wonder

I wonder

And no one can take that away

No one can steal the wonder

The thought

I imagine

I can see it

I can feel it beneath my hands, behind my chest

I know it

And no one can take that away

Except you

You could steal my thoughts

turn them from magic into the real

help me feel it in my hands, on my chest

And no one could take that away

Except me

I wonder

triumph

Triumph

In the form of stillness

Disquiet

Corrupting itself

The colors shake and leafs fall while birthing

References to the sun

Winning while the competition is dead

Players take off

Their coats

And walk naked, pink, brown, and red

Eyes closed

And groping for a safe landing midst the fall

Here again

Spreading out

Away from the

Seed

Breaking at the tips

Crushed by the impact

Of directly careless fleet

Running

In triumph

2 moons

Sacred posturing

Laying down earth incense

Lighting it in praise of the hidden second moon

The moon’s lover

Constant within the sun’s shadow

Keeps the shining ardor of his lover

On the path

Of godliness

In front the tide, ruling birthing cycles,

Insisting on paradox

Between chaos and order

In her cyclical way

The other side

The dark side

So often unnoticed, so often written off

Feels the fire

On his back and stays warm

By consistent contact

With his dualism

Everywhere

still waiting...

Wait, don’t tell me

I’ll find out anyways

Tomorrow

The day after next

At some point within the spread outside

I’ll enter that point

And never return

differential equations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_equation

THIS is the great American

Right here

Doing this

On her ass

BEHOLD the greatness

That is this American

Plugging away the dollars

Sleeping with his eyes open

Contemplating dead options

Again!

HOORAY!

I said HOORAY!

For the nothing and nothing and the nothing

Reading the Onion

Passing time over the clock

Ignoring the ringing

Letting the alarm

Become a rhythm to live life by

photo BOMB

hi, i made a mixtape if you're interested...http://alexistentialism.muxtape.com/
(its free...)

True Story

On the day of april 15^th

An hour after sunrise

A giant tree, the one in the front yard

Starting whispering stories

About a collapse

About splitting in half

No one could hear

But it so happened

I was sleeping

under a lazy sun snooping through window slits

But I heard no tree

I don’t remember dreaming trees

Only the simple tone

of my friend

telling me to go

To go in her car

To drive away

“its ok”

Next to the lot

Where the car was parked

A branch the size of a tree

Hollow and buzzing

Lay on asphalt

Looking innocent, out of context

My three roommates

Questioning me

“where did you go?”

“who said you could take my car?”

I don’t know, I don’t know

The branch teases me

Nonchalantly mixing with gravity

But the branch lay next to the car’s former spot

And not directly

Where the car would be

Teasing me

Young people who wanted you

Fade away

They move for the mountains

Slowly stay where they lay

But their colors become gentler

Don’t take it personally

Everyone who speaks

To you

Means the words they say

Even if you cannot decipher the meaning

They mean them any way

But don’t take them personally

Days are inches on a hem

Growing slowly towards the floor

The light grows quieter

In the late afternoon

As it softly surrounds former half shadows

That once framed your face

But don’t take it personally

It is all obliged to grow dim

The closer

You get

A gaseous mirage of oxygen

followed me

under water

I slipped down

closer to dirty sand

My hands

gripping rubbery vines running towards the sun

allow panicked breathes to escape

My lungs sucked out the air

from between sheets of

glass

I awoke tasting

a transparent film of juice on my lips

trickling to my tongue

There is a thought across from mine

faceless, opaque,

demanding that I follow

to the bottom

where I find

unpredictable doors

telos

“its gotta be about something”
looking at the his hands

Not looking at his hands

Simultaneously

“meaning. Maybe it’s a wall we can’t pass”

“maybe, but probably not”

Both looking at their hands

Both not looking at their hands

In a single motion everything acts

Exactly the same

Without touching a hair

The world reacts by feigning non-action

Or so he thinks to himself

Or so he is tempted to try to find common ground

About with

himself

Tessellations

http://mathforum.org/sum95/suzanne/whattess.html

hooray.

Authority withers

Descends into the hubris,

The hermeneutics

Of cloudiness

Blocking UV murderers as they penetrate

The green

Giving way to life

shuffling from one plank to the next

Chased by shark abandoned pirates

Gyrating with a million eyes

And patched knees

pre-given to falling

Into the ground

And becoming the delicate, long, finger pink brown worms

that work their way up,

their way around,

their way to a path

A moving from end to end

Traveling without traveling

Just traversing a span

On repeat.

people's court!!!! RBG!!!!

The less forward the more backward

maybe

bi-directional, eyes on the back of the head

one on top,
for breathing

in with a blink, out to shut off

another on bottom
for rooting
gravity to the sky
Seen
between blinks
accepting and denying the unpreventable
absorption
of what the sun has to offer

The less enlightened the more smarts

maybe

The thinking brain
creates a cloud
wringing itself
for rain
quitting while
in knots

The less delicate the uglier

maybe

Dirt wombs shout birth
for dying
intricate webs of dung
made gold
after baring the light
above ground

In Preparation for Later

Nobility found her place
Deep inside a mushroom patch
Constructed from band aids stuck
Patiently
By the semi focused minds
of twin sisters
waiting to rediscover their grove
of feelings
of meanings
in the space where
men
usually expect gold
or
time capsules ready to send them moonward

More Juice

New day
Because I said so
Because I keep saying it
Because no matter what I say
It keeps happening

Repeating, swerving
The same day
Over and over
Like a spiral moving forward
Revisiting the same arches
But in a different
Space, a future space
In comparison
To a past

artificial objects
sweet and sour drops
under the tongue
twisting

Past is in my left hand
And with future in my right
I juggle
And lick up the juices
Made from dropping
It all

Hopeful Monster

As an example of radical change, he gave flatfish — the flounder and its relations. These are descended from fish with the usual fishy symmetry: the same left-right symmetry that we have. Larval flounders have it, too. But as adults, flounders have a profound asymmetry — one side has been completely flattened. What’s more, they have deformed, twisted skulls, and an eye that has migrated from one side of the face to the other. It’s as though you had both eyes on the same side of your nose. How did they get this way?
Goldschmidt speculated that big changes like this could be caused in one step by a mutation acting on the developing embryo. Most such mutations, he suggested, would produce individuals that were plain monstrous, and doomed to die without issue. But every so often, one of these mutations would happen in an environment where it could be beneficial. Then, the individual sporting it would be a hopeful monster, because it might have an evolutionary future as the founder of a new lineage.

more beer for me Bee aches (all nytimes)

From Tap, Cask or Bottle

Blind Tiger Ale House, 281 Bleecker Street; (212) 462-4682; www.blindtigeralehouse.com.

d.b.a., 41 First Avenue; (212) 475-5097; www.drinkgoodstuff.com.

