Black and White Photography


I

In last month’s Vogue was a
handmade wool skirtsuit
dissected and priced at sixteen
hundred dollars. It looked like
something from “His Girl
Friday,” something Katharine
Hepburn would have warbled at
Cary Grant in. The same cut
as the suits worn by the women
in the vintage wetlook albums
tucked under my bed—3x5
photos of proud faced,
middle aged women, sixty years
ago, standing in showers or
surfacing, fully clothed, from
swimming pools, bullet breasts
with nipples erect in the evaporative
cool of the night air, hair
still bunched in perfect hot-roller
curls, while someone ground
the film advance on a Brownie
Instamatic.

II

Seeing only once the black and
white footage strung between
spinning, clicking wheels of Anne
Sexton was all it took, I was
hooked on the fierce vigilance
of her eyes, which somehow remained
green, and the long, arched wrist
leading naturally past the
deco watch and slim fingers
directly to the cigarette; she was
untightly wound but vigorously
controlled, reading a poem which
was not plotted from its start
and ebbed from slow crash of stars at
night’s initiation to her daughters
on a rock playing. And behind
the hardness was a vulnerability
I was rebuked, softly, for wanting
to possess.

Despite the strongly worded copyright notice at the front of his book (Walking the Black Cat), I am going to reproduce here one of the poems from said book, and I'll tell you why: 1) It is only one of 67 poems in the book--of which I've only digested 1/3 and almost every poem in the number's been excellent and the rest have been very good. So, less than 1/67th is what I'm reproducing here (some of the poems are longer than this, few are shorter) and 2) because the book's still in print (unlike most poetry books) you can still buy a copy from Amazon for 9.75. The book would be a steal at twice the price. 3) Because I've sung its praises and taken the time to transcribe a poem so you can sample it's wares, maybe some of you will buy it. Certainly no fewer of you will buy it because of this posting. And 4) I've provided a link to the Amazon page no fewer than 4 times already and I'll put another one down at the bottom. Buying great books has never been easier. 5) I've no qualms about reproducing the work of poets who are dead and/or from books are that are out of print, so why screw over (essentially) the poets that actually still might be able to make some scratch out of word of mouth, and there's no way to know if you'll like something (and therefore volunteer to spend money on it) than to read part of it.

So, all that said, here is the poem.

Winter Evening

These hunches I get, cold shivers
At the way the light
Makes bloodstains on the house wall,
I'm scared to trust a sparrow,
I won't come near the cat.

Destiny marks you early in the day
With a knowing finger,
Then busies itself setting up the props,
Painting the scenery.

My love's window was on fire
With the sunset.
Her hair was red.
The pillow she carried in her arms
Was like a baby.

Quiet as a breadcrumb,
I stood and watched.
All around me birds had fallen silent.
And then the clouds moved
Their tragic robes,
And so did the night.

--Charles Simic, from his book Walking the Black Cat. (Buy it.)

//

An account of the situation in New Orleans, and, honestly, it sounds like hell on earth. I'd avoided it for the past day or two--reading full accounts, that is, but now that I am, this is so much worse than I imagined.

I am not the type of person who sends their "prayers out to" people or any muck like that, personally, I think that it's a kind of huberis to think that your individual ... anything non-tangible ... could actually do anything, but ... this New Orleans business is astounding. So, my thoughts, at least, are with them, for all the good it will do.

Perhaps some of my money--well, any money I can find--will soon be with them, too.

//

How would you like to be act that follows that news item? So I'll quote Phoebe from "Friends": "It would be like those poor bicycle riding chimps that went on Ed Sullivan after the Beatles."

//

Gizmodo makes elaborate joke about Apple's upcoming Sept. 7th anouncment and the related speculation.

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Daring Fireball on why the iPod wins. Mostly, it's the third of these three (long) items to which I refer. So, scroll down accordingly if you're one of those short-attentionspan types. For those of you with even shorter attentionspans, I'll thumbnail it here: it's simplicity, stupid.

//

//

Pat Robertson wants a lot of people dead, it turns out.

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Student suspended for posession of a cigarette, hangs herself.

I link to it not because it's sensational but because the article is more about the lawsuit the parents filed against the school district and the grounds on which it was dismissed. I'd always been curious abou this particular cranny of our legal system and the back half of the article discusses the principles nicely and how they play into the particulars of this case.

//

Opinion: There's too goddamn much football on TV these days.

I've been pissed about how every time I turn around there's another goddamn preseason game on. That's the thing about football: every game matters. Every game matters so much that every down of every game matters. And that's awesome. Preseason football guts this. There's no consequences to any of it. So: whoopity doo. Thank fuck the regular season starts on Thursday.

//

I sat down today with Excel and the fall schedules for the 6 networks that I get and made out a schedule of when everything I want to tivo is and to see if there were going to be any conflicts. There were a few, but nothing major. I am excited about this fall. It will be a good time for television (I hope). I also hope that "How I Met Your Mother" doesn't suck. Please, please let it not suck. "Out of Practice," however, starring Rizzo and the Fonz? Oh, man, there's no way it'll be good. Though I do think that Paula Marshall is a total babe.

//

Matt from 1115.org wants to bring the troops home now.

My gut reaction, upon reading the last sentence of the article, where he declares said sentiment, was to wonder when 1115 had devolved into crazy liberal politics. If you want an example of crazy liberal politics, think of your local vegan then think of their politcal positions. This is usually the crazy type of liberalism that I'm talking about, the same people who lie bound in the trunk of a car parked on the mall of the University of Arizona campus and scream "No blood for oil!" at random intervals.

