Wednesday, March 29, 2006

alas
(via littl*hits dot com slash upload*d_imag*s)


On my victrola- Shon*n Knif*.


Victorian Sappho.


"I'm writing part of an extended poem, as an experiment...employing six modern and four ancient languages... Each line of the poem contains neologisms, born by extruding words through the declensions of another language..." --T*d Chiang, Stori*s of Your Lif* and Oth*rs (2002), "Und*rstand"


"Even when literary journals do publish experimental work, Kuzmin argued, they do it for "Soviet" reasons.." (via Bookninja)


Tuesday, March 28, 2006

"The first verse - bismi'llah al-rahman al-rahim "In the Name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful!" - is composed of 19 letters in Arabic....the entire Qur'an were generated from the first point."


"We've stared at this for hours and feel empowered and energized."


"Top Ten Things That Could Finally Make George W. Bush Impeachable."


An Umbrist rant from Springtail.


Nobody walks in L.A.


Uh huh. (via P*rman*nt R*d)


"A bite consequently destroyed Eden's fancy garden."


Abstract art. (via Cat*rina)


Zao Wou-Ki. (I want this book.)

"Historian Garrett Mattingly, however, has argued that The Prince was written as a satire. Some of his evidence includes the following:
   1. The manuscript was dedicated to a Medici long dead.
   2. The manuscript was circulated only among close friends; the Medici never read it.
   3. In his dedication Machiavelli presents the manuscript as a gift and requests a job in return--in spite of the fact that he had just been imprisoned, tortured, and exiled by the Medici.
   4. Machiavelli uses ironic language to extol the 'success' of rulers like Pope Alexander VI, Cesare Borgia, and the Medici notorious for their tyrannical rule.
   5. Machiavelli wrote other forms of satire and was well known for playing practical jokes on his friends.
   6. No other manuscript of Machiavelli praises a monarchy; all of his other writings heartily endorse republican rule."

--Puzzl*s About Art (Battin, Fish*r, Moor, Silv*rs 1989; citing G.M. Am*rican Scholar 27 (Fall 1958) 482-491)


Klingon programming.


" 'Hard' science fiction they call it. I have always had a certain awe for this kind of science fiction, and, although I cannot really do it well myself, wish that the genre had more of it. ...we need writers who can show us what the machines are doing to us in terms more systematized than those of random paranoia." --Barry N Malzb*rg, Galaxi*s (1975)


Mahdi Starbucks.


T*rry Holt Artwork. It's groovy!


Monday, March 27, 2006

A Million...


   "The Philosopher and the Birds

A solitary invalid in a fuchsia garden
Where time's rain eroded the root since Eden,
He became for a tenebrous epoch the stone.

Here wisdom surrendered the don's gown
Choosing, for Cambridge, two deck chairs,
A kitchen table, undiluted sun.

He clipped with February shears the dead
Metaphysical foliage. Old, in fieldfares
Fantasies rebelled though annihilated.

He was haunted by gulls beyond omega shade,
His nerve tormented by terrified knots
In pin-feathered flesh. But all folly repeats

Is worth one snared robin his fingers untied.
He broke prisons, beginning with words,
And at last tamed, by talking, wild birds.

Through accident of place, now by belief
I follow his love which bird-handled thoughts
To grasp growth's terror or death's leaf.

He last on this savage promontory shored
His logical weapon. Genius stirred
A soaring intolerance to teach a blackbird.

So before alpha you may still hear sing
In the leaf-dark dusk some descended young
Who exalt the evening to a wordless song.

His wisdom widens: he becomes worlds
Where thoughts are wings. But at Roscoe hordes
Of village cats have massacred his birds."

--Richard Murphy (Sailing to an Island 1968), quoted in: Wittg*nst*in in Ir*land


Runaway star. Plus. Oops!


Sunday, March 26, 2006

On my victrola- Charl*s Iv*s: Calcium Light Night (His tak* on tw*lv* ton* is suav* & wiccad*lic.)


'My eyes see the fields, the fields,
The fields, Neaera, and already
I suffer the cold of the darkness
In which I will not have eyes.

I can feel, even now, the skull
I'll be when all feeling has ceased,
Unless the unknown shall assign me
Some other, unforeseeable end...'

--'Ricardo R*is', tr Richard Z*nith



"This site is about mysteries that involve cats and their detective partners."


   "Wlframo Phazur"

Mirror wisp · orchid argot
for gray swim · gilt tsunami
spilling hollow · crisp across
which silo idol · fault brooks



   "Your Soft Hand on My Arm

Nothing was promised me.

Nor am I undeceived about the rest.
I go as if I cannot fare otherwise

and this is a blessing.
I walk with those who crossed the Bering Strait
and those who fled the annihilated city

not looking back.
I am a shotgun labyrinth
the crows themselves have forsaken

and perfectly, perfectly alone."

--Darth Ruck



Hungry Coyot*.