Jimmy's No. 43, 43 East Seventh Street (downstairs); (212) 982-3006; www.jimmysno43.com.

Standings, 43 East Seventh Street (street level); (212) 420-0671.

Burp Castle, 41 East Seventh Street; (212) 982-4576.

Heartland Brewery, multiple locations;www.heartlandbrewery.com.

Chelsea Brewing Company, Chelsea Piers, Pier 59 (at 18th Street); (212) 336-6440; www.chelseabrewingco.com.

Ginger Man, 11 East 36th Street, (212) 532-3740; www.gingerman-ny.com.

Waterfront Ale House, 540 Second Avenue (30th Street); (212) 696-4104, also at 155 Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn; (718) 522-3794; www.waterfrontalehouse.com.

Spotted Pig, 314 West 11th Street; (212) 620-0393; www.thespottedpig.com.

Borough Food & Drink, 12 East 22nd Street; (212) 260-0103; www.chinagrillmgt.com.

BEER B*TCHES!

Tasting Report: Solutions for a Hot Summer Day

Brasserie des Rocs Blonde $9 *** ½
25.4 ounces
Perfectly balanced, beginning with lively citrus, fruit and malt flavors and ending with refreshing hop bitterness.
(Importer: D & V International, Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.)

De Ranke XX Bitter $4.75 ***
11.2 ounces
Brisk and lively with great hop bitterness and saisonlike complexity. (Shelton Bros., Belchertown, Mass.)

Petrus Aged Pale $4.25 ***
11.2 ounces
Complex citrus and herbal flavors, refreshingly tart and sour.
(Win-It-Too, Santa Barbara, Calif.)

Orval Trappist Ale $6.50 ***
11.2 ounces
Spicy, bitter and very dry with a lingering touch of orange zest
and funk. (Merchant du Vin, Tukwila, Wash.)

Corsendonk Abbey Pale Ale $4.50 ** ½
(Agnus Trippel) 12 ounces
Brisk and refreshing with fruity flavors and a crisp bitterness.
(Phoenix Imports, Baltimore)

Brugse Zot $4 ** ½
11.2 ounces
Lightly fruity, smooth and refreshing; Pilsner-like with an ale texture.
(Win-It-Too, Santa Barbara, Calif.)

Affligem Blond $2.10 ** ½
12 ounces
Light, foamy and gulpable with well-balanced malt and hop flavors. (Star Brand Imports, White Plains)

De Koninck $3 ** ½
11.2 ounces
Amber with a malty, mineral earthiness and refreshing bitterness. (Belukus Marketing, Houston)

St. Pieters Zinnebir $12 ** ½
25.4 ounces
Light and lively with floral and spicy citrus aromas and flavors.
(Shelton Bros., Belchertown, Mass.)

BEST VALUE
Grimbergen Blonde $2.35 ***
11.2 ounces
Light, foamy and fresh with lingering fruit flavors.
(Scottish & Newcastle Importers, San Rafael, Calif.)

ahem, new year, new weird, new face of politics

Ron Paul's Bloody Victory
In cyberspace, no one can hear a disembowled libertarian scream
by Chris Thompson
January 8th, 2008 7:09 PM





Lettuce B-Free won't give out her real name; she prefers her World of Warcraft moniker. She grew up on Staten Island and moved to Florida, where she shares an apartment with a friend and works in retail. There are two things that get her up in the morning: online gaming and the maverick libertarian politics of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. "He's an amazing man, and I agree with almost every one of his positions," she says. "I was raised to have a deep respect for the Constitution, and wow, he wants to bring it back!" On December 26, Lettuce B-Free found a way to bring the two together: organizing a Ron Paul rally in the World of Warcraft universe.
"One of our members, who went by the name of whoisronpaul, came up with the idea," Lettuce B-Free says. "And we just jumped on it. . . . So at like three in the morning, me and a bunch of people got together and signed a group charter. And it's been really fun chaos ever since."
Ron Paul's supporters have already distinguished themselves by their unorthodox campaigning—the blimp that's been floating around the South for the last month, the Guy Fawkes Day fundraising blitz. But running a virtual-campaign rally in an Internet gaming site must surely rank as one of the highlights of the season. The word went out through the online magazine World of Warcraft Insider, ronpaulforums.org, and the Wired blog. Soon, hundreds of people pledged to don their chain mail and shake their broadswords for Paul.
Unfortunately, there was one small complication one rarely encounters on the campaign trail: In World of Warcraft, you can get killed, usually by slavering beasts eager to rip you to shreds. Since all the Paul supporters would be playing new characters, they would be weak and all-too-vulnerable to monsters waiting to ambush them on the way to the rally point. In the days before the rally, Lettuce B-Free and a few other organizers hit the World of Warcraft universe, frantically fighting zombies and ogres in order to beef up enough characters to protect the newbies and act as bodyguards during the rally. Meanwhile, other players who hate Ron Paul's politics followed them around, taunting them and spitting on them (virtually).
Finally, the hour arrived: 8 p.m., New Year's Day. Almost 300 characters—barbarians, elves, gnomes, and green, mottled things—assembled at the small town of Kharanos, near the great dwarven city of Ironforge. They had to pick a rally point outside the big cities, because assembling so many characters in a crowded environment would slow the server down. Just before the march, Paul supporters milled around and typed snippets from the Constitution into their computers, where their characters bellowed them as text bubbles in the game.
Dozens of Ron Paul opponents donned characters of their own and milled around the edge of the crowd, where they challenged players to fight to the death.
"Unfortunately, there were folks who were there to harass us and try to stop the march," says Lettuce B-Free. "They were trying to get us to flag for [player vs. player mode], so they could kill us. They were spouting negative things, but we had already decided that we were going to be quiet and respectful and stay focused."
At 8:30, the march began, and Paul's supporters lined up single-file and tramped into Ironforge. Hecklers dogged them along the way, twirling their battleaxes and typing text bubbles like "He can't win," "He's going to ruin the economy," and "A vote for Ron Paul is a vote for socialism." The marchers chanted slogans as they boarded the tram for the human city Stormwind, and then it was on to the hamlet of Goldshare. Because she had pumped up her character to level 19, Lettuce B-Free was too busy fighting off flesh-rippers and other random beasties to look back on the crowd. But in Goldshare, she turned and gawked at what she'd created. "There was just this sea of names," she says. "The entire town was filled. That's when I realized how huge this was."
But soon Paul's supporters stumbled into more dangerous territory, and as fish-human hybrids tore the players to pieces, priest characters frantically worked their resurrection spells to keep the crowd from breaking apart. Finally, they reached Orgrimmar, a ghastly, reeking city of the orcs, which Paul supporters had agreed would serve as a stand-in for Washington, D.C. If they could storm its gates, Lettuce B-Free says, they would be symbolically taking their country back from the Beltway elites. Unfortunately, an army of Ron Paul opponents waited for them. They knew that once they got too close to the gates, all the characters would switch to player vs. player mode, and they could slaughter them at their leisure.
The bloodshed was epic. Orgimmar's guards automatically waded into the crowd and slashed left and right. Poisonous snakes slithered from crevices and sank their fangs into libertarians. Ron Paul opponents charged and struck a blow for the status quo. "I died twice," says Lettuce B-Free. "There was so much chaos. It was a mass battle." But Paul's supporters won the day, as characters breached the gates and stormed the city. The Constitution, it seems, was triumphant.
According to Lettuce B-Free, Paul's supporters plan to storm World of Warcraft again before the campaign is through. They'll have to use a different server, because the strain of accommodating so many characters slowed down the game. But they'll be back, she says. "This was great, because it was a bunch of mature players who were able to express themselves and talk politics." And maybe decapitate a troll or two.

