(via marc*lproust dot it slash imagg)

"The Taj [Mahal] is no longer white but a grimy yellow. Local Indians are hacking away pieces of the facade and selling them. The guards do nothing. We splurged on a hotel room with a direct view of the Taj but could hardly see it on some days through the haze." --Th* 3nds of th* 3arth


A dollar and a dollar and a dollar. Thirty-six klicks.


Tiktaalik · in lucid murk
slow · swarming
down · uvula murk
gray catalyst · prison yard yawning to sky
skiff splosh · flourish burning cumin murk
what · soaring
in this drab · Iliad murk
Myklagaard song · walking along a high wall
forlorn · dandy murk

Tiktaalik · tubular
lord · droll indigo


"[Ziya Gökalp] believed...the Turks should use Arabic and Persian to form new Ottomanisms. ...His most successful coinage was a word for 'ideal'." --L*wis

Am*rican Dr*amz is most fantabulous film for Yours Truly post Munich. Go!


"Four of the same plus a fifth that is different is the most common pattern and relates to other [Wintu] beliefs." --Alic* Sh*ph*rd, In My Own Words (1997)


This gig is on its way out. Nobody to ring us up. Finally. My car, boiling.


portion control · frop
stark · lilac
roof unclad occult box · ink attack
prison forlorn slag of brisk coma · apart
osmium · utmost gallop
crisp skin · slowly rip
along paths scraps grinding · portion control if
ruinous · infirm scissors
glowing · warp

idolatry doll · scowl
ichor pulp · flip it


"Of all the languages in the world, the only one that ever approached English in the richness of its vocabulary was Ottoman Turkish." --G*offr*y L*wis, op cit


Rokbandoj.


"They say that they do not know whether he was deliberately trying to mislead the court or was simply deluded and that he is either extremely dishonest or a complete fool. I do not need to decide that issue..."


   "To the Wind

Oh wind, wind where to
Flapping your invisible wings

While you coming down on a stream
you can hear surely
My heart's cry

If you ever pass through
Istanbul
Scatter a sweet breeze on my land

Go and greet my home

Take kisses from me
To my dearest daughters!"

--Ziya Gökalp


Looking for this.


Black Mold.

(via worldlak*s dot org)

    "Not a Church Wedding

I never can remember the morning rain
so quietly does it become a mood,
& thence a land, where all things bent & dismayed
by Time's oppression dwell in immaculate ruin.
The light indoors seems stronger, though unwell.
I wanna/ sit alone & contemplate the taste
of autumn, empire's end, & death; I'd test
bounds, if but in parable to wail
by a gray shore with the immaterial forms...
   Usually I have to go somewhere, which forms
the context of this feeling, for the tarn
I leave behind, unvisited, its murk
& mists & dragging winds lacking my bark
to laze there, counterpoise,
        begins to churn."

--Plaidy


Pink Cadillac of.


"The last time the world was three degrees warmer than today -- which is what we expect later this century -- sea levels were 25m higher."


A Durkin's Attack among top kahunas.


My Ch*ssWorld.n*t gam*.

(via whit*hous*history dot org)


(Wasting too many hours at L*tsPlayCh*ss dot com...should blog!)


Qiu Xiaolong.


    "Ten-feet-straight-down Sutra

   No more of ghosts
whose svelte sweat-lacquered limbs the firelight toasts;
no more of ghosts, amour of hosts & shattered
will. Be mild to me as if it mattered.
The ill woodwind, that no one blows good,
takes up the theme: queming, an oboe's way.
No more of ghosts' whispers, soughing among sough
or candle drawn longer, up, a dream of flight.
We are all still. We beside absorb
& give back nothing like the orc maw of death.
Pride of lions, light of prunes, I taste your breath.
Sonorous silence, close--closer than sound
is no more ghosts; ostioles all shuttered up.

I suspend a word for you back home where I am not.
I work as swiftly & unerringly as God."

--Lydia Plaidy, ibid


Mim* Ministry. (via R*b*cca Blood)

(thanx, M*lani*!)


"...first of all, thanks for setting up the Klingon Wikipedia..."


"Turkish has two words each for 'white' and 'black.' 'White' is the native ak, or beyaz from the Arabic, while 'black' is the native kara, or siyah from the Persian...the borrowed words are used literally, while the native words are used metaphorically..." --G*offr*y L*wis, in: Imp*rial L*gacy ed L Carl Brown (1996)


"The last citation of the word 'to refurbish' in the Oxford English Dictionary is dated 1874. It was brought back from the dead in February 1969 by Mr Walter H Annenberg...on television, talking to the Queen [of England] and telling her that the Embassy was being refurbished. The quaintness of the word caught the public imagination and since then it has once again become current English."
--footnot*, loc cit


"...a haiku poem in three languages:...

jaghpu' yuQmeyDaq
no'Homchaj tuHqu' Sopbej
gharghHommeyna' tun.

ˆCe malamikoj--
Vermetoj certe manˆgas
Hontajn praulojn.

On our foes' homeworlds--
Soft little worms surely eat
Their ashamed forebears."

--Victor Medrano


"Which makes sense, in a pervy Elf fancier sort of way."

(via 3urographics dot ca)


Spiffy song. (via Robot Wisdom)


    "Job Misquoted

I know a mystery worth a few of those:
  clog stronger than the pipe.
And what after all is this thing of having hope
or losing it, as if hope were the only prize?
Is it for hope I've made the Maze my bourn;
hope, that I devise small hours to graithe?
Then once--its spreading rings,-- shall gravity smoothe
& not a molecule abide as cairn.

There must be reason in the mere parabola:
sometimes I say it's joy, sometimes beyond,
a building, where I cannot understand
except as limned by glyph & scribble-qabbalah.

Mystery, not that I bear nothing's burden--
but mystery ineffable: --claiming nothing's guerdon."

--Lydia Plaidy, Losing a Scr*w in th* T*mpl* (1922)


On my victrola- Lycia

"Without its terrible history, the Enola Gay is just another old aircraft brought to an ersatz life in a museum whose lunchroom is a Macdonald’s joined by “the largest McCafé in America"."


"While the novel is about Kazakhs and the past legends of Kazakhs, it should be noted that Aitmatov himself is Kirghiz."


"The human heroine of the book, Jaya Nihalani, might easily be described as a terrorist. Did you have any trouble with this?"


"If there ever was to be a revolution, however, the literary theorists have failed it. While the disparity between rich and poor in the US grew wider and more abysmal, while France and the rest of Europe created an underclass of Muslim immigrants, while the US became an empire and exported its industrial jobs to its de facto colonies, while the Christian right demonized homosexuals, while English departments grew yet more exploitative of its adjunct workers—wile all this happened, the tenured class studied Wittgenstein, Marx, Foucault, hooks, Fanon, Lacan, Spivak, Lyotard, Kristeva, Poulet, Butler, and Gertrude Stein and felt subversive."

ratbag flow · absynth
glowing orchid · blindfold scrytch
walk among swords · spark
all doors shut · walk among rocks
this rhythm knows its cough · air thinning

skull rack · diminish roll call
pawn storm · loud night past
sharp pain · among ghosts i walk
all doors shut · but a door into mist