere Ubu in Cork.
• No, not that Phavid Dillips:

LAMP

Franz Wright

Evening street of midnight blue with here and there a lighted window. Of the at home, or possible not. Concentrically into the air whose blue sphere gradually gives way to pure lethal space, wave after wave of a pale cadmium yellow expanding into emptiness and past the blood-brain barrier. Lamp manufactured unwittingly in the image of its make the mind, which goes on emitting dim rays from its frail bulb of skull, from its insignificant and evidently random sector of an infinite place all its own; mind illuminating not much: seen, say, from its own frozen and excommunicated Pluto, it is nearly indistinguishable from any other. All minds are pretty much the same, they'll tell you so themselves, but secretly each is devoted to the conviction that it is irreparably different from all the rest - in fact, it is this in which they are most fundamentally alike.





  

THE UNFOLLOWING 51, 56, 62, 71, 72

Lyn Hejinian

51

Afloat in a glass-bottom boat, I see into the sea—a miniscule emerald 
     memento
That the strongest social bonds are forged by language doesn’t nullify
             the power that dancing around the puppet effigies of the men
             in power has
On the solemn face of the glinting belly is a button baby
You have to know how to roll on the horizon
Followers follow, possibles possibulate, coruscations consider, blood
             coagulates

An allegory is a depiction of something that can’t be depicted
Mathias Madrid thrusts his fist toward his face in a mirror, Millicent
             Malcolm pets a faithful falcon on a perch, Margaret Mason
             makes fig jam to serve on cold toast with hard cheese
The pyrotechnical expanse, lacking azure, makes do with blatant
             blackness, unspoken light
Winter’s cover’s curled back by adjectives—whacking winter’s roadside
             cover
Stained owls and up over the ill rabbits they fly
Several hours go by but hours are impossible to perceive
I market, am marketed, mark, remark
We walk down a street under windows that let in noise that might
             prompt someone asleep in the room to dream of drummers,
             flautists, a man on stilts with a tuba, a sextet of giggling girls
What is it ghosts wonder?
   

56

It should not be strange to be a woman rewarded
Letters click as they wander, shift as they ascend, their altitudes attain
             autobiography
Next you are like dry steps’ passing sound and fall, and then you are
             like sweetened grapefruit

Everything applies in the hyper-patterning that retrospect
             attempts and to which the irreverent response is “How
             splay!”
In the small houses of the children in the house there are always
             complex simplicities and one was a vast pink stuffed
             equine thing called Star
Wet Brahms
Revocation of harm
By moving from window to window and carefully recording at
             each what we see, we...*
It is time you were told of the time I failed to defend the bull and
             indeed rejoiced in its murder
This is not hypocritical!
The statue at its fullest is emptiest of meaning
She speaks to another not about sex but about a particular game
             of truth
Sonorousness facilitates the descent of sunny motes from the
             ponderosa
Dancers have fleas—or, shall we say that fleas live on the planet
             of dancers?
   

62

Into the disordered shortening of a circle comes this little fury,
              this abdicated panic, this dirty Venus, this resemblance
              to nothing we know of the dead
Sky simultaneous bud, cavity contemporaneous slight
And from the tree a ripe peach falls and a puff of dust rises,
              gently circles, drifts, spreads, holds its shape, dissipates,
              and settles under the tree again and on the weeds nearby
Once there was a woman I’ll name another day and in her care
              were eight well-matched strong pelicans who flew low
              over the sea in careful configurations that brought her
              aesthetic pleasure and more fish than she or they could
              eat
Life is rife with erasure and time is rich with delay
Immediately the eater spots some defects (bits of meat, scraps of green)
No, I did not forget the sad vagrant shuffling about in his red

              speckled secrecy and I will never do so again!
You’ve been boasting of your cantaloupe pottage, you’ve provided
              us with thin toast, your glory increases all about you
Hush—ssshh—what is it?
The ancestor wandered toward the horizon, he craved
              recognition, but eons went by and he landed in a circus,
              there being no other work for a man from the gloom of
              origins
Cousins are composite, constructed, compared
Quick, lively, assembled ripples monitor, mosquitoes spill, and
              the children dine on candy
The sky is another point, this time of ambiguous blue
Why didn’t I think of that?
      