Their basic sentiment is right: I don't want blood for oil any more than they do, "No blood for oil" is a sound sentiment in and of itself. However, as a premise of the Iraq war goes, it's all fucked up. We didn't go to war over oil, we went to war because our president is a cowboy, and, it turns out, dangerously stupid (or shortsighted or intentionally out of touch).

Look, that's not the point. The point is that the people that say/do things like that are usually the ones who demand we leave Iraq right now, damn the consequences, or, as one of the crazy people in my intermediate fiction workshop put it "There's no way that they're worse off now if we leave than if we stay." They being the Iraqi people. This is dangerously stupid and shortsighted in the same way as the president these people rail against.

So you'll see why I was confused when 1115 asked for us to pull out of Iraq. 1115 is typically liberal, v. left of center, sure, but they're the people who endorsed Wes Clark for president back in 2004 (and will again, odds are, in 2008). They're the kind of liberal I am--basically pragmatic. There's a facticity both of the way the world and of the consequences to our actions (both those we've already undertaken and those we've yet to undertake) that we can't change through sheer force of will, as crazy-far-left-liberals don't usually seem to understand.

But then I thought over the article, and he's right. The conclusion of the article isn't "We should leave Iraq right now" (I'm paraphrasing) but rather "If we're not in-it-to-win-it (so to speak) then we need to get out (now-ish)." And that's a sentiment I can get behind.

I'm not saying I agree, but given reasoning behind the argument, it's not a bad point and it's one that needs to be made.

More than that, though, look at it this way: if things are going bad enough that PRAGMATISTS--those fully aware of the big fucking pile of shit we'll leave behind if we leave now--think we should get out now/ASAreasonablyP, the administration is doing a truly shitty job of this. And that, above any partisan gloating or faux (or real, even) moral outrage is just, well, really, really sad.

McCain told the Star that, like Bush, he believes "all points of view" should be available to students studying the origins of mankind.

 

The theory of intelligent design says life is too complex to have developed through evolution, and that a higher power must have had a hand in guiding it.

John McCain supports teaching of ID in schools along with "all other points of view." Great. This is where you and I part ways, John McCain. Matt tells me you're beloved because you're percieved to vote your conscience, not party affiliation. Fine, however, you still vote conservative, which I was fine with 'cause, you know, you did it from your heart.

Until you started backing this president, who we could tell, every time you went on TV, you just despised as a president (and probably respected as a man, to be fair). Maybe you don't like that he's a liar or exaggerator or the flippant and fraudulant way he sent our troops into harm's way or the contempt he has for "science" and "facts."

But your support of ID means one of two things, John McCain, that either you have the same-or-similar disdain for 'science' and 'facts' as this president--in which case you lose me, even if it is your 'conscience'--or you stopped voting your conscience and started voting with the polling data. And that I can't abide either. So that's it, John McCain, this is where you and I part ways.

//

I am sick with some sort of sinus thing, so these links will have to do without much explanation:

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Something about Bush's ability to communicate and how he and his communications office eat but, get this, from someone on the right.

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Albert Ellis is anti-Freud. Whatever. I like how he's one mean psychologist.

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"Towards a unified theory of wingnuttia"

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Has anyone ever watched an episode of Tru Calling or Felicity? I'm looking for a cheap (i.e. not something from HBO) TV Drama on DVD now that I've exhausted Buffy, Angel, Alias, CSI, West Wing and Gilmore Girls. And Veronica Mars doesn't come out until October. Don't make me watch Dawson's Creek, people--I'll do it.

//

Nobody has anything to say about snakes on a motherfucking plane?

//

"The Ballad of the Thin Man" is quite good.

//

Read Charles Simic's book "Walking the Black Cat." You will like it.

//

A long but ultimately pointless review of the day's news and interesting crap

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As you've probably heard, Google introduced "Google Talk" today. Some are naysaying, some are speculating that this is only one part of Google's endgame, some are waiting for a Mac client that has all the fancy features of the Windows only client availible now, though you can connect with iChat, which comes standard on the Mac. And that's why I've been on it almost all day: it's no extra investment of effort (after I figured out that I had to open port 5222 in my firewall) and iChat--which I run anyway--will open it automatically. The only problem: there's no one to talk to on it.

//

Mary Loise Parker to play Brad Pitt's Wife. Now those are two foxy people.

//

Samuel L. Jackson to star in the title-says-it-all thriller, Snakes on a Plane.

Related: "Snakes on a Plane" as zen koan.

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No, the economy is not doing all that well, thank you very much...

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Armstrong faces fresh drug accusations. That's Lance, not Neil, by the way.

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Jacob Weisberg on why we should quit pretending that evolution and God are compatible:

But the acceptance of evolution diminishes religious belief in aggregate for a simple reason: It provides a better answer to the question of how we got here than religion does. Not a different answer, a better answer: more plausible, more logical, and supported by an enormous body of evidence. Post-Darwinian evolutionary theory, which can explain the emergence of the first bacteria, doesn't even leave much room for a deist God whose minimal role might have been to flick the first switch.

And he's right.

Bonus: Only 13% of people believe in straight up evolution. That's a depressing, depressing figure.

//

I've been bummed lately because of my computers performance. Not that I'm not happy with it and don't love every Mac minute--how beautiful the typefaces in Word documents look cannot be expressed in words, it's like looking at a laser-printed piece of paper, it's increadible--so, anyway, I've been bugged by lags and spinning-beachballs-of-death, particularly in Firefox, which spurred my transition to Mozilla, which has the same problems, only less. So I took a long hard look at the Activity Monitor and learned something interesting: even though these programs only take up about 40 megs of resident memory, they were using on the order of TEN TIMES that in virtual memory.

