twitching spasmodically

Cash the dog, 14 November, early morning

2009-11-14T07:28:28Z

Woke up on my pallet in the workroom where I've been staying for a couple of weeks. Got a headache against which I just fetched a couple aspirin. Cash the dog comes in, noses round my makeshift bed inquiringly. He's not used to finding me in this room at night, usually I'm in the bed with the woman and the other dog. In a couple of days I'll be gone from here. I take the tough, old, little dog and rub his old hips. Old hips, I tell him, old hips. Like I'm assuring him his hips are old. In case he did not know. We have this habit. He lets me rub his old hips. And my illusion this rubbing mitigates his arthritis, and the old scar where the Rottweiler chomped him. You're a good dog I tell the dog. We been through a lot together, huh, buddy? Old man. Old man. I'm touching the new livid scars down his side where he chewed on himself a few weeks ago and we had to wrap him in a sweater to stop him chewing there, till he healed. Alopecia, white muzzle, a couple of benign lipidomas, cloudy eyes. I'm talking the dog, not me. We been through a lot buddy I tell the dog. He leans against me on my pallet in the dim room bursting with textiles and devices and tasks in progress. A hidden cavity in the great wall of the city. His tail wags a little and he nuzzles my hand for me to continue petting him. How dare I desist even for a moment. You're a good dog I tell the old dog again, in case he forgot.

Louise Glück's "October"

2009-10-31T17:32:16Z

Today I read Louise Glück's "October". I read it every October. It's an injured reply to violence. (Domestic violence and early family violence is what I guess -- the exact violence is not clear but does not need to be, the poem works anyway.) The poem, about twelve pages long, is sad and beautiful. Available in a chapbook from Sarabande. Glück is not someone I would trust, personally -- I would not want to be her friend or her student, for example. I would not want to be married to or live with her. She's violent her own self, emotionally violent. And takes herself very seriously. Reading between the lines of her poems, the idea of her I get is: very smart, but dramatic and manipulative. I could be wrong entirely and maybe she is a jewel of a person through and through. Years ago I heard her read at LoC at the beginning of her term as Poet Laureate. Sycophants in the audience, sighing after every poem, one sitting directly behind me. A class of students was there probably under compulsion, and they shuffled and whined. She read very well, though, at a lectern in the front of the crowded room. I've read all of her published poems since her second book "The House on Marshland" and her poems continue to move me. They avoid, just barely, excessive drama. They're stark and damaged and they work really well. I'm cautious about Glück (and her disciples). Meanwhile I admire her.

Happy Hallowe'en. Boo!

Porno for pomologists

2009-08-14T18:04:56Z

*hot pomegranate action*
*carnal cornucopia extraordinaire*
*tomatoes romping en deshabille*

We out here

2009-08-13T19:06:07Z

This tag appeared last night on the corner of Cortland and Whipple behind our home.

Notice the CW which stands for Cortland Whipple.

A close-up of the sigil on the far left. That's cryptic to me but probably contains meaning for other passersby. Artist's initials and a personal rune?

It's an ugly decoration on our neighborhood. I am sure the building owner is upset. More about the Latin Kings. "The ALKN has nearly thirty thousand members in the city of Chicago...."

No relation to the Gipsy Kings.

identity

2009-08-11T06:39:50Z

"Abuse is like a disease, placed inside you, forever eating at you, tearing down the walls of identity as fast as you can build them." -- Jameson Lee (letters section, Daredevil comic book, v2 #19)

austerity measures

2009-08-08T01:31:49Z

My debt nears five figures, and I wonder if I could eat Yoda. If I were really hungry and had nothing else to eat could I sneak up behind the little green guy while he was eating a Yoda-snack and conk him on the head then add him to the soup? Would I be a cannibal? I would not want to be a cannibal. What is Yoda's nutritional content? Since he's green, is he a vegetable? What about other humanoid muppets? If I borked the Swedish Chef over the head and made Swedish meatballs, am I a cannibal? Probably. What about Big Bird? One could get many nuggets out of Big Bird. There are people going hungry right here in Chicago and one Big Bird would feed a few city blocks. I guess if we ate him we would be cannibals in spirit. But don't tell me you never looked at Yoda and wondered if he were animal or vegetable.