71

A grasshopper singing of death laughs long—as if a heavy-
             hearted granny spoke a light word
A shadow scuds over glass, the glass stands still
Insects seethe and they say that is the dream of language but
             what is language if not what is threading through the
             veins of an insect’s wings
What does it mean to say “now” now, as now surfaces in a gesture,
             as of a person pushing his eyeglasses up toward his brow
Our luggage is stacked sky-high, we are wearing twenty layers of
             clothes, every utterance is symphonic
I’ve never made curtains for these windows, stabbed by the mid-
             morning light
I pass with a broom, standing with a hose in my hand and my
             thumb against the nozzle
The loops of time droop, fall slack—and someone steps out of
             those that were his or hers, hers or his, his and hers, his
             and his, hers and hers—is it right, then, that we are left
             to hurtle alone
The girls danced in dead light, the cadavers lay in live light—but
             as for those girls, men with mouths like mare vaginas
             watched them

Every rough rupture demands elasticity of the imagination
The silver river is irreversible but you attentively watch its mouth
What you write achieves its independence though you are nimble,
             arrogant, sly and wise.
That is how you spend the day, which is itself a powerful force
             and raises the significant question “How did you get
             here?”
All suffering is in the egg—now suck it out of its shell and spit
             it away

72

Collective longer literature appeals to cloud variants over a
             crowd
See the gang, going to Alabama, tonguing cones, singing waka
             wasa bong
The robust thrush it is, stately as royalty, common as a
             pickpocket at a concert
I will not, I say, rest, I say, rotate
Let’s go now to the very next neologism and term it
             fragmentarily
Desperate he was to cry out and couldn’t, to say what he knew
             and know it
This takes adults—and very far indeed
The saxophonist breathes, takes a breath, inhales, gasps
Armadillo, yellow shovel, and empty oval
I sprawl across a bed strewn with breadcrumbs, ah ha!
At echo’s edge, a rock wall rises, a monument to leisure
The mourner chortles, she’s like a clown with sandpaper, at
             sorrow’s involuntary humor
Her remarks, his remarks, their remarks, our remarks, my
             remarks, your remarks betray
Oh there is a blading in this gentle bend

Most Popes Are Called "Babe" Because Growing Up to Be Pope Is a Lot of Fun

 

HOW THE POPE IS CHOSEN

James Tate

Any poodle under ten inches high is a toy.
Almost always a toy is an imitation
of something grown-ups use.
Popes with unclipped hair are called “corded popes.”
If a Pope’s hair is allowed to grow unchecked,
it becomes extremely long and twists
into long strands that look like ropes.
When it is shorter it is tightly curled.
Popes are very intelligent.
There are three different sizes.
The largest are called standard Popes.
The medium-sized ones are called miniature Popes.
I could go on like this, I could say:
“He is a squarely built Pope, neat,
well-proportioned, with an alert stance
and an expression of bright curiosity,”
but I won’t. After a poodle dies
all the cardinals flock to the nearest 7-Eleven.
They drink Slurpies until one of them throws up
and then he’s the new Pope.
He is then fully armed and rides through the wilderness alone,
day and night in all kinds of weather.
The new Pope chooses the name he will use as Pope,
like “Wild Bill” or “Buffalo Bill.”
He wears red shoes with a cross embroidered on the front.
Most Popes are called “Babe” because
growing up to become a Pope is a lot of fun.
All the time their bodies are becoming bigger and stranger,
but sometimes things happen to make them unhappy.
They have to go to the bathroom by themselves,
and they spend almost all of their time sleeping.
Parents seem incapable of helping their little popes grow up.
Fathers tell them over and over again not to lean out of windows,
but the sky is full of them.
It looks as if they are just taking it easy,
but they are learning something else.
What, we don’t know, because we are not like them.
We can’t even dress like them.
We are like red bugs or mites compared to them.
We think we are having a good time cutting cartoons out of the paper,
but really we are eating crumbs out of their hands.
We are tiny germs that cannot be seen under microscopes.
When a Pope is ready to come into the world,
we try to sing a song, but the words do not fit the music too well.
Some of the full-bodied popes are a million times bigger than us.
They open their mouths at regular intervals.
They are continually grinding up pieces of the cross
and spitting them out. Black flies cling to their lips.
Once they are elected they are given a bowl of cream
and a puppy clip. Eyebrows are a protection
when the Pope must plunge through dense underbrush
in search of a sheep.

