Zeitgeist Spam

In the House of the Hangman 293 & 294

Such “information is the prosthesis that props up the obsolete body” … “gathering it satisfies the body’s outmoded Pleistocene program.” The immolated animal is never a wild animal. The soiled asses of “angels” touch my lips. “You love, I love, he love, she love. What does all this loving make?” A, B, C. 11 ounces, 13 ounces, 11 ounces. All well under the bell curve of 20 weeks. At the same moment as what, workers in yellow jumpsuits with badges on their shoulders trot among yellow buildings as yellow cars hum along pine-lined roads. Yellow “promotes clear thinking.” Inside the compound’s windowless factories, an army of (yes, yellow) robots works 24/7. “On a factory floor as big as a football field you might see four people. It's basically just robots reproducing themselves.” Boys: a little green arrow pointing at their balls. This is where nomads fall into the play

that’s one paragraph / the performance is something else and this is where huge pine a quarter-mile off floats. So that’s a uterus! Protesters have entered Lewisham Town Hall. We know only through our bodies, but we don’t know how our bodies know. This is where they have concentrated you. Light coming into sky above black plane / of ridge, silver of planet next to leaf / in foreground, wave sounding in channel: light coming … sounding in channel. So why don’t we get going – we have a well-financed lack
          of our own self-importance. Psychic powers look for a cardiopuscular elective compulsion. To paint a sheet of cardboard blue. To join thousands of others. To hold it overhead. To turn a dry gulch into a raging river. Species means guilt. They blindfold you and toys come out. Unquote comma, a giant painted Buddha / / his hands that look / like feet / / his feet / gargantuan. A, B, or C? SMELLS LIKE BACK OF

OLD HOT RADIO. “Relax, stand at attention, and. Purple snake stands out on Porcelain tiles.” “How many of these bicycles could J. Paul Getty buy?” “I stepped into the Hybrid Zone and drew the Ace of Diamonds.” Who wants to live in a place where transdimensional spaceworms can appear in the sky and blast superheated steam straight down onto innocent earthlings? Henceforth, a “state of emergency” … inexplicable … we went to the laundromat down the street and dried about 10 garbage bags of laundry … any really you want go to mixed on me. These pictures appeared on the websites of the most important daily papers. It goes without saying that, whatever will happen, we’re proud of what our novel is doing in the streets. Omnia sunt communia! Give him a minute with a road map and he will solve the mystery of bloodshot eyes. It all boils down to praxis, people.

To take the elements of music and “use them all with equal importance,” rather than subordinating some to others, was nothing less than “a spiritual and democratic attitude toward the

world.” Stockhausen would no more subordinate musical parts to the whole than he would sacrifice individual lives to an abstract cause, or expropriate one person’s labor for the benefit of another. For Stockhausen,

the emancipation of musical dissonance is, at a formal level, a kind of parallel to the emancipation of the oppressed in the world. It doesn't actually free anyone, of course, but love’s a terror, in town and out of town too.

[Note: Sources: 293. Stelarc, as quoted in Jane Goodall, “The Will to Evolve”, in Stelarc: The Monograph (ed. Marquard Smith); Marcel Hénaff, The Price of Truth: Gift, Money, and Philosophy (tr. Jean-Louis Morhange); Nathaniel Mackey, “Ghede Poem”, in Paul Hoover, Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology; JBR, re the triplets, whom I just met via ultrasound this morning; Jason Clenfield, “Fanuc: The Secretive Giant Eating an Industry’s Profits”, at Bloomberg Businessweek, 24 Nov 010, via Geoff Manaugh, “The Robot A-Z”, at BLDG/BLOG, 29 Nov 010; JBR, triplets again; David Shapiro, “Tracing of an Evening”, in Hoover;ae Armantrout, “Necromance”, in Hoover; JBR, stuck on the same sublime; Richard Seymour, “Protesters storm Lewisham council meeting on cuts”, at Lenin’s Tomb, 29 Nov 010; Henri Atlan, The Sparks of Randomness Volume I: Spermatic Knowledge (tr. Lenn J Schramm); Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, “Alakanak Break-Up”, in Hoover; Stephen Ratcliffe, “11.29”, at Stephen Ratcliffe, 29 Nov 010; Bruce Andrews, “Bomb Then, Bomb Now”, “Stalin’s Genius”, “Species Means Guilt”, in Hoover; Bill McKibben, “350 EARTH pulls off world’s biggest art project”, at GRIST, 29 Nov 010, via Timothy Morton, “Hyperart about Hyperobjects”, at Ecology without Nature, 29 Nov 010; Jerome Rothenberg, “The Treasures of Dunhuang: Performance Version”, at Poems and Poetics, 29 Nov 010; JBR, who else? Da boyz; Edward Ruscha, SMELLS LIKE BACK OF OLD HOT RADIO, 1976, as seen at Tom Clark, “Signage (II): Edward Ruscha: Word Works”, at Tom Clark Beyond the Pale, 29 Nov 010; Barrett Watten, Progress, in Hoover; Graham Harman, “from Pepperdine University”, at Object-Oriented Philosophy, 29 Nov 010; JBR, re: Christine Hume, “Some Capacities and Fallacies of Literary Hybridity: A Card Game”, at Poets.org, via “American hybrid, stay away from me-ee”, at Harriet, 29 Nov 010; w Phil Plait, “Storm Sign”, at at Discover Magazine, 28 Nov 010; Paul Virilio, Unknown Quantity; JBR;Charles Bernstein, “The Klupzy Girl”, in Hoover; Wu Ming, as quoted in Jodi Dean, “Our novel Q clashes with the Italian police | Wu Ming Foundation”, at at I cite, 29 Nov 010; David Lehman, “The Difference Between Pepsi and Coke”, in Hoover; JBR (cf. Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope, on Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach”. 294. Robert Archambeau, “C.S. Giscombe's Emancipation of the Dissonance”, at at Samizdat Blog, 30 Nov 010; C. S. Giscombe, “Prairie Style”, as quoted in Robin Tremblay-McGaw, “Two Prairie-Style Poems from C. S. Giscombe”, at at X-Poetics, 20 Feb 09]