Now, since virtual memory is stored on disk, it gets hung up on the well documented bottle-neck of Mac Mini performance: the 4200 RPM notebook harddisk, so I implemented a hack I'd read about back when the Mini was still relatively new: I did a fresh install of Tiger ... on a FireWire drive.

And because the Mac is genius at transferring settings and documents and applications, though it took an hour to move the 75 gigabytes of data I've got on my hard-disk (I've not been able to archive porn, NewsRadio or other video lately) the performance gains were awesome. Solved my Mozilla/FF problem and actually increased system performance across the board considerably. It is beautiful.

//

And now, a picture of an office chair being sucked into an MRI machine. Good luck in medicine, Lars!

//

It's going on 24 hours since anything interesting was posted on the internets, so today you'll get one new items and two items that would have been remaindered on any other day.

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"They're fake and they're unspectacular!"  [Defamer]

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Awesometown was a pilot for Fox which was rejected because Fox are retards. The three funny-men behind it posted it on the internet under a creative commons lisence and were asked to join the writing/acting team of SNL. Watch Awesometown.

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Read my two latest poems, then tell me how much you hate them. Poem One: Visions of Ireland and Spain. Poem Two: Upon Going to a Vocal Recital at the University of Arizona.

Susan was quite helpful with the first one but there are yet more questions to be answered about it.

//

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers rock. They truly, truly do. In particular, the newer stuff.

//

Upon Going to a Vocal Recital at the University of Arizona
 

In the music department
I was always warned in hushed tones
over the shined brass bells of tubas or the oily
keys of communal brown upright pianos, never
date anyone in the choral studio—singers are more
trouble than they’re worth, none of them knowing
I had, before.

You were brilliantly lit, owning the stage with
your gentle pacing and the swishing of your
shining green gown. You concluded your compulsories
and delivered then a butter-smooth rendition
of a song sung to me a thousand times before,

as a baby and a boy before staunchly deciding I was ‘Dan,’

and from the She who sang it with a wink
from the stage at my high school’s senior showcase,

and the same She who over a tinny cordless phone
sang to me sitting on a dorm’s concrete back steps
my freshman year away from home,

and it seemed in the crowded concert hall
you sang it just for me: 

          Oh
                   Danny
                                Boy…

And sitting in the audience, it was impossible
not to want you: imagining you of transcendent high C
floating down the staircase at stage left, amidst
the thunderous applause to which you were so richly
entitled, beaming,
into my open arms.






---
This is one of those poems where I've got to be careful at delinating the She from the You--both clearly enough and early enough. How do you think I negotiated that? How does it work outside of that? How's the imagery--flat, cliche?

Oh Danny Boy

Oh Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling
From glen to glen, and down the mountain side
The summer's gone, and all the flowers are dying
'Tis you, 'tis you must go and I must bide.
But come ye back when summer's in the meadow
Or when the valley's hushed and white with snow
'Tis I'll be here in sunshine or in shadow
Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy, I love you so.

And if you come, when all the flowers are dying
And I am dead, as dead I well may be
You'll come and find the place where I am lying
And kneel and say an "Ave" there for me.

And I shall hear, tho' soft you tread above me
And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be
If you'll not fail to tell me that you love me
I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

I'll simply sleep in peace until you come to me.

---
It's one of those things that I just didn't see coming, but when I heard this song recently for the first time in quite a while, it totally wrecked me. Now I can't even read the lyrics without tearing up. Damn you, PBS!

//

Has any pop-up ever--I mean, in the history of time--has any pop-up ever actually worked? By accident alone and only I would guess.

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"Theophilus, don’t perform oral sex on girls against the city wall like a dog"--Roman Graffiti, courtesy of .:Data-What?:.

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I wrote a widget for the OS X dashboard. Here is a picture of said widget:

It strips the fresh Tooth Paste for Dinner comic off of ... wait for it ... toothpastefordinner.com.
I would make it availible here for testing, but typepad's upload feature seems to have gone a little wonky. If you're running Tiger (Lars), email or IM me if you want to test run this bad boy for me before I submit it to somewhere for, I dunno, general widgetry.

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I had forgotten how ... all consuming it could be to spend five consecutive hours staring at a computer screen learning how to do something that's not even really all that imortant. Sure, widgets are just HTML, graphics, JavaScript, CSS and a .plist file, but for someone like me whose entire knowledge of HTML stems from a time when the "blink" tag was the hottest thing going? It took me a while. And it was fun. I hadn't learned how to do anything completely useless since PreCalculus and this was more fun than that.

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New Death Cab for Cutie record August 30th. Transatlanticism was their best to date--Chris Walla's prodcution alone was worth the price of admission--but Lindsayism rips Ben Gibbard a new one about one of the new songs a few weeks ago.

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France gets book vending machines. [Gizmodo]

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I have now watched both "The Bourne Identity" and "The Bourne Supremecy." Verdict: Doug Liman (... Identity) directs things good. Paul Greengrass (...Supremecy) is not good by comparison. Also: Franka Potente, once freed from the red mane of "Run Lola Run" is quite the fox.