Alan Rabinowitz

December 18, 2007
A Conversation With Alan Rabinowitz
Zoologist Gives a Voice to Big Cats in the Wilderness

By CLAUDIA DREIFUS

Among zoologists, Alan Rabinowitz is known as the Indiana Jones of wildlife conservation. But he is actually more the Dag Hammarskjold of biology.
That is because Dr. Rabinowitz, executive director of science and exploration at the Wildlife Conservation Society, is a kind of international diplomat for big cats — jaguars, leopards, pumas.
For 20 years, he has traveled the world, imploring the power elite of democracies and dictatorships to dedicate large parcels as reserves for these imperiled felines.
In the 1980s, he persuaded the leaders of Belize to establish the world’s first jaguar preserve. More recently, this Brooklyn-born biologist prevailed on the junta in Myanmar to transform 8,400 square miles of forest into the Hukawng Valley Tiger Reserve.
Dr. Rabinowitz, 53, recounts his Burmese adventures in a new book, “Life in the Valley of Death: The Fight to Save Tigers in the Land of Guns, Gold and Greed” (Island Press). An edited version of a two-hour conversation in New York follows.

Q. With so many of the world’s animals in danger, why do you mostly advocate for big cats?

A. Because cats get to the human psyche. People love big cats. If I go to a government and say, “If you don’t do something quickly, you’re going to lose your tigers,” they listen. If I say, “You’re about to lose all your wolves,” they won’t care. But leopards, tigers, jaguars — people have a huge admiration for them,
My real goal is to save large sections of pristine wilderness for all types of wildlife. One way to do that is to make sure that the top predators have enough safe territory to thrive in. Because big cats need so much territory, when you save them, you’re really saving whole ecosystems and you’re saving the other animals down on the food chain. This is what’s called the “apex predator strategy” in conservation.
The other thing I’ve seen is that no government, even if they are doing a lot of development, wants to lose their big cats. Even when you’re talking to the most authoritarian of dictators, none of them wants to be the guy at the helm when the last of his country’s tigers go extinct.

Q. How does a conservationist negotiate with dictators? Do you employ special strategies?

A. I don’t go in with a plan. I just talk from my heart. These guys, they are used to people coming to them with hidden agendas. I think they can see that I don’t have any other than the wildlife.
When I first went to Burma-Myanmar, for instance, there wasn’t a lot of trust there (laughs). I was told, “You don’t look like a scientist.” But the situation for the Burmese tiger was desperate. Between habitat destruction and hunting, they were almost gone. We did surveys, and in a lot of areas where tigers were supposed to be, you saw none. I was pretty blunt about that.
Sometimes, personal things worked for me. In 2003, I was diagnosed with a slow-growing form of leukemia. Some of the toughest leaders in the Burmese military, they just couldn’t fathom why anyone with cancer was repeatedly coming to their country and going into the jungle when in their mind I should be meditating or having a more easy life. “So what if I have cancer?” I told them. “The tigers still have to have a home.” I think my personal situation helped win some trust.

Q. Because of gross human-rights violations, the military government of Myanmar is under economic sanctions from the United States. There are people who wonder how you could work with such a government. What’s your answer?

A. Tigers have no control over what human governments they live under. If we’re going to draw lines on what is an acceptable political landscape for saving wildlife, where can we work? Wildlife always ends up taking a back seat to what’s going on among humans — always. If we’re going to save wildlife, I’ve got to give it a front seat. Nothing we do hurts the people of Burma.
But if I based conservation on what I considered moral subjectivity, I’d be doing the wildlife no favor. And we’d be virtually guaranteeing the extermination of tigers from Burma. They’ve been almost hunted out for their skins and for the traditional-medicine trade.

Q. How are the tigers faring since the preserve was established?

A. Tigers don’t come back so quickly. When you’re down to very low numbers, you have to get a male and female just even meeting. With so few, it’s not easy for them to find each other. Even when you get them meeting, the young stay with the female for about three years. She doesn’t breed again until those young leave her. So if the tigers are coming back, we won’t know it for a few more years.
For the meanwhile — since hunting has been banned and since we’ve started some economic development projects for the local people — there’s been an increase in the prey-species that tigers eat: wild pigs and sambar deer. We’ve set up “camera traps” on animal trails where you can photograph everything that passes. We haven’t seen a lot of tigers yet.