I hope we have a Barnaby or two here, too

If the Metropolitan Police were wondering how their heavy-handed tactics went down with schoolchildren, all they need to do is listen to what 15-year old Barnaby had to say on the weekend at the Coalition of Resistance conference:

 

{Note: via ANTHEM]

Obama thinks he's Nick Clegg (or, he really IS an useless asshole)

According to the LA Times, " President Obama's proposal on Monday to freeze federal workers' pay was an unexpected announcement that represented the first in a series of White House moves to seize the initiative from Republicans on the economy." Apparently, he he's got a Lib Dem backbone. 

"The hard truth is that getting this deficit under control is going to require broad sacrifice," Obama said from the White House. "And that sacrifice must be shared by the employees of the federal government." Translation: Fuck you, little people. 

"No one is served by our government participating in a 'race to the bottom' in wages," said Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO. "The president talked about the need for shared sacrifice, but there's nothing shared about Wall Street and CEOs making record profits and bonuses while working people bear the brunt.""

I guess this is the New World Order, after all.

In the House of the Hangman 292

Metaphors for example are algorithmic, they are a set of instructions that produce an end result, and this morning I have a gas heater pointed directly into my bathroom, to the idea of gusto. I do what I can, and stumble much of the time. Most poison frogs don’t manufacture their own poison; they ingest other poisonous creatures then sequester the poison in their skin, where it acts to deter predators. Eventually the soles of the feet will infect the palms of the hands with their hiddenness

so the woman at the bodega had stapled the bag top, scissors-sliced airholes. Safetypins jabbed into my shoulders should enable me to fly soon. The second thing one asks is, like how when someone dies, they divide into two. I’ll buy a cheap rusted car and a pistol and drive south. Indeed, in some ways these castles are almost literal embodiments of the frontispiece to Hobbes’ Leviathan. I still don’t know what the Great Dragon is, which is very disappointing since she says show me again your spine potato IF YOU’VE CAUGHT FIRE, or found yourself lost in unfamiliar woods

or been given the task of ruling several million people, or invented the Phillips-head screw. The travelers’ goal is the goal of all cinema. “With the dark trees silhouetted and the birds aflame / It just feels like love / It really does / I don’t know.” And with the dogs came two homeless men, with wild, red beards and wild, red faces, and one of us had the idea of setting them up in the hot dog business. In a recent study, scientists discovered that mountains are actually made of granite, not clumps of yarn and glue.

[Note: Sources: Robert Jackson, “Tim Morton’s Algorithmic Talk + Aesthetics Without Meaning”, at Algorithm and Contingency, 28 Nov 010; Traci Lynn Matlock, “this morning …”, at The Noumenon Revelation, 28 Nov 010; Richard Lopez, “living in stereo”, at Really Bad Movies, 27 Nov 010; Dave Munger, “All-Nature, All-Toxic”, at SEED, 24 Nov 010; Bill Knott, “Secret Places”, “Mimed”, at in DROPPING SYLVIA PLATH ON HIROSHIMA AND OTHER NEW POEMS 12:46 p.m., EST (USA), November 27, 2010; Denise Duhamel, “Bury”, at 2nd Avenue Poetry, 3; “the surreal treehoppers”, at Why Evolution Is True; Marisa Crawford, “The Haunted House”, as quoted in Lily Ladewig’s review of Crawford’s The Haunted House, at NOÖ Journal, 12; Brian Allen Carr, “Running the Drain”, at NOÖ Journal, 12; Jon Beasley-Murray: “castell”, at Posthegemony, 25 Nov 010; Blue Highwind, “The Last Airbender”, at Planet Blue, 27 Nov 010; Andrea Rexilius and Susan Scarlata, as quoted in Erin McNellis, “New Pony: A Horse Less Anthology”, at NOÖ Journal, 12; Luke Bloomfield, review of Emily Kendal Frey & Zachary Schomburg, OK, Goodnight, at NOÖ Journal, 12; Adrian Ivakhiv, “cinema as Prospero's organic machine”, at immanence, 28 Nov 010; Dorothea Lasky, as quoted in Leigh Stein’s review of Lasky’s Black Life, at NOÖ Journal, 12; Eugene Thomas, “Mysterious Mustard Kings”, at NOÖ Journal, 12; Charles du Preez, “Claustrophobia”, at NOÖ Journal, 12]