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Occasionally an actor or actress will become so at one with their part that it transcends acting. here is an uncomprehensive list: Peter O'Toole in "Lawrence of Arabia," Alexis Bledel in the Gilmore Girls episode where Jess wrecks her car, Jeremy Piven as Paul Spericki in "Grosse Pointe Blank." There are good actors that are still ... acting when you watch them. These people in those roles embody their subjects--or, more, even than that--they make the subject them, if that makes any sense. Also: Mila Kunis is the "That 70's Show" episode "Cat Fight Club."

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While the rest of the album is hit and miss, "Mystery Juice," the opener on Sean Lennon's solo disc "Into the Sun" is still excellent, trippy and rockalicious.

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Sometimes I feel like this:

And I am a writer, writer of fictions
I am the heart that you call home
And I've written pages upon pages
Trying to rid you from my bones
My bones
My bones

--Lyrics from The Decemberists "The Engine Driver," it's like "Wichita Lineman" for a whiny generation.

//

Jay Pinkerton rewrote the Superman origin story to be hilarious. And dirty, absurdist and more than a little mean. It's terriffic.

Also via .:Data-What?:.

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And now, a picture of a "Bewitched" cell phone:

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The wierdness that is number stations... [referenced in this Gizmodo post]

Now I almost want to have a short wave radio, but I'm not quite THAT nerdy.

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Guy: My whole family hates me. I hope they all fucking die, even the babies.

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Also at Gizmodo, Low End Theory: Why Discmen Won't Die.

The last crappy CD player I bought cost me 29.99$. That was only eight months ago, so either prices have shifted massively since then or in AZ you really get screwed.

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Partisan bickering can be funny, too.

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Midlife Assesment : Cataloging my Ruination @ Slate.

I'm sure glad I don't have that non-closing-torso-hole problem...

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Musical shout out of the day: The Buzzcocks. With songs like "Orgasm Addict, "Fallen in Love," and the recently-covered "Everybody's Happy Nowadays" how could you go wrong?

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Lars gets whitecoated today. Way to go, Lars! You're living the dream. Of being a doctor. Not my dream, particularly. But a dream. Your dream. So way to go!

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Jenna Jameson vs. Scottsdale. Now everyone all together: Fucking Scottsdale.

Who the fuck spells out Circle K on a sign? (Fucking Scottsdale, that's who.)

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Slate on Lions, Cheetahs and Elephants on the Great Plains.

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And now, a picture of Bebe Neuwirth and Mr. T.:

Remember that thing where you would set your entire iTunes library on shuffle and then write down whichever songs came up in the first twenty? Well, if not, what you do is... see, that's a little joke on my part. Here's mine.

1. Sweet Tooth - The Hang Ups
2. Jenny was a Friend of Mine - The Killers
3. Tell Her Tonight - Franz Ferdinand
4. Give it Up - The Format
5. Quartet No. 3 in F Major, Op. 73, Moderato - Shostakovich
6. Nefud Mirage - Lawrence of Arabia Original Soundtrack
7. Take Five - Dave Brubeck Quartet
8. Handle This - Sum 41
9. Swingin' - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
10. Minnie the Moocher - Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
11. A Life in the Day of Benjamin Andre - OutKast
12. 1972 - Porchsleeper
13. Congeniality - Ornette Coleman
14. Mine's Not a High Horse - The Shins
15. Monkey Gone to Heaven - The Pixies
16. Across the Sea - Weezer
17. Syeeda's Flute Song [Alternate Take] - John Coltrane
18. Konig von Deutschland - Echt
19. Givin' Up - The Darkness
20. Color Blind - Counting Crows

Honorable Mention: #25 was "My Heart" as performed by the Olive Street Stompers. Oh, those Stompers, how I miss their ways.

Not a bad group, I'd say. Nothing to be too embarrassed about--none of my Gilbert and Sullivan  or Avril Lavigne showed up.

A little non-Miles Davis jazz heavy, but you gotta respect a list with both Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane.

And I'd've preferred if the Squirrel Nut Zippers--I can still look my SNZ discs in the eye--had turned up rather than Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, but, you know, it's random.

And remember, I DLed #20 off the original Napster, like, 7 million years ago.

Also, fuck you guys: for dumb, festive punk that first Sum 41 album is choice.

//

Ein Hilarious Picture.

[via .:Data-What?:.]

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This is the trailer for "Shopgirl." I haven't watched it yet, as I'm on goddamn dialup and it takes a fucking month to do anything. I loved the book, loved the book like I've got two copies, one for keeping, one for lending. And I'm nervous about all the actors in the lead roles. Yep, 100% of them even though I like each and every one of them as actors. So nervous.

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I always knew that the milky way was a bar, and that it is filled with nougat. -- Comment on Slashdot

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Andy, this one's for you: in case you didn't know, the Adventures of Pete and Pete are out on DVD. Well, the first season's out now, and the second season will be out 1 Nov.

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"Any dance move is the robot as long as you can imagine a sufficiently advanced robot."--Demetri Martin

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Target bought all the ads in the New Yorker this week. This Slate article explains it all, then nails why target rocks and then gets boring so I didn't finish it. Or maybe I did and just can't remember what it was all about. Either way.

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Here are the lyrics to 16 Military Wives. Lars discussed the video in brief and I want to hype the fact that the song and the video would be, seperately, perfectly executed and together deserve some sort of Music-Video-Oscar. Or something.

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The Bad Plus deserve more credit than they get. The tune "And Here We Test Our Powers of Observation" [iTMS] from their disc "Give" is the rockingest Jazz track I ever did hear and has got this great, chunky, hooky 'chorus'--or what would be the chorus, were it not a jazz tune.