• What the hell is wrong with me, why did it take me until 5:56 this morning to remember Tate's pope-poem? My apologies. 
• My apologies, I need point out again that when Obama is confronted (their word) w/questions about drones, especially by Democrats, weigh what's worse, they know it's kabuki, they think it's not kabuki?
• Trick question: insert whatever question behind that freaky backward E-thing of power and under that skeevy square root thing of greed and fuck me, your motives can be - probably are - purer than mine and thus more concussive than a depth charge dropped from PT-73.
• My apologies, after Get Smart and F Troop allusions yesterday, I thought a McCale's Navy allusion was necessary today, Old Leadbottoms.
• My apologies, this was going to be an aarghfree post.
• the moon gazed  my midnight labors...
• Taco Cat is a palindrome.
• Hey, look what was waiting for me when I got home last night:

• Arsenal line-up for tonight: Fabianski, Jenks, a mop, dust, Gibbs, dark matter, no tomato, inanimate carbon rod, Bergerac, Akers, a merkin.
• Devotion of rubes.
• Hey, if you listen to WFMU and/or appreciate what they do for music, they are way behind on their goals for the annual Marathon, throw them even a Snacks Sticker Sheet's worth of $$$ please. Look how much Arvo Pärt they play!
• Will there be a WFMU in 2046, when Planet is my age today, when I'm 85, when this fucking blog is 42, imagine how old the gags you hate now will be then.
• The ten least hipster cities.
• Baltasound.
• Bailter Space.
• A guide to Arvo Pärt's music.
• bX-62m038 - that's what motherfucking blooger told me after it ate this post last night - the part written before I remembered the Tate poem this morning - keeps telling me up to three minutes ago. What is an idiot blogwhore and attention slut to do?
• I had two interesting conversations blog-sparked yesterday, sincere thanks to you both, one - hehful - by phone, say no more say no more, the second by email, asking me to clarify one of my habitual spasms, not the following one, but related to Have I ever mentioned I love in this case Arvo Pärt's music? Because I do love Arvo Pärt's music, I mention it, play it all the time. Usually in this situation I would use the italicized question above as a brick in a gag lamely rhetorical to you perhaps but sophisticated as an anchor link to echoes to me, but not this time, just like this time.

What Should We Place, in All Good Faith, on the Horizon? A Stone? An Empty Chair? A Submarine?

I haven't given my standard full disclosure in a while: both my parents were teachers, my favorite aunts and uncles were teachers, a beloved friend is a teacher, my wife is a teacher, I have many friends who are teachers including my beloveds at Thursday Night Pints, some of the most influential people in my life have been teachers - I am incapable of an unbiased opinion when it comes to teachers. Thank a teacher today. Having said that, regarding the Chicago teachers strike, please READ THIS. I'd only add, good thing motherfucking Obama makes himself available constantly to reporters and constituents so when he's asked where he falls in the battle between teachers and his motherfucking former chief-of-staff he would certainly answer.... kidding. And anyone who bitches against the teachers because s/he thinks it might damage Obama's reelection campaign can, as Ed correctly guessed, grow fresh tomatoes, hello.

• Arvo Part is seventy-seven today.  Anti-aargh.
• Why they are striking.
• Why they are striking.
• The implications.
• An interview.
• Your fucking Washington Post.
• Five facts you need to know about the shit state of Chicago schools.
• Fuck Terry Moran, whoever the fuck he is.
• Fuck Terry Moran, whoever the fuck he is.
• Boatload of links to Chicago (and much more).
• Obama exceptionalism.
• Motherfucking Obama.
• Police state.
• Code is law.
• Put not your faith in princes.
• An imperial nostrum.
• Motherfucking Bill Clinton. Fucker sure can give a speech though.
• One year away from global rioting.
• ICC! crumbling!
• Ruefle interview.

ART CLASS

James Galvin

Let us begin with a simple line,
Drawn as a child would draw it,
To indicate the horizon,

More real than the real horizon,
Which is less than line,
Which is visible abstraction, a ratio.

The line ravishes the page with implications
Of white earth, white sky!

The horizon moves as we move,
Making us feel central.
But the horizon is an empty shell—

Strange radius whose center is peripheral.
As the horizon draws us on, withdrawing,
The line draws us in,

Requiring further lines,
Engendering curves, verticals, diagonals,
Urging shades, shapes, figures…

What should we place, in all good faith,
On the horizon? A stone?
An empty chair? A submarine?

Take your time. Take it easy.
The horizon will not stop abstracting us.