Q. We understand that you’ve been trying to negotiate with the North Koreans to set up a wildlife sanctuary.

A. In the Demilitarized Zone, yes. We think there are a lot of animals in there. It’s forested. And because it’s so heavily fortified, there isn’t human settlement. We reached out to the North Koreans. We thought, why not make the DMZ into a peace park?
We first approached the North Koreans years ago to try to study the Siberian tiger that migrates into there. They wouldn’t let any Americans in. We were able to get one British scientist to visit their capital city, a birdwatcher. They never allowed him out of the city. There’s no story to tell there.

Q. What originally drew you to conservation?

A. As a child, I had this horrific stutter. In school, I was put in what was called the retarded classes. I was very angry that people couldn’t see past the stuttering. From the second grade on, I stopped talking, except to the little green turtle and the chameleon I kept at home.
Talking to the animals, I realized they had feelings. I didn’t know if they understood me. But I saw that they were exactly like me. They weren’t broken, but people mistreated them because they can’t communicate. I thought if these animals had a voice, people wouldn’t be able to crush them and throw them away. When I was a child, I promised the animals that if I ever got my voice back, I’d be their voice.
It makes me feel whole, knowing that I’m allowing more animals to live in this world. Every time I set up a protected area, I feel I’m paying them back for helping me speak. When we got Hukawng established, I thought, all those turtles, otters and tigers, they now have a chance to live.

shibboleth

"Shibboleth” takes its title from the Old Testament story in which the ability to pronounce the word was used by the victorious Gileadites as a test to identify members of the tribe of Ephraim who were trying to sneak back into their home territory. Those who couldn’t say it correctly were revealed as Ephraimites and killed.

Gutai

The Gutai Manifesto
Yoshihara wrote the manifesto for the Gutai group in 1956. The full text of the "Gutai Manifesto" is available in English at the website of Japan's Ashiya City Museum of Art & History [2]. Among its preoccupations, the manifesto expresses a fascination with the beauty that arises when things become damaged or decayed. The process of damage or destruction is celebrated as a way of revealing the inner "life" of a given material or object:
"Yet what is interesting in this respect is the novel beauty to be found in works of art and architecture of the past which have changed their appearance due to the damage of time or destruction by disasters in the course of the centuries. This is described as the beauty of decay, but is it not perhaps that beauty which material assumes when it is freed from artificial make-up and reveals its original characteristics? The fact that the ruins receive us warmly and kindly after all, and that they attract us with their cracks and flaking surfaces, could this not really be a sign of the material taking revenge, having recaptured its original life?...." [3]

Transautomatism

Transautomatism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Transautomatism is a modern style of painting, founded by Friedensreich Hundertwasser. It is a kind of surrealism, which also point of the viewer's fantasy. Different people see different things in the same picture. It is less what the artist wants us to see, more about how we interpret it. The transautomatism is based on the different styles which Hundertwasser developed, e.g. the spirals and drops.

Many of the Dream Last Night

Mental excretions
piling up
creating oily walls that talk
in the thousand languages of touch
Every brick every word
a window
leading between flicking dimensions
a dream
into
a dream
retelling the middle of tales
and letting go
of beginnings
and endings
as loose ouroboro tails
flailing to find one another
to make sense
of senselessness
under the guise
of sleep

the two of us

He knows the number
Of people he’s kissed

I don’t know the number
Of people I’ve fucked

He knows how it feels
When he is in love

I am not sure
That kind of love exists

He is a child who is a man
Who knows how to ask

I am a woman who is a girl
Who stopped asking

He remembers something easy
Without using his memory

I focus to understand easy
By abandoning my memory

He is not innocent
Because no man is

I am innocent
Because everyone is ignorant

from the room next door.

Near by
Huddled in the far
Corner-less
Horizontal wood
Left eye to the floor, seeing gravity
Feeling a long slant of light
Next on the nose
Guiding forward
As arms and legs slide effortlessly
Toward
Some forward
Some center
Now warmer, now less resistant
From wherever it is
You came

Popped Bulb-No ideas-Broken Glass

I can’t imagine
The spell
That took you into your own mind
And told it lies
That told it to love
What isn’t love
That told it to ruin
What wasn’t yours

I can’t fathom
The stories yourself told yourself
So that you could
Tell yourself
To tell others
Whatever fit the moment
A shape shifter
Manipulating the air so that the air could manipulate
The mind
The words are trapezes keeping
All souls up in the air
Bouncing upward in anticipation
In acknowledgment
Of imminent decline

I can’t think of
The way you walked
to prevent your own fall
The steps you took
To claim bodies
To cushion the road beneath you

I never imagined I’d be here
At this juncture
In this space
For these reasons
On this day
With no peace
And no mind
And no imagination to help
Light understanding

Technological singularity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

--was this touched upon by Ken Wilber in Boomeritus? Blade Runner?

The technological singularity is the hypothesized creation, usually via AI or brain-computer interfaces, of smarter-than-human entities who rapidly accelerate technological progress beyond the capability of human beings to participate meaningfully in said progress. Futurists have varying opinions regarding the timing and consequences of such an event.

My breath skipped a beat
But its back in synch
Because nothing turns my head around forever
It all twists back
To the origin