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I saw this in every news source I read this morning, because I'm going to post it anyway: Big Game to Make North Americd Return?

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"Evengelical Scientists Refute Grafity with Theory of Intelligent Falling"

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Finally, a picture of Superman wielding Thor's Hammer, Mjolnir:

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I can't believe you're not using Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Look at the Dashboard. LOOK AT IT. It's BEEEEEUTIIIIIIFUL. And it's right there, everytime you hit F12. Every time. Look, it's got weather and time and stickies and FoxTrot. FoxTrot! What an age we live in. New FoxTrot every day and you don't even have to open that stinky, inky 'newspaper.'

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You can blame Mac utility SnapnDrag for the vast majority of pitures I post here. It's easy. And it lets you take screenshots of either windows, selections or, well, screens. And it's so easy. So, if you're running OS X, check it out. Oh, and it's so very free.

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"I'm a heroine addict. I have to have sex with women who've saved someone's life."--Zach Galifinakas

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Fiona Apple's "Extraordinary Machine" gets released 2 October. I've been rocking it since it was leaked, like, a year ago. It is good and I will buy it when it comes out because of said goodness and so she don't gotta deal with her labels crap in the future.

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"You call this a bicameral legislature?" -Homer Simpson, "Mr. Spritz Goes to Washington"

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Jenny McCarthy's going to be in a movie. And there will be nudity. Rock. Too bad it won't be made ten years ago.

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Much of today's material came from goldenfiddle.com.

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You should watch more Alias. And, sure, this last season, the fourth, wasn't great and, sure, now Jennifer Garner's married to Affleck but she weren't before. The first three seasons are some of the best television I've seen. And that's saying something, 'cause I've seen everything (except "Silver Spoons," I don't know how I missed that).

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Mary-Louise Parker is very pretty:

and

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Slate: Why Evolutional Psychology Gets Evolution Wrong

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Christian Science Monitor on Bushes Stunning Zero Vetoes

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Harvey Danger's new album drops 13 Sept in stores. Online without special bonus disc two weeks later.

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Stevie Y is Team Canada's Guy, Says Great One

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Could have / will the Darkness split up?

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I'm running the beta build 1.7.11 of Mozilla--it's not branded Firefox at this stage in development, apparently. It is fast and rocks socks. And stable, at least so far.

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This story about Todd Bertuzzi is almost sad. As a remedy, here's the footage of him possibly ending then-Rookie Steve Moore's career. Well, I can't find the footage, but as you can recall, it was bad, and cheap and I reading the article I almost felt sad for him then I remember that he very easily could have killed the guy. So you know what, Todd? You're not forgiven. And I'm not picking the Canucks in Fantasy Team Hockey this year because of you.

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Visions of Ireland and Spain


Visions of  Ireland—it was PBS pledge
season again—and fife and lute music
droned over rotating helicopter footage of
landmarks and lakes, the green hills streaked
through with yellow just like your eyes brought
your foggy European poetry back to me.

Young American Abroad, I had named
the style: tales of cracked plaster in
nine hundred year old villages and sitting
below the brass statue erected six hundred
years before your birth and the odd cant
and tilt and come-ons of Spanish men and
how Ethpania, you said, was rich in a cultural
heritage we would never understand so
enamored are we of Rugged Individualism
and Hemmingway's drunken I and Bukowski,
alone in a broken world.

But neither was your perspective broader
for having gotten drunk on Sangria, for saying
you prefer Spanish cheese or for having fucked
your way across Iberia.                           
                                       But still your breasts,
I imagined, were luminous teardrops with round,
brown nipples and the Irish green of your Wisconsin
born and bread eyes drained from me every time
the criticism, whether I should have let it or not.
I was far from the misogyny you loudly
labeled on me. Far from it.

Visions of Scotland and Spain

Visions of Scotland—it was PBS pledge
season again—all rotating helicopter
coverage of lands high and low, of lochs,
of gutted castles and green, rolling hills,
and your European poetry came back to me.

Young American Abroad, I had named
the style: tales of nine hundred year old
villages, drinking at the foot of bronze statues,
the odd cant of Spanish men and how
Ethpania, you said, was rich with a cultural history
we would never know, so locked are we in praise of
Rugged Individualism and Hemmingway and Bukowski
and seeing only college aged men, you, of course, were right.

But neither was your perspective broader
for having gotten drunk on Sangria, for saying
you prefer Spanish cheese, or for having fucked your way
across Iberia.
                         But still, your breasts, I imagined, were
luminous teardrops with round, brown nipples and the
Wisconsin blue of your eyes drained the criticism from me
every time, whether I should have let it or not. I was far
from your publicly accused misogyny. Far from it.

---

So now here's the question: is it overly subtle? I mean, it's nothing but unsubtle, but the point, it's well enough hidden to be unobvious but not unreachable?

Eyes Fastened with Pins

How much death works,
No one knows what a long
Day he puts in. The little
Wife always alone
Ironing death's laundry.
The beautiful daughters
Setting death's supper table.
The neighbors playing
Pinochle in the backyard
Or just sitting on the steps
Drinking beer. Death,
Meanwhile, in a strange
Part of town looking for
Someone with a bad cough,
But the address somehow wrong,
Even death can't figure it out
Among all the locked doors...
And the rain beginning to fall.
Long windy night ahead.
Death with not even a newspaper
To cover his head, not even
A dime to call the one pining away,
Undressing slowly, sleepily,
And stretching naked
On death's side of the bed.

