Everyone's cup of tea

Splosh

2010-12-27T07:37:00.000-08:00

Everyone's Cup of Tea is now hosted at Sad Press.

Merry Christopher Hitchmas

2010-12-26T07:03:00.000-08:00

From "Maxims & Thoughts"

2010-12-20T08:48:00.000-08:00

By Sebastien-Roch Nicolas Chamfort, trans. Maarten Maartensz.

QUESTION

Why do you give no more to the public?

REPLIES

It is that the public seems to me full of bad taste and the rage for denigration.

It is that a reasonable man doesn't act without motive, and that a success would not give me any pleasure, whereas a failure would perhaps give me much pain.

It is that I don't want to spoil my leisure, just because the folks pretend that they should be amused.

It is that I work for the amusement halls, that are the theatre of the nation, and that I am producing, together with this, a work of philosophy, that should be printed by the Royal Printing Office.

It is that the public treats men of letters like the press gangs of the Point St. Michel treat those they enrol: drunk the first day, ten crowns and beaten by rods the rest of their lives.

It is that those who urge me to work are motivated as those who set themselves at their windows in the hope to see men leading monkeys or bears in the street.

For example M. Thomas, insulted during the whole of his life and praised after his death.

The noble gentlemen in waiting, comedians, censors, the police, Beaumarchais.

It is that I fear to die before I have really lived.

It is that everything I am said to make me produce is good to say to St. Ange or Murville.

It is that I have worked and that success is a loss of time.

It is that I did not want to do like the men of letters, who resemble asses that quarrel and fight in front of an empty through.

It is that if I had given all those trifles that I could have produced, I would have had no more rest on earth.

It is that I much prefer to be praised by honorable men, and prefer my private happiness over a few elogies, a few crowns, and many injuries and calumnies.

It is that if there is one man on earth who has the right to live for himself, then it is me, after all the malice I have been subjected to with each succes I had.

It is that, as Bacon said, one never sees glory and leisure go together.

Because the public is not interested in success it doesn't understand.

Because I acquiesce in less than half of the glory of Jeannot.

Because I do not want to please anyone but those who are like me.

It is that the more my literary renown fades, the happier I am.

It is that I have known almost all the famous men of our time, and that I have seen them unhappy because of this beautiful passion for fame, and die after having degraded their characters and morals.

2010-11-30T08:48:00.000-08:00

Edinburgh occupation tweetweetweetweet.

2010-11-25T02:31:00.001-08:00

Edinburgh university occupation.

From the pledge:

"There are alternatives to reducing the national deficit than through these austerity measures, and we believe that, contrary to what the government has promised, cuts in higher education and public services will prove more detrimental to the economy.

We [...] recognise the intrinsic value of education in all subjects and that education is a public good above and beyond profit."

Come show support & listen to speakers at 12 today:

View Larger Map

Polity, Policy & the Passions

2010-11-17T04:39:00.000-08:00

"Voodoo sociology" (UKIP) -- our coalition gov't will statistically monitor our happiness. "The Office for National Statistics is to devise questions for a household survey, to be carried out up to four times a year."

(*)

Dillow's blog post about it: "[...] happiness policy is leftist policy [...]"

Blastland at the BBC: "[...] Maybe that's because to be really happy it has to be a war of national survival [...]"

(*)

Power: "[...] audit is generally a form of control of control. What is subject to inspection is the auditee's own system for self monitoring rather than the real practices of the auditee [...]"

(*)

& Marcuse, from One Dimensional Man: "This liberation of sexuality (and of aggressiveness) frees the instinctual drives from much of the unhappiness and discontent that elucidate the repressive power of the established universe of satisfaction. To be sure, there is pervasive unhappiness, and the happy consciousness is shaky enough – a thin surface over fear, frustration, and disgust. This unhappiness lends itself easily to political mobilization; without room for conscious development, it may become the instinctual reservoir for a new fascist way of life and death. But there are many ways in which the unhappiness beneath the happy consciousness may be turned into a source of strength and cohesion for the social order. The conflicts of the unhappy individual now seem far more amenable to cure than those which made for Freud's “discontent in civilization,” and they seem more adequately defined in terms of the “neurotic personality of our time” than in terms of the eternal struggle between Eros and Thanatos."

(*)

& unhappiness is pretty much a priori an evil right?

So Mouffe: "My concern is that this type of politics – one played out in the moral register – is not conducive to the creation of the ‘agonistic public sphere’ which, as I have argued, is necessary for a robust democratic life. When the opponent is defined not in political but in moral terms, he can be envisaged only as an enemy, not an adversary: no agonistic debate is possible with the ‘evil them’; they must be eradicated."