colbert

October 14, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
A Mock Columnist, Amok
By MAUREEN DOWD
I was in my office, writing a column on the injustice of relative marginal tax rates for hedge fund managers, when I saw Stephen Colbert on TV.
He was sneering that Times columns make good “kindling.” He was ranting that after you throw away the paper, “it takes over a hundred years for the lies to biodegrade.” He was observing, approvingly, that “Dick Cheney’s fondest pipe dream is driving a bulldozer into The New York Times while drinking crude oil out of Keith Olbermann’s skull.”
I called Colbert with a dare: if he thought it was so easy to be a Times Op-Ed pundit, he should try it. He came right over. In a moment of weakness, I had staged a coup d’moi. I just hope he leaves at some point. He’s typing and drinking and threatening to “shave Paul Krugman with a broken bottle.”
I Am an Op-Ed Columnist (And So Can You!)
By STEPHEN COLBERT
Surprised to see my byline here, aren’t you? I would be too, if I read The New York Times. But I don’t. So I’ll just have to take your word that this was published. Frankly, I prefer emoticons to the written word, and if you disagree :(
I’d like to thank Maureen Dowd for permitting/begging me to write her column today. As I type this, she’s watching from an overstuffed divan, petting her prize Abyssinian and sipping a Dirty Cosmotinijito. Which reminds me: Before I get started, I have to take care of one other bit of business:
Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn’t have to think about. It’s all George Bush’s fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay.
There. Now I’ve written Frank Rich’s column too.
So why I am writing Miss Dowd’s column today? Simple. Because I believe the 2008 election, unlike all previous elections, is important. And a lot of Americans feel confused about the current crop of presidential candidates.
For instance, Hillary Clinton. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to be scared of her so Democrats will think they should nominate her when she’s actually easy to beat, or if I’m supposed to be scared of her because she’s legitimately scary.
Or Rudy Giuliani. I can’t remember if I’m supposed to support him because he’s the one who can beat Hillary if she gets nominated, or if I’m supposed to support him because he’s legitimately scary.
And Fred Thompson. In my opinion “Law & Order” never sufficiently explained why the Manhattan D.A. had an accent like an Appalachian catfish wrestler.
Well, suddenly an option is looming on the horizon. And I don’t mean Al Gore (though he’s a world-class loomer). First of all, I don’t think Nobel Prizes should go to people I was seated next to at the Emmys. Second, winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don’t need to care about science, literature or peace.
While my hat is not presently in the ring, I should also point out that it is not on my head. So where’s that hat? (Hint: John McCain was seen passing one at a gas station to fuel up the Straight Talk Express.)
Others point to my new bestseller, “I Am America (And So Can You!)” noting that many candidates test the waters with a book first. Just look at Barack Obama, John Edwards or O. J. Simpson.
Look at the moral guidance I offer. On faith: “After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up.” On gender: “The sooner we accept the basic differences between men and women, the sooner we can stop arguing about it and start having sex.” On race: “While skin and race are often synonymous, skin cleansing is good, race cleansing is bad.” On the elderly: “They look like lizards.”
Our nation is at a Fork in the Road. Some say we should go Left; some say go Right. I say, “Doesn’t this thing have a reverse gear?” Let’s back this country up to a time before there were forks in the road — or even roads. Or forks, for that matter. I want to return to a simpler America where we ate our meat off the end of a sharpened stick.
Let me regurgitate: I know why you want me to run, and I hear your clamor. I share Americans’ nostalgia for an era when you not only could tell a man by the cut of his jib, but the jib industry hadn’t yet fled to Guangdong. And I don’t intend to tease you for weeks the way Newt Gingrich did, saying that if his supporters raised $30 million, he would run for president. I would run for 15 million. Cash.
Nevertheless, I am not ready to announce yet — even though it’s clear that the voters are desperate for a white, male, middle-aged, Jesus-trumpeting alternative.
What do I offer? Hope for the common man. Because I am not the Anointed or the Inevitable. I am just an Average Joe like you — if you have a TV show.

The real, the unreal, and the neitherness

Every moment of this waking life
An undertow rumbles
Bringing my heel to meet my face
A close encounter
A tumbling weed going along the road
feeling the stretch that bars the east from the west
That encapsulates the between
Rolling in the sun
Guided by the wind
To a shore blocked by mountains
Higher than aspirations and traceable to the first cause
First cause for alarm

Round about the dream cage
An animal rumbles
Looking for daily bread
Expecting a cut
And turning circles until that very something
Becomes a something found
Something tangible and relieving
Like a pillow
Like a drugless drug
A leaving for a higher nothingness that cannot be
But is

Every day the same is altered but seems to mimic
Yesterday in a broken mirror
providing different paths
Of possibility
A reflection bent
Allowing light to find its own
Despite eyes

Does the devil dare to ask?
To want something good for himself?
Can he expect more than failure?
Can he dream while awake about the death of life or about the life of death?
Can the devil expect a change?
Can the devil repent?

The expanse has shriveled into a diamond
Perfectly cut
But not for sale
A caveat meant as a practical joke
So as to make light of
dead weight
So close in appearance
To seriousness

lately

Lately (1)


Lately the leaves are skipping out on all the green
Going straight from red to brown to red
Orange veins reflect a drowned out sun
Asking us to let her in

Lately a permanent nyctinasty
Has taken hold of every flower
They sleep indefinitely
But still skip out on dying
A sleeping beauty

Lately the tiniest rocks
Are roller balls
Taking paws out towards the sea
They hear the roar of a mother
They instinctively go to the source
In a wind driven tide directing
All lungs to water
In a tide driven wind directing
Air inside of waves

Lately the slight movement of time
Is gathering menacing speed
In drawing together shards of something soft
Back into a whole
That never knew
Until the call
Began the call






Lately (2)


Lately the impossible has shed snake skin
Turned into a night moth
Wider than an owl’s wingspan
Speckled in a vacuous brown
On top of brown dust
Reflecting the moon’s smile back onto her

Lately secrets are illusions
A mirage of whisper
Concealing a loudspeaker on a soapbox
Telling the truth without speaking
Revealing the real because the unreal is not

Lately I wear my insides out
Without an armor to bear
All mushy like oatmeal and nutrition
Malleable in your hands
Easily taken and replaced
Impervious

Lately it gets brighter earlier
The sun is restless
Wakes up in the middle of the night
Feels the hangover of insomnia
But comes out relentlessly
To see
What everyone else does

anchor to the floating

Weightlessness
Is the light
Unhinged
Floating
Both still and moving, something paradoxical
A question
That remains a question
Rhetorical from joy
From not needing the answer, or any answer at all

Happiness
is lead
weighted and connected to the floor
an anchor if
happiness
is still unsure
of its grin if
happiness
is still contemplating the future
is still thinking about all that isn’t
but could
and should
or shouldn’t
or couldn’t become

Said the person to the same person

Maybe I can convince you to convince me
We all need this convincing
A voice
Positive reinforcement
To say
What was already said
To say
What I’m already saying
Out loud, in mumbles, in half sweeping statements
That shatter marble
Crawl underneath covers
Underneath the mattress
The door
Clean through to the other side,
outside
where clarity is achieved
So that someone can convince me
That clarity
Is real
In the realm of gray

home

The center of the web
Is a little whole
Entire
Entirely transparent
The center of the web
Is a little hole
Clarity balancing the weave
Traceless
Backlit until the night
Backs off another hemisphere
Comes close again
To claim its territory
The matchless sky
Hiding complexity behind it
As the mask of maya
Asking
For silk
And death

blame numbers

Stringy sidewalk turning towards the road
asking for direction
while the whole thing spirals
saying both ways are good.