--Charles Simic, from his book Charon's Cosmology

From "The Father, The Son and the Holy Guest Star"

Marge [watching Homer and Bart in Catholic Heaven]: I'd like to speak to Jesus.
WASP: Oh I'm sorry, Marge, he's gone native.

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Alcohol Related Deaths Increase in Britain and Wales, Shitty Reporting Unaffected

Alternate headline:  Liberal U.K. Goverment Increases Deaths Over Last Five Years ... FROM THE FUTURE!

Fuckers.

//

Japan Apologizes for War Time "Colonization" (i.e. atrocities).

At least it's something.

Apparently, though, Asia's not buying it.

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It really shouldn't be news when a Simspons episode is funny, but remember the Seven Sisters bit from "I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can?" Hilarity.

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The second item--detailing Roger Ebert's pulitzer wielding destruction of Rob Schneider--is fucking priceless.  You've just gotta read it. It's so, so funny.

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King Floyd's "Groove Me"--as featured on the soundtrack to (Doug Liman directed) "Swingers" is awesome. It is, and there's no stopping the force with which it will funkify every inch of you.

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More paper dolls from Paper Doll Heaven:

From left: Lisa Kudrow, Liv Tyler, Liv Tyler and Eliza Dusku.

I think these are fun.

Those are paper dolls I made at Paper Doll Heaven. They are of Alexis Bledel and were fun to make. The selection of skirts, handbags and shoes were seriously lacking, so your milage may vary.

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Speaking of Alexis Bledel, Sin City comes out on DVD on Tuesday. Much viewing of people's junk getting smashed, slashed, shot and punched to pulp will ensue.

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The Replicans want to destroy our ability to participate in government and many, many things we hold dear. They are coming for us. Don't be fooled, they actively wish us harm. And they will take any means expedient to achieve that end. This is just a reminder.

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The NCAA has apparently lost touch with reality. Oh well.

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I downloaded and tried out OpenOffice.org's Open Office Suite. It is very free and performs as advertised. However: it is very, very, very ugly. Like, computer programs from 10-15 years ago ugly. Look for yourself.

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Lindsayism comes through again with a neat-o movie trailer. This time it's for "Elizabethtown."

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ZDNet issues sarcasm-laden "apology" for using Google on a Google Exec (which got them--by Google--blackballed).

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Punk landmark CBGB's saved from eviction. Dana Stevens mentions that the CBGB's shirt is now the definative anti-punk statement, you bandwagoning bastards.

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Alexa is pretty cool. How am I just discovering this?

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Is no one else concerned about oil prices? Literally nothing could make the cost of doing any sort of business go up more than skyrocketing oil prices. When do we invade Venezuala, again?

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Thanks to everyone who recommended "Teenage Wristband" by the Twilight Singers. It's quite good.

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I finished my story (I think) and am passing out to readers who are willing to critique it and/or answer a long string of questions. You are all more than capable of doing this, who will accept the challenge, though? (It's only six double-spaced pages.)

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Justin delivers on promised Western Conference news. Gives good hockey.

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There's this guy who makes furniture out of FedEx boxed. FedEx be all up in his grill and shit, but, man, this dining room table is the mac. [via Slashdot]

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1115.org goes apeshit on recent presidential dickery.

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There's an album by a guy named "Senor Coconut" which is entirely salsa/cha-cha/meringue/bossa covers of Kraftwerk songs. Fucking Kraftwerk. And it's awesome. iTunes it.

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Props also to Jimmy Eat World for just rocking so hard. Listened to a lot over the past couple of days. "Your House"? It rocks socks.

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"Special Edna," episode 14.7 of "The Simpsons" was on the other night. I'd like to take a moment and relive one of my all-time favorite Simpsons moments.

And we're not stopping there, because at Eastern Airlines, world conquest
is part of our master plan. Now enjoy the soothing music of the Turtles!

The whole Epcot sequence is magic--"It's what people in 1965 imagined 1987 would be like!" the electric car bit, Enron's Ride of Broken Dreams, et cetera--and Cletus' press conference questions are great, but really, can you beat plane-head robots?

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As a follow up: "The Simpsons, Hyper-Irony and the Meaning of Life."

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If you haven't read "THIS IS MY COMPUTER BLOG ON THE INTERNET" you ought to. It's not updated terribly often but, man, is it funny:

THIS IS THE OWLS THAT HEARD THE HARMONICAS!! THE RABBIT IS PLAYING HIS HARMONICAS!!
HEY OWLS, GET YOUR HORNS!!! THEN YOU CAN PLAY THE SONGS WITH THE RABBIT!!! I AM CALLING SUPER MOP-TOP!! HE WILL PLAY HIS DRUM SETS!!

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Text of Steve Jobs commencement speech this year @ Stanford. I didn't read it or nothin', but I might want to sometime and I didn't want to lose the link. That, any maybe you will read it and summarize it for me.

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I started writing a story last night so probably no poems for a while. I know, you're all real sad. You don't have to be dicks about it.

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An interview with the editor of Defamer. It digresses for a while in the middle, but it comes back, don't worry.

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And now to wrap up, a pair of Slate articles.

The first is on how network news and so called "Old Media" will continue to be profitable--extremely profitable--for a long, long time to come. So get over yourself, bloggers and new-media-revolution types.

The second is about meth-mouth and how, while somewhat accurate, sometimes, it's attributed causes are usually horse-shit.

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I know this post is going to be dorkier than usual, and I'm OK with that.

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Gizmodo launches official "It plays Doom" certification for things that ... play doom.