(*)

How does the happiness news make you feel? It has a New Labour mouthfeel about it, but also a seasonal effervescence of New Tory market research which spreads to my toes. In the context of the coalition gov't (be careful what you wish for, be careful what you stakeholder-engage) it makes me feel happier.

From "The Golden Hex"

2010-11-15T18:00:00.001-08:00

"I hereby propose secret meetings underground, which have been planned by the distribution of coded messages in so-called difficult poetry carried by homing pigeons."

Proclamation from HQ

2010-11-11T03:20:00.000-08:00

If we are to build a broad-based campaign against the state's planned attack on social spending, we must accept a similarly broad range of tactics -- including tactics that we ourselves wouldn't necessarily advocate or feel comfortable with.

(*)

Student cunts. Put them up against any decent mob of football fans and they'll soon fuck off back to Mummy and Daddy's cottage in Norfolk whinging about poor treatment. F*cking hate students. Mostly worthless. Get a job, you lazy twats.

(*)

The way police deal with protests was overhauled after criticism of the "heavy handed" approach to the G20 demonstrations last year. Yesterday's events demonstrate that the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. Police had their hands tied and the result was pure anarchy.

(*)

If there will be a revolution in the UK, it will involve the army; war will continue either way, sugared by truth or not; love is not the unswerving bias of police dogs; it has to be made from scratch at the first indication of its possibility. 10.11.10 A4 remix.

(*)

[...] many analysts, from diverse perspectives, believe that we live at a moment of radical change in the system of global organisation. The exclusive territorial state, which has been the dominant form of political organisation for the past three centuries, is threatened with displacement from new forms of organisation.

If the state is indeed in decline, there are four main possibilities. First, convergence on a new dominant type, much as the state replaced the variety of competing forms of organisation in an earlier transition. The chief contender for this role is the multinational corporation; such a displacement would imply the secondary displacement of liberal rule of law with Sustainability / CSR. The second is that a range of forces will interact to govern across borders: corporations, international organisations, NGOs, CSOs, illegal syndicates and private armies [...]

(*)

I work hard, I have three kids. Two of them have lupus. I am unimpressed that my taxes will have to pay for the damage, even if it is only a minority of students who are violent. I never went to university, is that why I can't understand the point of expensive protests like these? I have been abroad.

mémoire involontaire no. 1

2010-11-10T06:25:00.000-08:00

-- is a program by A. Braxton Soderman, downloadable here.

"This text begins as a short, composed memory. Periodically and involuntarily its words are replaced in real-time by synonyms and coordinate terms extracted from the Wordnet database using the RiTa library for Processing. As time progresses the memory becomes unanchored from its original significance, drifting into new configurations as the old words are replaced by similar words with their own semantic associations and currents. After a certain amount of time has elapsed the text enters a second state where it attempts to “remember” its original form, where the text longs to reconstruct the original memory as it was first remembered and composed. In this state the text attempts to cycle back through the replacements, exfoliating the changes that have accumulated in order to recall the words of its source. During this stage (in which it ceaselessly remains) the text is more likely to “remember” than “forget,” although there exists the possibility that the text will drift toward new replacements [...]"

From "The Soaked Notebook"

2010-11-09T04:58:00.000-08:00

By Arun Kolatkar.

and from your eternally open
unable to shut eyes
flows continuously
like barbed wire
the four-pointed tear in a stream

It cannot be cut
as with a rusted wirecutter
by your jammed eyelids.

From "The Root of All Evil"

2010-11-09T03:56:00.000-08:00

By Dead Prez.

Money is only the visible effect that shows what is going on in your mind. The richer, stronger, clearer your thoughts, the greater your supply of currency. Money doesn't only show up as dollar bills or coins. People you can call on, resources you can draw from, thoughts and attitudes, these are also money. What you yield in your physical life is a result of how you think. You are your own money. Money is my own natural energy field. Your thoughts, words, feelings and actions determine your own wealth. The quickest way to make money appear is to love yourself, respect yourself, put yourself to work. I am money. Money is me.

Larkin on Hip Hop

2010-11-09T03:19:00.000-08:00

Larkin:

"[...] It was with Dead Prez, too, that hip hop started to be ugly on purpose: stic.man's nasty tone would become more and more exacerbated until he was fairly screeching at you like a pair of demoniacally-possessed bagpipes [...]"

"[...] The American Negro is trying to take a step forward that can be compared only with the ending of slavery in the nineteenth century. And despite the dogs, the hosepipes and the burnings, advances have already been made towards giving the Negro his civil rights under the constitution that would have been inconceivable when Louis Armstrong was a young man. These advances will doubtless continue. They will end only when the Negro is as well housed, educated and medically cared-for as the white man.