Directionless itself is the direction
all is forward while backwards is just
another attempt to anthropomorphize
the non human in the mind of a human
navigating a four cornered world
pretending to know the softness of the round
but rounds don’t gather momentum
between the pillow and the head.

Allegations of progress
reveal the materiality of time
adding up atoms until a blooming
of minutes past
emerge on the edge of a cycle.
Each lizard eye is open
focusing on two different sides
of one self
not asking which one is right
but knowing both are true
true enough to be recorded and burned away.

Blame the sun because she laughs
without flinching
Blame arrogant selflessness
for thinking there was a self to give away
Blame numbers because they suggest
order in a circle.

Synergistic capsule floating against
a rejecting oil claiming continuity
as a non-chore, as fact, as immutable
against water downed claims of the same
not being the same.
Differentiated outside withers against
the backdrop of another one born,
ten toes and all,
recorded in books bound to outlast
the materiality of feather shrouded skin
basking within telos and incapable of denying
not knowing
just the same.

Variations on a Theme: The Wars of Something and Nothing

Blooming to death
for stasis mud puddles
gathering up the edges to focus
on one deep well.

Birthing the end smell of leaves
caught beneath an angled rock
cutting deeply
embedded miles down.
Round hands pull it out forever
creating lines that extend around the Potomac
forcing the tide’s hand
asking what she can do for
a stolid nonchalance
outfitted in the immovable.

Growing outwards in all directions,
lightless for a shaded mark
of the point
that is no point at all
but the coreless sphere
constantly shape shifting the face of an
octagon times an enneagon
of substancelessness

Nano dirt of the outside
closing in while
atmospheric trouble arouses the purple
arcs that reach further
and further yet
towards a center, a teleology to hold
the reason for the single thought.

conversation. work.

I can't top that.

From: Sent: Friday, October 26, 2007 3:22 PMTo: : RE: hey ho
the last to pretend
that email
will be
meant in creative
form
was you

-wrote i

From: : Friday, October 26, 2007 2:31 PMTo: Alexis : RE: hey ho
I will,
Pretend:
That the Last
E-mail
You wrote-
was meant
to be
Create-
ive
IN fORm

Armenian Issue Presents a Dilemma for U.S. Jews

October 19, 2007

By NEELA BANERJEE
LEXINGTON, Mass., Oct. 17 — On the docket for the weekly selectmen’s meeting here on Monday were the location of park benches, a liquor license for Vinny T’s restaurant and, not for the first time, the killing of 1.5 million Armenians in Turkey 90 years ago.
The debate in this affluent Boston suburb, home to many Jews and Armenians, centered on a local program to increase awareness of bias. The issue was not the program itself, but its sponsor, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish advocacy group, which has taken a stand against a proposed Congressional resolution condemning the Armenians’ deaths as genocide.
“If you deny one genocide,” said Dr. Jack Nusan Porter, a child of Holocaust survivors and a genocide studies scholar who attended the meeting, “you deny all genocides.”
The Congressional resolution has created an international furor and deeply offended the Turkish government, both a key ally of Israel’s and a crucial logistics player for the American presence in Iraq. But as events in Boston suburbs in recent months have shown, it has also put American Jews in an anguished dilemma as they try to reconcile their support of Israel with their commitment to fighting genocide. In the end, the Board of Selectmen here voted unanimously to cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League, as did three other Boston suburbs this week. Three other towns had already done so, with more considering the option.
For many Jews, the issue has involved much soul-searching.
“It’s hard to talk about it because there are two things or more in conflict here,” said Rabbi David Lerner of Temple Emunah in Lexington. “Israel is in a very vulnerable position in the world, and Turkey is its only friend in the Middle East. Genocide is a burning issue for us, now and in the past. It’s something of who we are.”
The House resolution condemning the killings of Armenians as genocide is nonbinding and largely symbolic, but Turkey’s reaction has been swift and furious. It has recalled its ambassador from Washington and threatened to withdraw critical logistical support for the Iraq war.
For Patrick Mehr, a Lexington resident who spoke at the meeting Monday, the overriding priority is condemning the killings, regardless of Turkey’s response.
The next day at his home, Mr. Mehr, the son of a Holocaust survivor, voiced the anger many Jews and Armenians feel toward Abraham H. Foxman, the Anti-Defamation League’s national director. “Abe Foxman, like George W. Bush, is mumbling that it may not have been genocide,” Mr. Mehr said. “Foxman talks about commissions of scholars who should study this. That, to me, rang exactly like Ahmadinejad saying, ‘Let’s have a committee to study the Holocaust.’ Give me a break.”
Jewish leaders have long sought to focus attention on the killings of Armenians, starting with the American ambassador to Turkey in 1915, Henry Morgenthau Sr., who wrote in a cable that the Turkish violence against Armenians was “an effort to exterminate the race.” Several members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who voted for the resolution, including a key sponsor, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, are Jewish.
Several major Jewish groups, like the American Jewish Committee, oppose the resolution, arguing that it is not the best way to persuade the Turks to examine their past.
Mr. Foxman argues that Turkey is the only friend Israel has in the Muslim world, and it has been hospitable to Jews since giving them refuge after they were driven from Europe during the Inquisition.
“Israel’s relationship with Turkey is the second most important, after its relationship with the United States,” Mr. Foxman said. “All this in a world that isolates Israel, and all this can’t simply be waved away.”
Widespread attention to the Anti-Defamation League’s opposition to the resolution came in July, when David Boyajian, an Armenian-American resident of Newton, Mass., wrote to a local newspaper saying that the town’s anti-bigotry program, known as No Place for Hate, was tarnished because of its sponsorship by the Anti-Defamation League.
He wrote that the A.D.L. “has made the Holocaust and its denial key pieces” of the program, “while at the same time hypocritically working with Turkey to oppose recognition of the Armenian genocide of 1915-23.”
The news shocked most local Jews, many of whom have long been active in campaigns against killings in Bosnia, Rwanda and, most recently, Sudan. By mid-August, Watertown, Mass., had decided to end its affiliation with the Anti-Defamation League’s program. On Aug. 17, the board of the New England Anti-Defamation League passed a resolution calling for the national organization to recognize the Armenian genocide. Its regional director, Andrew Tarsy, was fired by the national group the next day.
The clampdown on the local chapter infuriated many Jews in the Boston area. Two members of the New England board resigned, although one has since returned, and many local leaders criticized Mr. Foxman. Newton, whose population is heavily Jewish, voted to sever ties with the Anti-Defamation League unless it changed its position on the resolution.
Mr. Foxman quickly rehired Mr. Tarsy and issued a statement intended to heal what he said were dangerous rifts in the Boston Jewish community at a time when Jewish unity was crucial. The statement did not support the House resolution. The killings of Armenians, Mr. Foxman wrote, were “tantamount to genocide.”
He added, “If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide.”
Some Jews praised Mr. Foxman, whose reappraisal, they said, was uncharacteristic. But other Jews and Armenians said he did not go far enough.
“It denies the intentionality of genocide,” said Joey Kurtzman, executive editor of the online magazine Jewcy.com. Janet Tassel, a congregant at Temple Isaiah in Lexington, said she did not like Mr. Foxman but could not understand how Jews could be fighting over the word genocide when Israeli and American interests are at stake.
“If this resolution goes through, it’s goodbye Charlie for Israel, for U.S. troops in Iraq,” Ms. Tassel said. “It will lead to more anti-Semitism. I’m conflicted about what’s right.”
Dr. Porter, the genocide scholar, said the differing views among Jews on the resolution stemmed in part from whether they saw Israel as particularly vulnerable. “I see Israel as a strong nation,” Dr. Porter said, after speaking for cutting ties to the Anti-Defamation League at the Lexington meeting. “Jews are strong. They don’t have to be intimidated by politics.”
The complex of considerations weighed heavily on Rabbi Howard L. Jaffe of Temple Isaiah, who after weeks of thought decided to back the genocide resolution. “It’s very hard for me to support a position that could be detrimental to Israel,” he said. “But for me as a Jew, I have to take seriously Jewish values, and they require us to do what is right and righteous.”
At the Lexington meeting, nearly everyone praised the No Place for Hate program, which has worked with hundreds of residents in the past seven years.
Some Jewish residents pointed out that the local Anti-Defamation League chapter took a stand for the resolution and should not be punished for the national leadership’s policy; but Vicki Blier, another member of Temple Isaiah, said in a phone interview that the Anti-Defamation League had to be held accountable for its views.
“If this were an organization that were denying the Holocaust, would they be allowed to do anything in town, even if what they are doing is the most beneficial of programs?” Ms. Blier said. “In my experience, Jews are at the forefront in the recognition of injustice. Jews have always stuck their neck out for others.”