In the House of the Hangman 291

The second thing one asks is, “What the bloody hell is all that ornamentation on the thorax?” (Note that the “balls” on the antenna-like structure aren’t eyes, but simply spheres of chitin.) If these are sensory bristles, they may have an unknown tactile function: All the unseen / valves / of the night / click open, / / a blue-violet /

pour down. Your friends have been nice—in a tunnel—a woman leading you up to where the black sun comes from, clay and silt. Everything’s slow, animating the tumbleweed, running on ¼ tank now. I was a psychic Ritalin child. Fig trees, for instance, just appeared between the stones. I used the WEAMOD CC2007 “state of the art

ground based silver iodide generator and orgone energy transmitter designed for seeding orographic clouds.” Just by walking in we make it happen, a carny moment holding its own eerie glow. I mean, what is it about a world spinning on its one good leg, or eating clear around the sleeping worm of the apple, when all I had to do this morning to feel the weirdness was walk down the hill?

[Note: Sources: “the surreal treehoppers”, at Why Evolution Is True; Monica Youn, “The Subject Ignatz”, as quoted in Steven Fama, “cat and mouse … and poetry!”, at the glade of theoric ornithic hermetica, 26 Nov 010; Rauan Klassnik, “Dreaming”, at Coconut 14; wJed Rasula, “The Pomps of the Subsoils”, at Coconut 14; Jeffrey C. Alfier, “Surveyed by a Sun Threading Machine Shop Windows”, at The Spot Lit(erary) Mag(azine) Site; Laurel Ann Bogen, “Death Valley 6.2”, at The Spot Lit(erary) Mag(azine) Site; JBR; Stephanie Berger, “Conversation: Pawn’s Eye View”, at Coconut 14; JBR;Adam Aitkin, “At Rozelle Asylum”, as quoted in Michelle Cahill’s review of Aitkin’s Eighth Habitation, at Jacket 40; Bart Bridger Woodstrup, as quoted in Anna Elena Eyre, review of Predictions (ed. Cara Benson), at Jacket 40; Eileen Myles, and CA Conrad, in Myles’ review of Conrad’s The Book of Frank, at Jacket 40; Graham Harman, “weird country”, at Object-Oriented Philosophy, 27 Nov 010]

Great Photo

[Note: Can't find out who took this. Every site I find it on says "via ...". To the photographer: Thank you!]

60

Today I'm 60. According to the CDC if I'm average I have 20 yrs to go. That means I'm running on 1/4 tank. How many more poems?

Kathy Runs the Voodoo Down

"How many letters in Bank of America? How many letters in Abraham Lincoln? ... Think about it."

In the House of the Hangman 290

There will be no social solution to the present situation.

(Shape. Shape and appendages. Shape and head; climbing. Shape, black bear, no real body. Shape, colouring, white and grey stone. Shape inside a heart effect, a real heart. Shape, it has no head, part of a tail, more nearly a moth with open wings, colour has nothing to do with it.)

First, because the vague aggregate of social milieus, institutions, and individualized bubbles that is called, with a touch of antiphrasis, “society,” has no consistency.

(Yes. Yes. Yes, all of it again, these white parts would be the eyes and mouth I suppose. Yes, all of it looks like an abstract of some sort … you see the veins, different muscles, veins are usually in red. You try to allow for everything, but something unexpected comes up, things don’t go your way.)

Second, because there’s no longer any language for common experience.

(No. True. False. False. False. False. False. False. Not especially. Uh, not really. False. No. Um, no. I guess that’s true. Not really. Uh, no. No. False. No, but what a convoluted question! Of course not, that would be crazy. Not really. Uh, no. Yeah. True. False. True. Uh, false. No. Some of it. True. No. No. Uh, true.)

And we cannot share wealth if we do not share a language.