One of my favorite poets, Stephen Dobyns, wrote a poem about him and his workshop finding and eating Neruda. "....we've eaten this famous poet, and even though he / tasted great and we could probably eat another...."

If I were a chef I would make Swedish Chef noises all day while I worked.

what is a poet?

2009-07-21T18:22:59Z

Joel Brouwer -- whose poems and commentary I read and enjoy -- brings up the question, What is a poet? Well, a poet is a person who thinks intensely and often about the craft of poetry and reads a great deal of poetry, as education toward writing it, and who maybe writes poems as a result. That said, I think to call oneself a poet invites abuse. I remember my buddy Eddie Maloney smirking at me: "Who says you're a poet? What if I'm a poet?" That was years ago but it's an educational image, Ed's smirking face, I will always remember. I write poems and share them with a few dubious souls but I don't go around saying I'm a poet. I read a lot, for pleasure. (Reading is rare these days. It used to be a common thing to do. My parents and grandparents read a lot. Now we have a postliterate society.) I write a little but mostly it's just the occasional rant like this one.

Sotomayor, my two cents

2009-07-13T18:56:12Z

Sotomayor. It's unamerican to concern ourselves about the gender or race of a judge we appoint to the supreme court. We want a judge who is experienced in matters of jurisprudence, has demonstrated she or he is capable of sternness and compassion, and above all enforces -- objectively, consistently -- the laws created by our legislators in whom we hope to trust. If that's Sotomayor I'm all for her. I don't care if she's a wise Latina as long as she's a good judge, and I say so having known a few wise Latinas. (It's interesting that we don't really have a clear view of her stance on reproductive freedom.) In any case I hope the Senators tasked with questioning her credentials do a proper job of it without regard for partisan politics.

washer dryer

2009-07-12T21:51:11Z

Jeanne got a hand-cranked washer that washes clothes with thoroughness yet care using pressure and a modicum of soap. She got a dryer that requires power, but dries by spinning rapidly, not by applying heat, and the dry cycle is brief, about three minutes. It's pretty cool. Apparently this washer and dryer are ideal for laundering -- with gentleness -- delicate items that normally require hand washing. They are energy efficient and we do not have to plug quarter-dollars into them to make them go. Jeanne, working hard, used this washer and dryer to remove various stains from my white shirts, since I am a slob when I eat and apparently cannot stay away from dirt and bicycle grease. She saved three white shirts. Which I am sure I will stain again, because I do not learn.

http://www.laundry-alternative.com/

fireworks, End Result, Matrix, healing power of gay

2009-07-05T06:02:24Z

One of the many things on earth I don't understand is the common fascination with fireworks. Light fuse; retreat while watching intently; explosion. Repeat. But people watch fireworks explode over and over, as if expecting something new. Maybe the next detonation will be different. Maybe the explosion will shape itself as a dragon or a dryad or a dray horse. Maybe the next bomb contains a galleon, a witch, a spider. But even in the very bombastic displays done over DC I never saw a dray horse. And frankly the unglamorous dray horse, like the unglamorous wild turkey, was instrumental in building this American nation. The fireworks should shape themselves as low, squat horses hitched to drays. As fluttering, busy turkeys BANG getting blunderbussed.

Whenever I hear or read the phrase End Result I wonder if I'm being invited to discuss teleology. End Result just sounds pompous. Puffer fish / spiky / danger / fear / aggression / stand back. Try love.