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As reported here earlier, Peter Jennings died. Wonkette said it best: "We've avoided giving you the exhaustive Peter Jennings coverage because his death makes us sad." Here, here. Peter, you will be missed.

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And to complete a Gawker Media Hattrick: "The Island" bombed--but why?

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I'll tell you why, I was their core audience--people who like both car chases and long futuristic looking sequences about the ethics of science-fictional situations. And I knew about the movie. And I like Scarlett Johannson. But I didn't really want to see two halves of a movie fused together into a walking Frankenstein of a picture. And I hate Michael Bay.

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Speaking of car chases, Mr. & Mrs. Smith had an excellent, excellent, excellent car chase.

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Justin covers Eastern Conference hockey news. Promises Western Conference soon. And thanks for the link to the rules changes!

More than anything, though, I think I'm going to like Florida quite a lot. It takes some stones to hire 77-year old Gary Roberts. But I like Roberts and Luongo and some of their other new acquisitions. And I get to hate the Rangers for hiring Ville Nieminen!

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I was talking earlier with my sister about the best episodes of Buffy. Look, she's five years younger than me--I'm 22, just done with college and she's 17 and entering her senior year in high school, there's not a whole lot we've got in common, save Buffy and other pop-things. It's not like the two of us can talk about the time we went out and got trashed and I went home with that chick who I thought was hot but it turned out she had ugly feet and then I was Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop.--So we were talking about Buffy and our three favorite episodes were the same as each other so I thought I'd share and see if you all (by which I mostly mean Lars) agree.

We picked:
#3) Passion (Season 2): Angel kills Jenny Calendar.

#2) Tabula Rasa (Season 6): Everyone forgets who they are.

and

#1) Fool For Love (Season 5): Spike details his defeat of two previous slayers to Buffy.

Fuck, yeah, "Fool for Love" is good.

For more Buffy Info (like if you need a greater refresher on what happened in any of these episodes), visit my favorite resource, buffyguide.com.

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I know posting pictures of your cat isn't cool, so take note that this is my sister's cat. Also, it's funny because there's a tiny tyrannosaur eating her head and she doesn't look too terribly concerned.

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Pretty Persuasion stars Ron Livingston and Evan Rachel Wood--who you may remember from her awesome turn as Hogan Cregg on das The West Wing--and is apparently 'fucked up but awesome.' I look forward to seeing it, even though it's got both Selma Blair and Jane Krakowski.

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People find these mindblowing. Mostly it's the first one that does it for me. Two is not exciting, three makes sense once you look at it. See what you think. It's about color perception. [via .:Data-What?:.]

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People were talking about how long it might take--and even if it was possible--for Apple's iTunes to take over the Japanese market. It took four days.

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Ebert and Roeper beat the fuck out of "Dukes of Hazzard" on their show this week. But is that really surprising?

Roeper accused Jessica Simpson of not speaking English as a first language.

Dear Roeper,
Yes, she really is just that stupid.
Thanks,
Me.

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Also, is Britney drinking a screwdriver? That would be pretty badass.
Yes, I find celebrity FAS funny.

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I know I've plugged Haughty Melodic before, but, damn, "American Car" is awesome. And "Busting Up a Starbucks" and "Tremendous Brunettes" (even though I dislike Dave Matthews) and, mostly, all the rest of the tracks. Damn.
From "American Car":

There’s a girl down in the bar,
A flaming star upon her shoulder,
Slugging hot pink frozen drinks
To put the foot down on her smolder.

Easy, cowboy, what’s the rush now?
She may cleave me like a snowplow...

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Now, no one's yet asked where I'm applying this year, but I'll tell you anyway. Here is the list of 17 schools which will be getting all my shit.

Top 13 Schools (in order)
Minnesota
U of Houston
Indiana
Johns Hopkins
UC Irvine
Wisconsin
Iowa
Arizona
Mich
Brown
UT Austin's Michener Center
UNLV
Oregon

Safetyish schools
Notre Dame
Texas State
Montana
Nebraska

Now, in Creative Writing no school is a safety school but those four have programs which are smaller / not established yet. Hopefully it won't come to me going to any of them, but I ought to at least have better odds than at the others.

Also, those are all "University of" and not "State."

If you want to see the spreadsheet that helped me pick these 13/17 from the original list of 28 you can download grad_school.xls. It may or may not rock your world, but I thought I'd give you the option.

Clouds Converged

We gon’ break this thing down in just a few seconds,
Now don’t have me break this thing down for nothing.
—OutKast, “Hey, Ya!”

Clouds rolled in everyway around our
favorite restaurant, dark gray and variegated
like a cat named Smoky.

The place was loud with Italian
music that somehow featured harmonica
and the din of the party of twelve behind us,

brightly dressed in billowing garments and
all over forty, all drunk. The clouds converged
from 270 degrees of sky, leaving only

a narrow avenue of escape. But it just
wouldn’t start raining. Our asymmetrically toothed
server dropped a tray of silver. Her lip quivered
in the gap where her left eye tooth wasn’t.

She was nervous because we said so little
Your uncut-emerald eyes streaked with candle
reflection, produced almost a tear but then none.

The play of parallel bolts behind you,
like four simultaneous oak trees revealed
from top to bottom, jigging a silent path from
cloud to ground was almost enough to save

what was otherwise as I expected: the quiet
between us except for the flat-as-a-tapeworm
intoned questions you didn’t want answered and
that broken, empty, head loll of defeat.

It was all so very reasonable and transparent. But
the clouds were different and the play
of lightening, even trapped within the eight
squares of two windows
                                         was brilliant.