(Does the comedy bob? The Apocalypse owns the quantum. Will the Apocalypse punt? Its synonym shapes a mountain bitmap. The foam cooperates. The nonsense stares across the tree! Whatever longest courtesy. Expect the end of the world to be opposite the asterisk. The end of the world flips on top of the tree. A disgust loses? Hell staggers! Why does a future bell the biggest pin? Why can't the screw boil opposite the Buddha? The liquid monitors on top of the excess. After this story reacts the preferred broadcast. This story plays before the glove. The end supposes this story. A telescope elects the end.)

It took half a century of struggle around the Enlightenment to make the French Revolution possible, and a century of struggle around work to give birth to the fearsome “welfare state.”

(Yes, I think that this is cold, but I’m not completely sure. I suppose that it does. Yes, I think that this is heavy, but I’m not completely sure. Yes, I always have to carry it far. I can’t really speak for them. Yes, I think that this is where we get off, but I’m not completely sure. The blue one, I think. We are just having a little chat.)

Okay, a horse charge is quite a specific term, as a spokesman for the Metropolitan police said yesterday.

(True, now that you mention it. False. False. False. False. No, false. I suppose. True. Not particularly. Uh, could happen. False, well, maybe sometimes. False. False. False. False (why would they be watching me?). No, not really. True. Probably true. Uh, probably. I wouldn’t say so. False. True. Depends. Absolutely not. True. False. False. Uh, false I guess. False; I think we’ve done that one already. False. False. That’s probably true. Huh? True. True. True. True. True. Uh, maybe — probably not. False. Uh, sure. Uh, no. True. Probably. False. Isn’t that the definition of culture?)

I made the crying gesture (index fingers moving from corner of the eye down the cheeks): “this is me weeping for the banks.”

(“Of all punctuation signs, one is not exactly like the others: the colon. Neither wholly punctuation nor wholly conjunction, it has long posed a problem for me in writing. All the other signs, more or less, mark breaks in the rhythm or inflections in tone of voice; there is no sign except the colon that reading aloud cannot render acceptably. But in the colon another function lies in wait, an active function of elimination; it marks the place of a mini-breakdown in speech, a breakdown where a superfluous conjunction has disappeared life and limb in order to assure the two members of the sentence that it connected a more dynamic, seemingly electric contact: in the use of the colon there is always the trace of a small short-circuit. It also marks the beginning, within the connected discourses, of the transgression of the telegraphic style; a statistical study would no doubt reveal the scant use ancient writers made of it (how far back does it go, anyway?) as well as its growing frequency in modern texts. Any impatient style preoccupied with swiftness, any style that tends to explode intermediary links, is especially attached to it, as to a carburetor, peremptory and expeditious.” Burning off excess. The release of fiery phlogiston. Ardour’s fulmineous perseverance. The open road like a capacious and unladen table.)

Some of my colleagues look like old scarred samurai warriors covered in blood. On the inside.

(Uh, I wouldn’t say unusually. Uh, true I guess. Not really. No. Well, yeah. Not recently. Yes, sure. I don’t think so. False, I guess. True. That’s probably true. True. No, that sounds scary.)

The social networking giant Facebook is a few steps away from trademarking the word face.

[Note: a “Bocage” for Tom Clark. This new form demands that I drop the ITH tripartite haiku-y thing. Sources: The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection, as quoted in Pierre Joris, “The Coming Insurrection”, at Nomadics, 26 Nov 010 (in which PJ writes: “An excellent day-after Thanksgiving read — cleans & clears the head, the palate & the gut from all the turkey-triptophane induced somnolence.”); Dan Farrell, The Inkblot Record, as quoted in Derek Beaulieu, “Pulled off my shelves #10: ‘It looks like ink spilled on a piece of paper’”, at Lemon Hound, 26 Nov 010; Craig Dworkin, “Legend (II)”, as quoted in Beaulieu; George Wood, “Random Paragraph Generator”, at Wow That’s Fun!; Christian Bök, “Busted Sirens”, as quoted in Beaulieu; PE, “Mounted police vs. students”, at ANTHEM, 26 Nov 010; Jodi Dean, “Conquer and divide”, at I cite, 26 Nov 010; Julien Gracq as quoted in John Latta, “Fragments in the Ostensorium”, and Latta himself, at Isola di Rifiuti, 22 Nov 010; Timothy Morton, “Graham Tells It”, at Ecology without Nature, 25 Nov 010; “Facebook looks to trademark the word ‘face’”, at BBC News, 25 Nov 010]

Happy Thanksgiving!

[Note: lifted from Sina Queyras, "I've got strangeness that jingle jingle jangles...", at Lemon Hound, 25 Nov 010. It's a really interesting post about the game this shills for, etc., and should be read. I'm happy just to watch this mofo, however, and channel the Wicked Witch of the West: Ohhhhh, what a world, what a world. ... ]