J and I are watching one of the Matrix movies, it is importantly pugilistic, and devoted to artillery and fire. But we were discussing seriously whether the Matrix movies with their emphasis on man pursuing man are a powerful statement about the positive power of gay relationships. It must be so: and I applaud. Those men in the movie spend a lot of time chasing each other, trying to get close to one another, and one of the lessons of the Matrix story is: we need each other. We can't get out of this horrible fix alone. The fighting is bloodless, tender, ecstatic. The Matrix is a series of evolving intimacies. When Agent Smith en masse punches Neo all over Neo's tightly wrapped, trim, fuliginous body it is almost as hot as the wallet retrieval scene in "Sideways".

Those Matrix guys are so getting it on. More power to them.

esophagogastroduodenoscopy, Nigeria, traulism

2009-06-25T19:11:42Z

This morning, esophagogastroduodenoscopy. Rewarded with bright photos of my innards all of which are in working order. Drugged-out post-procedure walk with J to her nearby office, J guiding me. J got me lunch and reviewed matter of factly my new medication and innards photos. Cab ride home with talkative Nigerian who explained how his stuttering cousin in Nigeria is one tough bastard, stays taciturn, swings fists as needed. The second random discussion of traulism in as many days. Yeah, traulism's archaic. I'm bringin' it back.

Hope you all are having a healthy cool day. Peace.

Can't dust shelves without pulling out books and reading from them.

2009-06-12T08:26:33Z

"They were all dead now, Severa and Becan, whom I had never seen; the old man, the dog, Casdoe, now little Severian, even Fechin, all dead, all lost in the mists that obscure our days. Time itself is a thing, so it seems to me, that stands solidly like a fence of iron palings with its endless row of years; and we flow past like Gyoll, on our way to a sea from which we shall return only as rain." -- Gene Wolfe, The Sword of the Lictor

Today, in the afternoon, with nephew baby Ashton

2009-06-02T19:54:43Z

Today, in the afternoon, with nephew baby Ashton. I sing songs, read to him, explain about left foot, right foot. He is bald, I am bald. At age 12 weeks he has slightly more hair than I. He says, globble globble, an observation of considerable prescience. I give him back: globble kaboonk boonk boonk. He says, globble globble glick, which I take to mean he wishes to hear the poems of Louise Glück, so I get some and start reading. He begins to squirm and holler. This is good stuff I assure him. See, she's having trouble with the tomato plants and is reporting her failure directly to God. This could possibly be a little narcissistic but then this lady won a Pulitzer and what do I know. He hollers more and I put away Glück and take out Carruth which he likes better. These some sad poems here little guy I tell the little guy. Some sad and happy poems. He lets off a string of little farts, and then I let off a string of slightly bigger farts. We have much in common.

life

2009-05-27T18:53:44Z

The battery indicator is non-linear.

Words that bug me; puffer fish; Private Pyle; real real

2009-05-24T21:04:06Z

Words that bug me:

modality -- is this the mode of a mode? It's like emphasizing that you have a mode. Congratulations, you have a mode. Even your mode has a mode.

functionality -- the function of a function? The ality? Reality? Really? You really speak this word out loud so other people have to hear it?

methodology -- a study of a method? Where does this leave your modality?

Can a methodology have a modality?

Private Joker, why aren't you stomping Private Pyle's guts out?

It's like being real real. People puff themselves up with ersatz vocabulary. They are like puffer fish. I read or listen to them and think: puffer fish, boom, expand, spiky, stand back.

Dictionary.com has become so clogged with adverts, it's almost unusable.

Yes, I woke up on the wrong side, why? Where's the cottonpickin' coffee?

PSA / old iMac / Airport Classic / DLink router / connect Phoebe

2009-02-27T14:06:55Z

This is a public service announcement. When you're with your dollface to upgrade her old iMac, what she's named Phoebe, with an old Airport Classic wireless adapter you bought for her on eBay (because an Airport Extreme won't go inside an old iMac from 2002), and you can't get Phoebe to connect to your DLink DIR-655 router, and you're both getting frustrated, then you should know the solution is to take the router out of B / G / N mode and instead set it to transmit only in B / G mode. You should say to your dollface, Dollface, I got this. Then go over to the router, call up its administrative interface, go into wireless options, and set the router to transmit in B / G mode, and then Phoebe's got internet.