life lived behind lids

During a typical lifespan, a human spends a total of about six years dreaming[1] (which is about 2 hours each night[2]).

...as in, yorke p2

True to Form



gas leak dream.


in the garage i pull a bike out and it knocks the gas main conection.

i tried blocking it but every time i get near i cant speak. feel i am suffocating.

panic. family is inside. call the emergency. who is calling the emergency, am i?

feel i am suffocating. i stick a pencil in. a pen. the wrong end of a garden fork.

it still comes out and i have to run out of the garageunable to speak or scream.

i run to th eneighbors but semi collapse on the lawn trying to explain but nothing comes out.

debilitated.

once ive got my breath back i go back in.



rageing egos,
paranoia and
knives in the back will not stop the rising tides,
they are in themselves a form of poison
hanging in the atmosphere.


Thom

...as in, yorke

mental note


disconnected
disjointed
accidental
sketchy
fragmentary
synthesized
impermanent
momentary


Thom

"Repetition as a kind of solipsism"

Marcel Duchamp told an interviewer in 1960, “The idea of repeating, for me, is a form of masturbation.” Whether you find his statement contemptuous or commendatory, it speaks to a particularly 20th-century idea of repetition as a kind of solipsism. As “Déjà Vu? Revealing Repetition in French Masterpieces” at the Walters Art Museum underscores, Duchamp’s 19th-century compatriots had no such qualms about revisiting, or even replicating, a subject.

radiohead's image

i've been published. wahooo

i've been published in issue 79

for more info, please see:

http://www.iotapoetry.co.uk/

brownen outen

1000 grandview

Thursday

What to do? The impasse is still an impasse. The plateau is still the peak from which I can always fall, but can I surpass? Perhaps. The years of narrowing down to affordability, the lack of possibility, and the need for sustainability: is this all about ability or the lack thereof? Are we all the same person wanting the same things for ourselves and thinking similar thoughts behind similar faces? People: variations on a theme? From a distance, are cultures homogenous and noisy enough to sound like a symphony? Or, perhaps, are things slowly but surely pulling away from a calm core of a chorus into chaotic dissonance? Arguably, we are out of harmony with our environment, pummeling past it into the graces of clouds where only imagined immortals once dwelled.

Who cares?

This desk is still a desk. This chair, these clicking sounds that rise up into the air hit the ceiling (cement, not glass) and bounce back down again. False dichotomies have my analytic mind in a vice: meaning versus no meaning, something versus nothing, fatalism versus nihilism.

The middle path…who has discussed it before? Did it start with Aristotle? Maybe Socrates, or a Pre-Socratic Heraclitus? This was discussed by the much revered Buddha and centrists/moderates across the universe. But, is this compromise? Can a vision be so clear as to lead in one direction beyond all the others? The Buddha walked the middle path, but the same time was a rebel. That is to say, he followed an extreme that was radical because it was his own path. Is this what Heidegger called the calling?