Fire Season

All the angels of Tie Siding were on fire.
                                                                  The famous sky was gone.

Presumably the mountains were still there, invisible in haze.
                                                                                                 OK,
there was only one angel, but she was a torch in the wind, beside
the wind-ripped American flag the post office flies.
                                                                                   OK, she wasn't
literally on fire.
                            Maybe her angelic red hair made me think she was
ablaze as it flaunted the prarie and made a festival of itself.
                                                                                                  There
was a fireworks stand nearby, entirely beside the point, as was the
Fourth of July.
                          It was really dry.
                                                        It was fire season.
                                                                                       It was the
wind festival, featuring an angel standing in it, letting her red hair
conflagrate history, reduce it to ask, bid it start anew, erase the sky
with atrocity's own smoke.
                                            She wore, besides her flame of hair,
blue jeans and a singlet.
                                         She was violent in the wind.
                                                                                       I started
walking toward her.
                                  I'm still walking toward her, no idea what to
say when I get there.

--James Galvin, from his most recent book, "X"

//

Not really that much of a roundup, mostly just a couple of fairly weak links so far, and since I ate everything there was to eat on the internets on Friday, this will be one cold, dark, boring weekend.

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If operating systems were pornstars. [via Fleshbot, which contains boobies.]

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Robert Novak gets hysterical to avoid talking about Plame? Seems reasonable.

Also @ 1115: Novak, in color.

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Pretty good, indepth interview with Slate's movie critic David Edelstein. Maybe you, too, will grow up to be a movie critic.

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Brendan Koerner (@ Slate) explores America's love of Ranch Dressing. And makes me want to puke.

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Any ideas/suggestions on what you'd like to see more/less/different of here?

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Lindsay Lohan will apparently be getting her boobs back. Thank crap. Now, will this all so de-whore her and/or give me a shot?

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If you're going to post this crap on Slashdot, you might as well just start the post with "Just so you know, this will be  troll. Possibly the trolliest-troll you've ever seen." And not that there's not nothing to his point. Just don't be trolly about it.

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LJ Post [via Defamer] about Scott Stapp getting his ass handed to him as he tries to hit that shit @ Denny's in Gainsville. True or not, the idea that it could happen? Hilarious.

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Apparently China's Mystery Disease(TM) could be Ebola. [sarcasm] Fucking great. [/sarcasm]

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Lars, buy two.

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Bonnie McFarlane is funny. She was funny on Letterman the other night. And she apparently has a (regular in any way?) column. The excerpts on the index are funny enough for me.

Apparently she also was in a UPN series called "Social Studies" in 1997. Which must've been like, their first year or so, eh?

Here are some of her upcoming showdates. None of us are near any of them.

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Because everyone that had actually seen it liked it and the only people that didn't like it were the people who hadn't seen it (myself most surely included) and because it got picked up by CBS for the fall, I tivoed and watched the first episode of Veronica Mars. You know what? It was pretty darn good. That Veronica Mars, she's a pistol. And she goes to Neptune High. The first season hits DVD 10 Oct 2005.

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Sarah Silverman will soon have a movie. It is called "Jesus is Magic." This is the trailer. It is funny (and offensive!). Very Sarah Silverman.

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This is fucked up. Not the "Local Sports-Fan Kills Wife with Claw Hammer" part, I mean, that is fucked up, sure, but that he did it because she wanted to cuddle after sex. Men are fucked up. [via Sploid]

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I just finished the first season Scrubs on DVD. It was almost too funny. And much funnier than this last season was. (Don't get me wrong, the last season was plenty funny, but from episode 6 right through to episode 24, the first season in non-stop hilarity.) Now I've gotta wait until 15 Nov for the second season.

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I've decided I want to the Overture/Vennusberg-Bacchanale Ballet from Tannhauser played at my funeral. Said in manner of Christina: "Dooooo it."

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Also: the commentaries alone are worth the price of admission to the NewsRadio seasons 1&2 set. There's commentary on something like 25 or 6 of the 30 episodes. And they're funny. And apparently the cast was badly behaved out on the town. Those are some funny stories.

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::Updated/Extended::

Today I share something special with all of you. And I've accepted the fact that I might be crazy because of it, but I'll share it anyway.

Most all of you know that I have an extra-special love for Mary-Louise Parker. It's because she played a strong woman on "The West Wing" and though I'm a Toby--I can write and, let's be fair, I hate things, I hate a lot things--I've always wanted to be a Josh. And so the Josh girlfriend goes along with that. And also this other thing that I'm going to tell you.

I've long contended--with a modicum of scientific proof that I read somewhere ten, fifteen years ago--that immedeate attraction is fundamental, unconcious, based entirely on appearence and can't be easily--if ever--deconstructed and understood. However, given the evidence I'm about to present, I think I can explain quite readily the bulk of my immediate attractions to women, at least, the women of film and television. It is, apparently, all about the frown-muscles.

Take a look at this picture of Mary-Louise Parker I screen-cap'd from an episode of West Wing ("Posse Comitatus" if you must know, the episode that trumps all other episodes). First I present the unaltered version:

And now I give you the version in which I've upped the contrast and outlined what, specifically, it is about MLP that takes her from a nice-looking woman to one who I can't manage to get over:

Does that make me wierd? You might think that this is an isolated incident, an anomaly; it is not. This frown-muscle phenomenon explains my wierd and immediate attraction to Ellen Pompeo of TV's "Grey's Anatomy" even though she's way too skinny to be my type.