Keywords:
iMac 800MHz PowerPC G4
Mac OS 10.4.1.1
Apple Part # M8535LL/A
Original Apple Airport Card 802.11b
Apple Part # M7600LL/A
DLink DIR-655 Xtreme N Gigabit Router
dollface
Phoebe
internet

You crazy, gotta-have-it-all gals. rant warning language warning

2009-02-12T23:33:47Z

Fellas, here you go. From MSNBC, 5 things men should know about women

The gist of the article is -- are you sitting down? -- don't be a jerk. I'll recapitulate the five don't-be-a-jerk points the article articulates.

First, the headline: Gals like looks and smarts, but love and dependability also important

(Who knew? You crazy, gotta-have-it-all gals.)

Then the five things you should know:

1. Offer money, love and dependability.
The article says, "Money and character are important to women."

The article begins with money. All righty. The headline introduces the importance of money, but then the following three paragraphs barely mention the filthy, filthy lucre that greases most relationships. Curious.

Because we can't just come out and say that women are gold diggers.

"Offer money" to women. Does that boggle anybody else? Hey baby. Here's a c-note. Let's go to the fuckin opera.

The author of this article -- Jeanna Bryner of MSNBC -- is too whitelivered to articulate the equation Guy with money = Attractive to women.

Instead she implies that much in her coy headline, then changes tack:

"A survey of more than 5,000 U.S. couples published in the journal Social Forces in 2006 suggested women are happiest in their marriages when men show a high level of emotional engagement: expressing positive emotions; being attentive to their wives' needs; and setting aside time for activities focused specifically on the relationship."

Sure, that's all quite true -- and quite apart from the important matter of money in a long term relationship.

You need a partner who is financially responsible and who can contribute. Love is sweet but you need bread with it. The author's point was really two points -- 1) be involved; 2) contribute money -- bundled into one, and was delivered in a sly, unfocused manner. There was a better way to write it.

Already, after reading the first point, the article has made me angry and confused. Why am I reading MSNBC anyway? I was asking for heartache.

2. Practice saying 'thank you'.
What kind of Neanderthal never says thank you to his sweetie? And what woman would put up with such an ungrateful punk? Are there any couples out there who truly exist in this mode?

Oh, wait.

3. Don't be jealous.
Yes. Be charming, not jealous. You get better results. Many guys take a while to figure out this one. Many never do. Point to MSNBC.

4. Leave aggression on the field.
Many guys take a while to figure out this one too. Another point to MSNBC. It's a sign of maturity to use strategy rather than aggression to achieve goals. Many boys never reach this level. That's why they're still boys at age 50.

(Most times anyway you need a combination of strategy and boldness to succeed -- at least, that is the only way I ever accomplished anything meaningful.)

This point rubs me wrong since subtle aggression is the basis of bullying. A bully is smallminded and cowardly, yet often we let him or her achieve quite a lot. This provides the illusion that bullying is productive and acceptable.

5. Watch her heart.
The article delivers this advice literally: if you are a guy who's partnered with a woman, you should, um, keep a general gauge of her health. You needed an article to tell you that.

Check your cupcake. Does she gasp and wheeze after climbing a flight of stairs? Does she eat sticks of butter for breakfast? If so, take her to a doctor.

"Your job, men: Make sure your sweetie gets regular checkups and takes care of herself."

Cause she can't handle this herself. Fellas, take care of your little lady.

OK, you gold digging harpies, you cloddish rakes, now you have the information you need to endure a longterm, romantic, heterosexual relationship.

Have our standards sunk so low that we need a printed reminder to be a decent person?