Nothingness. Nothingness is still the something that hums like an OM that never gets as simplistic as an ocean’s breath. Nothingness that is the mundane that cannot or will not reveal to me its supposed sacredness. Human ideas imposed upon a world that was not conceived by human ideas…

When we were younger, we imagined that the future might be molded from our attempts and wishes. The future was (was!) a malleable thing and we were (were!) capable of holding it in our hands. That’s right, it in our hands, as if it was an object to be beholden to. Now, the future is no longer an object, but a mirage. A thing we cannot help but plan for (it is predictable), but also cannot count on (it does not exist). Life is unpredictable, or so we are told. Or, so we have witnessed. The random death of a child. The random strike of lightening. Randomness in itself may just be a human misconception. Chance…the human inability to assign meaning to events? Or, is chance instead meaning that is the human misconception: the drive for reason over stretching itself into arenas in which it is not applicable? Perhaps, this is the fourth, fifth, ninth, whatever dimension. Perhaps, this is the unfathomable cube for an ordinary square. What I conceive as my hidden inside might just be a perspective from which I cannot yet gaze.

Regardless, these thoughts are shot. They go nowhere faster than air arrives into lungs and proceed to leave them. Just another electrical wave in the dark. “Just another”? “Just”?

The assigning of value, the grand dreams of a broken ordinary genius.

Henry David Thoreau

“rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth”

Formalism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formalism_(art)

I stole this poem...

Hey Karl Marx!


Hey Karl Marx!
Are you listening?
Can you see it?
Your words are
being taught at
elitist universities
to the childrenof rich white republicrats
while laborersbuckle under
the weight of a system that
they can't beat
Obviously, they have missed the point.


© Wayne Mason 2004

Out of the unparalleled distinction
this young girl grew five heads
Each turned in a cubic direction
with the luckiest facing the clouds
smiling towards rain
evaluating the differences in grey before they inevitably give way to a myriad of
pinhole distinctions
unknown to those
Heads that face west
or east
or north
it truly depends
But only one only knows
up
The anti gravity
But only one only wonders
about the appearance of feet
But she can feel the differences between toes, all jammed together and sometimes
spread, allowing tickling blades of grass to slide between
instances of skin

But only one only wonders
about the contraption of shoes
aiding in walking
only wonders
about this act of running
She feels her legs
Legs?

When in the middle of the city
the only city in the world
and the lights outshine the moon
and the towers of commerce seem to lean together
creating a canopy for the
stone forest
she can still see every star
they cannot seem to hide
nor do they seem to want to hide
because she is the only head
never bowed, but forever face to face
speaking to you

Doldrums he said

Doldrums he said
On the flamingo lit beach
Highlighting a sand bar

Buried bar between
While the grays get angrier
While trying to outshine the inward intensity
Inherent to black
That grows warmer in the heat
That fails to get attacked

Nothing as usual
The game plan going
The wining of the millionth time
The inconsequential loss that never

Really means losing

Adding up to a time pocket
Rounded
At the edge
Secretly writing brightly
Of fuzzed indigenous neon
Unrelenting
In stretched flanks of horizon
Covering
An unmovable inch
Regarded as plastic encased
In further inflammable plastic

Same old same old

As the repetition means growth
As the repetition sparks the slow diamond

Beyond the departing and recumbent eyes of

Rationale
Moving

eat your ADD

September 6, 2007
Some Food Additives Raise Hyperactivity, Study Finds
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Common food additives and colorings can increase hyperactive behavior in a broad range of children, a study being released today found.
It was the first time researchers conclusively and scientifically confirmed a link that had long been suspected by many parents. Numerous support groups for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have for years recommended removing such ingredients from diets, although experts have continued to debate the evidence.
But the new, carefully controlled study shows that some artificial additives increase hyperactivity and decrease attention span in a wide range of children, not just those for whom overactivity has been diagnosed as a learning problem.
The new research, which was financed by Britain’s Food Standards Agency and published online by the British medical journal The Lancet, presents regulators with a number of issues: Should foods containing preservatives and artificial colors carry warning labels? Should some additives be prohibited entirely? Should school cafeterias remove foods with additives?
After all, the researchers note that overactivity makes learning more difficult for children.
“A mix of additives commonly found in children’s foods increases the mean level of hyperactivity,” wrote the researchers, led by Jim Stevenson, a professor of psychology at the University of Southampton. “The finding lends strong support for the case that food additives exacerbate hyperactive behaviors (inattention, impulsivity and overactivity) at least into middle childhood.”
In response to the study, the Food Standards Agency advised parents to monitor their children’s activity and, if they noted a marked change with food containing additives, to adjust their diets accordingly, eliminating artificial colors and preservatives.
But Professor Stevenson said it was premature to go further. “We’ve set up an issue that needs more exploration,” he said in a telephone interview.
In response to the study, some pediatricians cautioned that a diet without artificial colors and preservatives might cause other problems for children.
“Even if it shows some increase in hyperactivity, is it clinically significant and does it impact the child’s life?” said Dr. Thomas Spencer, a specialist in Pediatric Psychopharmacology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
“Is it powerful enough that you want to ostracize your kid? It is very socially impacting if children can’t eat the things that their friends do.”
Still, Dr. Spencer called the advice of the British food agency “sensible,” noting that some children may be “supersensitive to additives” just as some people are more sensitive to caffeine.
The Lancet study focused on a variety of food colorings and on sodium benzoate, a common preservative. The researchers note that removing this preservative from food could cause problems in itself by increasing spoilage. In the six-week trial, researchers gave a randomly selected group of several hundred 3-year-olds and of 8- and 9-year-olds drinks with additives — colors and sodium benzoate — that mimicked the mix in children’s drinks that are commercially available. The dose of additives consumed was equivalent to that in one or two servings of candy a day, the researchers said. Their diet was otherwise controlled to avoid other sources of the additives.
A control group was given an additive-free placebo drink that looked and tasted the same.
All of the children were evaluated for inattention and hyperactivity by parents, teachers (for school-age children) and through a computer test. Neither the researchers nor the subject knew which drink any of the children had consumed.
The researchers discovered that children in both age groups were significantly more hyperactive and that they had shorter attention spans if they had consumed the drink containing the additives. The study did not try to link specific consumption with specific behaviors. The study’s authors noted that other research suggested that the hyperactivity could increase in as little as an hour after artificial additives were consumed.
The Lancet study could not determine which of the additives caused the poor performances because all the children received a mix. “This was a very complicated study, and it will take an even more complicated study to figure out which components caused the effect,” Professor Stevenson said.

A loitering of clouds
Hanging around, light
Intrinsically carefree

Meshell Ndegeocello at the Rose

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Me'Shell_Ndeg%C3%A9Ocello

she jams out around nyc town. twas a pleasure