lololololol This is a man realising he has destroyed his life irreversibly.
-Thomas Jefferson

Also google man... Always google s**t before you speak on it.
-Thomas Jefferson

The way (some) women sneeze by totally muffling the actual sneeze and then saying "chew."

Not dwelling in but dwelling on.

Wander around campus, admire the holes they dig when the students leave, like cross-sectioned headquarters from old Marvel comics.

Street, power, sewer, earth. Imagine the same cross-sectioning of experience itself: skin, atoms, ideas, photons, neurons, abstractions, ghosts. Flesh?

This is my idea of materialism, spirituality without spirit. Because, as Douglas Mao will soon say, the seen is the unseen.

The way I see it, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who prefer the Rolling Stones, and those who prefer the Beatles. I prefer the Kinks.

Via Cracked, AGAIN?? Also this guy.

I've just heard that Canadian poet Robin Blaser has died. Blaser has been publishing since the sixties, but I only recently discovered him myself. He quickly became one of my favorite poets, thanks to poems like this one:

Metamorphoses

I burn 'your' magnificence in the streets
It is paper

The gods written on paper flare up
suddenly
                 in a turn taken up the alley

I turn away from the stars,
roll over,
                    it is that falls out of my eye
a pearl of great price
                                       no tear
The same with the flakes of mica,
                                                              desiring
the tree stands before me of what name

If you have fifty-two minutes to spare, you can watch him give a full reading here. (If you get bored with Robert Haas's endless introduction, skip ahead to incantatory "Luck    Unluck    One Luck" at around twenty-nine minutes.)

It was Blaser's remarkably limpid, elegant reading style that first drew me to his collection The Holy Forest. I saw him at the snowbound On Words conference in Buffalo in 2006, in a beautiful but acoustically disastrous cathedral that turned his reading into a sonorous, unintelligible rumble. It was not an inappropriate first impression, since Blaser was a kind of secular visionary or devotional poet, as well as a master of Wallace Steven's dictum: "The poem must resist the intelligence / Almost successfully."

Today I abruptly became gainfully (well, break-even-fully) employed for the summer. By the end of the week I will have applied to be gainfully (really) employed for the next year. Thirty down, 60 to go?

I could listen to this on a loop all day long. YTMND, get on that, will you?


1) Monkey-fighting snakes: bad euphemism, or awesome sequel pitch?

2) I would get pretty sick of just about everything on a Monday to Friday plane. That is one long monkey-fighting flight!

3) My favorite part is actually before Sam Jackson's line, when the woman says, "We gotta clear the snakes out of the cockpit," and the other guy chimes in with "Yeah yeah, clear the snakes out of the cockpit." Like he totally thought of it first. Jerk.

Brought to my attention by he of the long box.

You know, when my cable was disconnected (due to the malfeasance of one of my roommates), I thought I would never get used to life without it.

Now, it feels as though cable never existed, and life has just always kind of sucked.

***
Also, happy Mission Accomplished Day, everybody! In honor of the occasion, here's a poem by the annoying diabetic bitch goddess herself, Sharon Mesmer (slightly updated for the sixth anniversary).

I Wanna Make Love to You on Mission Accomplished Day

I wanna make love to you on Mission Accomplished Day
On the floor of the main headquarters of the Department of Faith
I wanna make love to you [six] years ago today
When Bush's carrier offed some old Arab broads who just "got in the way"

When I was a kid we made love in a fun Catholic kind of way
On our bikes, under maypoles, in the Enterprise's cargo bay
I can't wait for Al Qaeda's Call for Papers Day
When I'll make love to you on four million barrels a day

I met FDR once in Vegas, he was a good lay
But not as good as you 'cause you're so ofay
Like an OPEC quote, and bin Laden's protégé
We'll make hot monkey love on Whoopin' Osama's Sorry Ass Day

wants to tickle
your
google alerts
said
transcendent
or
transient

Ohmigod I love this. I love this so much.

Now, for an English translation of the lyrics. Preferably homophonic.

The other night I dreamed I was standing near a tree filled with dozens of squirrels, skittering from branch to branch. Then, suddenly, there were dozens of gigantic red and black spiders skittering around with them. It only half woke me up, so that I wound up still convinced that there were giant spiders in the bed.

Now, whenever I see or even read about squirrels it creeps me out a little.

I bought a frickin' awesome coat. It was expensive (not as expensive as it is now), but I don't mind.

The sleeves are a little long, but I don't mind.

I kind of mutilated the lining in two of the pockets trying to unstitch them. That I mind a little bit.

It's still frickin' awesome though.

I knew there was a reason I liked this guy.

Some highlights:

He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali

His favourite book is Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

He kept a pet ape called Tata while in Indonesia

His favourite films are Casablanca and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

His favourite music includes Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Bach and The Fugees

And, most importantly:

He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics

***
By the way, this list makes me want to start an internet meme along the lines of Chuck Norris facts -- Barack Obama facts. Here's my offer for the first:

When Barack Obama falls in water, he doesn't get wet, the water gets inspired.

You guys -- I am seeing all these ads that suggest that Obama had some kind of crazy dude as a pastor at some point? Have you heard about this!? How did this not come out way back in the primaries, seriously?

I am not sure I can vote for him now. Oh no.

Um... right.


By the way, that voice at the end of the ad? That seems to be Kay Hagan shouting, "There is no god"? Isn't her and she's suing over it. She's also put out this response:


This is very much in the Obama-as-Muslim category: you want the candidate to say, "What if I was a Muslim? What if I was an atheist? Do I have to be a Christian to hold office"? But they can't say that, whether they'd like to or not, because the answer, in most parts of the country, for most offices, is effectively "yes."

...and it's true: all the ads are political. McCain, Pierello, some guy I haven't heard of, football, Obama, McCain again -- literally nothing but political ads (also that one for football).

I guess it's... annoying? Actually, I'm still kinda jazzed to be a battleground for once.