P.S. Cannot do the black girl lateral head wag. My entire torso wags and it looks dumb. But I'm pretty good at saying Oh no you di'n.

P.P.S. Should I drop all pretense of being a wellspoken young man and give over to my natural inclination to curse like a sailor? You should hear me stomping round the house. It's cocksucker this, cocksucker that, all day long.

AWP conference / Chicago language warning / rant warning

2009-02-11T05:38:01Z

The AWP conference happens in Chicago this year beginning tomorrow. The AWP conference -- a gathering of sensitive egos; a horrible communal cocksucking. The scheduled sessions have titles like

The Sister Art(s): Toward A Feminist Ekphrasis

Can't miss that one.

One time I was on a date, a first and only date, with a young academe PhD candidate. She was ... 32? 34? She met me and was dissatisfied immediately. Was tetchy the entire evening. I tried a couple of jokes. Bought us drinks. Tried a couple of funny stories. She just looked at me. She did not have any stories to tell. She talked about intertextuality and ekphrasis and agonism. I mean she forcibly shoved these clunky words into our conversation. I nodded and replied in kind b/c, hell, I know about the terms and a little about the ideas behind them, not via the academe but just from my sloppy variegated reading.

Agon means a struggle, I told her. What's agonism? A struggle about the struggle? She bristled.

Except for intertexuality. What the %$#@ is intertextuality? I don't even want to know. If I even think about intertextuality I will become a lesser person. A lesser reader.

Instead I can orbit the periphery of the conference and meet up with a few writer pals in a shitty little dive where they serve sour mash in mason jars. I'm OK with that.

... Nelson Algren, you know. Wonder if some of these academicians at AWP ever read any Algren or if they give a damn about good stories or good poems or if they're brave enough to have any love in their hearts at all.

Ever read Nelson Algren? I recommend "Neon Wilderness".

2009-02-09T23:56:16Z

Interviewers: Do you feel that any critics have influenced your work?

Nelson Algren: None could have, because I don't read them. I doubt anyone does, except other critics. It seems like a sealed-off field with its own lieutenants, pretty much preoccupied with its own intrigues. I got a glimpse into the uses of a certain kind of criticism this past summer at a writer's conference — into how the avocation of assessing the failures of better men can be turned into a comfortable livelihood, providing you back it up with a Ph.D. I saw how it was possible to gain a chair of literature on no qualification other than persistence in nipping the heels of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Steinbeck. I know, of course, that there are true critics, one or two. For the rest all I can say is, "Deal around me."

Sunday

2009-02-08T18:57:42Z

From today's rotten.com:

>>>>Boy Scouts founded by Lord Robert Baden-Powell, a man who enjoyed seeing naked boys swimming just a little too much.

Dangling modifier? Swim, my little darlings! Oh, swim!

>>>It is odd that such a homophobic organization would be founded by a repressed homosexual.

Not really.

That's really funny but it's totally disgusting.

2009-02-07T19:39:46Z

Ham juice
J: I have a juicer. I don't know if you knew that.

E: We can get some juicing oranges.

J: Oh, it will juice anything!

E: Let's juice a ham. Let's put in a ham and juice a ham.

J: That's disgusting. That's really funny but it's totally disgusting.

E: We could have ham juice.

How does that grab you?
On a Saturday afternoon Jeanne is puttering round the apartment doing home improvement things and I'm wasting time on my computer and we are listening to Nancy Sinatra sing to us. You know that song Kind of a Woman?

Well I'm a wine drinking, fast thinking, eye winking kind of a woman, just a-lookin for a cool headed unwedded serious kind of a man.

J: I don't wanna hear any whiny, woe is me, I'm smart and intellectual but I'm so depressed, female singers for a while, that OK? No more Cowboy Junkies. If I hear one more Cowboy Junkies songs....

E: OK. How about Nancy Sinatra? Except we'll skip that first song, Bang Bang My Baby Shot Me Down.

