Saturday, January 13, 2007

alas
(via ulib dot iupui dot *du)


Cal*ndar r*b*ls.


"Such political consequences as it [the Congress of Vienna] achieved were in the main disastrous and brought much misery. But its glittering gaiety had one odd result. It gave Vienna--a fine but rather sombre city, with not a particularly happy history--a curious glamour, a touch of magic, determinedly exploited by writers and composers of operettas and the like, that refused to vanish until after the First World War, when even the ghost of the Congress stopped dancing." --J B Pri*stl*y, Th* Princ* of Pl*asur* (1969)


dawn silk vow
strict napalm
hit


"In Cameroon, gender is organized on the lines of the concepts of wet and dry." --Jay Griffiths, A Sid*ways Look at Tim* (1999)


Darkly.


Friday, January 12, 2007

"It is something else: a sustained, philosophical reflection upon identity, made in the person of one who felt he had none".


We should seek the bones of our language in grief, not grammar.


tuymaq hurls constantly burn
Itzcuintli burn

fraud lamps stand
Grinchus sjambok links in passports burn


Tuymaq is a dark knowing, sjambok a bullwhip.


"There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell." --B*rtand Russ*ll


"...the engine of the movement is deep economic and personal despair."


"She took me up to the ridge, and proudly showed off its awful emptiness. It was a gift, but only now do I receive it." --Parsifal Mosaic


Thursday, January 11, 2007

alas
(via fr**th*fiv* dot org)


"We might as well start dating the new era from Quetzalcoatl's 2012 now, since that's what they're going to do anyway once they've forgotten what it meant for real." --Parsifal Mosaic, Com* Glut th* Str**ts with Spill*d Bodily Fluids (2006)


"Between official order and unofficial disorder, the responses were multiple, giving the Spanish Golden Century its sense of urgency and perhaps even its beauty." --Carlos Fu*nt*s, Th* Buri*d Mirror (1992)


Wikinomics.


   "pigeon passenger

Excess of Mercy did not make this world;
in strangest strangeness. Yet also, a password
into. If only all! we thrive
like weeds in a wall. We pray
to Father Christmas while breaking on the wheel.
Do you think I don't know that?
I have so many lies at hand.
I choose at times to be harsh for truth, though.
For honor. (That despised word.)
Honor is a harder thing than love,
so I spare everyone but those I truly love...
And not a day passes that I don't despair
in this labyrinth of knives where I'm still too nesh.
And that is how I know I don't belong!"

--Ald*rman Whinny, Th* Sun Som*tim*s Ris*s (1911)


198 M*thods of Nonviol*nt Action. (via fring* matt*rs)


"The world's most watched TV programme is apparently the Hindi version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, with about 250 million people watching it live every week."


Lycr*ls. (196 = 89 + 107.)


Wednesday, January 10, 2007

"Baieido has dedicated itself to making incense for over 300 years."


A pathos of apologists. A king who sits grinning foolishly, atop a mountain of dung. All around, a crowd who would try not to watch, and must.


"Yes, we were stupid for disregarding the limits placed before us; for tryng to go everywhere and know everything. Stupid, spoiled, and arrogant. But we were right, too. I was right. How could I do otherwise when the violence of the unsaid things became so great that it kept me awake at night?" --Mary Gaitskill, V*ronica (2005)


   Lando

L'ombro nuba, domsxtelista
baroj kaj fajro;
espero lupa mia
en cxi-tiu disputita
lando
lavanta miajn pajnojn

skrapo
skrapo


   Land

The housethief cloud-shadow,
barriers & fire;
my wolfly hope
in this disputed
land
washing my wrists

scrape
scrape

(1989)


Meaning comes from speech communities interacting. The "language" that exists as dictionaries and grammars is the result of a complex process of analysis, but its relation to the meaning that comes from a speech community interacting, is that of a cut-out traced shadow silhouette to its threedimensional figure source.


Th* Land That N*v*r was.


Tuesday, January 09, 2007

The Hat model of meaning: every word is a hat, and every meaning is something that wears that hat.


Fl*sh in th* Ag* of R*ason.


Sound of th* B*ast.


Thomas Pain*, Star Park*r, Dani*l P*arl in a row.


   "UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

There are places in me where nothing can live.

Places like the road to Mongolia
tells you to roll up your windows & try to breathe shallower.

Maybe it was a failure of enginering.
I dunno. i don't go out at night
searching for beacons that aren't there...

But I keep track pretty good. That's something;
& for jokers who have to ask, I've prepared
a variety of colorful accounts."

--Y*ntl Hambright, Bri*f and Burning Pray*rs (1968)


"Butterflies are landing on your right arm, your left arm is covered with cockroaches. Or you are walking in mud and your eyes are on the back of your head."


Monday, January 08, 2007

Ori*ntalism's Int*rlocutors.


starts with morning's cold
this manifold light that sings
story all to know


Our picture of how we use words is not only different from how we use them, if it were so, we could not even form that picture. Rather, it is one of our myths--call it the myth of thinginess (Haeccitas). It's why translation seems inherently paradoxical, and true philosophy a goal almost beyond imagining. And, when one abandons this myth, it is so great a leap that it takes only a modest degree of fetishizing to render it the Jewel in the Crown, the experience of experiences, satori--or letting go of words as words. Why should this be so? Is it that who we think we are, is also a grave matter of "words as words"? And where do we go from there?

"I looked
around
lousy candle's all I found"

--St*pp*nwolf


"The ultimate proof of his regime’s secular nature is the fact that in the Iraqi elections of October 2002 — in which Saddam Hussein got a 100 percent endorsement, and thus overdid the best Stalinist results of 99.95 percent — the campaign song played again and again on all the state media was Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”." (via cursor)


old wisp floating still
fragrant stain
turning in morning's corona as
cars rip through that stationary cataract
of swung grasp and story fall


Sunday, January 07, 2007

alas
(via iit dot *du slash ~khanath slash *bay slash sakina)


   'LXX

EVERYONE SMILES AT THE CASUAL WAY I SINK TO THE BOTTOM, CELLULAR FROM EATING well and drinking well.

Does money walk around with no food? Or is there someone who gives it seeds like a little bird. Frankly, I know almost nothing about this.

Oh stone, generous cushion to the end. Let us, the living, love the living, since the good dead things will come later. How much we have to love them and hug them, how much. We should care about current events, for we won't always be as we are. Since temporary Ravines are missing from the essential cemetaries [sic].

The carriage goes in the clay, on edge. The passage hits us on top of the head, with its dozen steps, scaled in horizontalizing frustration of feet, through shivering vacant sandals.

And we're afraid to take a step, since we're never sure if we swing with the pendulum, or if we've already crossed it.'

--Smith's Trilc*


"All sin ever is evil,
As is Sargasso
Forever on Ossa..."

--Satir*: V*ritas