J: No, that's a good one. Play that one. That song was in Kill Bill.

Continuing to have trouble
I'm a grouchy old man who's having trouble adjusting to a postliterate, postmanners society. Pardon the irascible LJ posts of late. Returning soon to our regularly scheduled hi-jinks. Hope you all are having a mellow & relaxing Saturday.

Wait, one more
I'm gonna take the entire cottonpickin' MS Windows Vista development team and tar and feather them in the town square. What's right is right but you ain't been right yet.

Chicago and dog poop

2009-02-06T15:48:35Z

Recently Chicago Trib columnist Erin Zorn wrote about dog poop. Chicagoans responded. A scrum developed. Having strong feelings on the topic of responsible dog ownership, I joined in:

http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2009/02/it-may-be-heresy-but.html

Mostly I'm depressed about the illogical arguments that people put forward. For example, horse owners don't pick up their horse's poop, and my dog does not poop on your welcome mat, and furthermore I don't expect you to pick up poop from raccoons, deer, possums, or squirrels, and dog poop is natural fertilizer anyway, so I should not be expected to pick up my dog's poop, especially using only a thin, flimsy, plastic garbage bag. (from Brian Stooka, of Chicago)

Or, that people who expect you to pick up your dog's poop are micromanagers. (Fred, formerly of Chicago, now a suburbanite)

(Fred also plays the tolerance card. Go Fred!)

Meanwhile, Jim of Chicago goes off on a bizarre tangent: Relax, it's just dog poop and if the rats are carrying it away then, even better. Who cleans up after the deer? The raccoons? Does a bear poop in the woods? Who gives a poop? People pay attention to your own lives. I saw some video the other night of a man who punches another man. The victim falls, hits his head on a car bumper. Meanwhile, no one does anything, not even a single call to the police. Finally, the owner of the car shows up, moves the man's body and drives off. The owner of the store ,where this happened, finally comes out sees what happened and calls the police. The man is taken to the hospital where he dies a few hours later. Where where you people then? No one interfered or called the police or even an ambulance. Meanwhile some well meaning "micromanagers" are worried more about dog poop. What is news worthy today?

Jim and Fred, and Brian Stooka -- the difference is, deer, possums, squirrels, raccoons, and bears are not domesticated animals in the care of humans. Also, poop from these creatures appears rarely on our city's sidewalks. Dog poop on the other hand is abundant. Scooping your dog's poop is a small, considerate thing you can do to improve, even slightly, the lives of your neighbors.

Plato or Socrates?

2009-02-05T03:28:35Z

Was it Plato or Socrates who said "Know thyself"? Or someone else entirely?

If it were not Socrates -- whose name I always mentally pronounce Bill and Ted style -- then my horoscope contains an error:

http://www.freewillastrology.com/horoscopes/taurus.html

as he / language warning

2009-02-04T03:03:25Z

I am a little disappointed in the New Yorker. The Feb 2, 2009 issue contains a Letter From Tehran which edifies us with an account of a "dissident economist's attempts to reform the revolution". By Laura Secor. I have not read the whole thing. It's a little too much packaged New Yorker tidy for me. It describes a situation but it doesn't hit me in the gut. Not much in the New Yorker hits me in the gut any more. Never mind. That's between me and the New Yorker and is not important to anybody else. Some of the poems hit me in the gut. Muldoon's doing his job. And there's a good fiction story sometimes. Never mind. I was reading this Letter From Tehran by this lady, I'm sure she's smart and educated and all that, but, she writes:

A retired police commander told me that officers who, like him, had been trained in police academies .... blah.

Holy dogshit. Come on now. I used to count on the New Yorker to inform my sensibility of English usage. Now these pansies can't get either their verbs or their pronouns right.

I know, if I got time to write about this grammar stuff, I got it good, right?

Pansies. Christ.

Obama speech sparks misuse of enormous proportions

2009-01-23T18:12:55Z

Go Mary Schmich.