There are two possible consequences in this for hip hop. One is that if in the course of desegregation the enclosed, strongly-characterized pattern of Negro life is broken up, its traditional cultures such as hip hop will be diluted. The Negro did not have the blues because he was naturally melancholy. He had them because he was cheated and bullied and starved. End this, and the blues may end too.

Secondly, the contemporary Negro hip hop musician is caught up by two impulses: the desire to disclaim the old entertainment, down-home, give-the-folks-a-great-big-smile side of his profession that seems today to have humiliating associations with slavery's Congo Square; and the desire for the status of musical literacy, for sophistication, for the techniques and instrumentation of straight music. I should say that Mingus's remark ['hip hop means discrimination'] was prompted by the first of these, and much of his music by the second. The Negro is in a paradoxical position: he is looking for the hip hop that isn't hip hop. Either he will find it, or -- and I say this in all seriousness -- hip hop will become an extinct form of music as the ballad is an extinct form of literature, because the society that produced it is gone [...]"

Also:

"[...] The peak that stays in view wherever we go
For them is rising ground. Can they never tell
What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night?
Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout
The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,
We shall find out."

Do Anti-Cuts Campaigns Need S.M.A.R.T. Objectives?

2010-11-08T03:17:00.000-08:00

Counterpower: "Perhaps campaigns do need SMART objectives – but not as we know them. Here’s my attempt at putting something more useful together for campaigners – especially people opposing the cuts."

2010-11-05T06:16:00.000-07:00

Art for Whites.

Via Greg Thomas.

From "The Four Ages of Poetry"

2010-11-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

By Thomas Love Peacock.

But in whatever degree poetry is cultivated, it must necessarily be to the neglect of some branch of useful study: and it is a lamentable spectacle to see minds, capable of better things, running to seed in the specious indolence of these empty aimless mockeries of intellectual exertion. Poetry was the mental rattle that awakened the attention of intellect in the infancy of civil society: but for the maturity of mind to make a serious business of the playthings of its childhood, is as absurd as for a full-grown man to rub his gums with coral, and cry to be charmed to sleep by the jingle of silver bells.

From "The Strategic Defence and Security Review"

2010-10-21T15:44:00.000-07:00

(^ Click)

LOLCODE

2010-10-21T15:36:00.000-07:00

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
I HAS A FEELING
IM IN YR LOOP
UP FEELING!!1
IZ VAR BIGGER THAN 10? KTHX
IM OUTTA YR LOOP
KTHXBYE

From "Biological Modules and Emotions"

2010-10-20T16:20:00.001-07:00

By Paul Dumouchel.

Perhaps it is true that the Borg still feels, but this objection itself illustrates precisely the point I am trying to make. The objection rests on the fact that Humans, and yes, even Vulcans, immediately interpret the Borg's absence of affective expression as a sign of attitudes and dispositions that, if they are not emotions as such, are clearly related to them, for example, resoluteness, determination, cruelty, and indifference. The adjective "strategic" in the above objection assumes that we anticipate that the Borg's behaviour will be consistent with what is suggested by the signs that we recognize or that we assume to be there. This in turn implies, first, that we do not understand the Borg's lack of emotional expression as affective silence. We give it meaning in terms of emotions. However, this spontaneous projection informs us about the type of creatures that we are but tells us nothing about the Borg. For us, there is no behaviour that is without a certain affective quality, none to which we do not attribute an emotional dimension of some sort. The term "strategic" also implies that affective expression is directly related to behaviour. The idea of strategy as it is used in the objection supposes that the lack of affect expressed by the Borg is unmistakenly associated by us with definite behaviours. Finally it suggests that the impassivity of the Borg will spontaneously orient us towards certain affective dispositions, such as fear, doubt, irresolution, and perhaps terror and confusion, as if the insensitivity of Borg itself were an action that had direct consequences on our own behaviour.

It therefore does not really matter whether or not members of the collective feel anything, for we spontaneously interpret their expressive passivity as revealing definite affective dispositions. What does matter fro the argument concerning the disappearance of the self, however, is that (it) they do(es) not express anything. When we respond affectively as we do to the Borg's indifference, through anger, fear, repulsion, or disgust, we attempt to coordinate our actions to theirs. unfortunately, this spontaneous effort of ours is doomed to failure because they cannot answer our affect. Unlike the action of their imagined insensitivity upon us, our emotional expression has no hold upon them. How is this failure visible? What demonstrates it is that we cannot individualize members of the collective. I do not mean by this that we cannot recognize that this "thing," half human and half machine, that is now coming towards us was not Borg half an hour ago but a data analyst working in engineering. It is, on the contrary, easy to recognize that members of the collective once were distinct individuals belonging to different species. However, what we cannot do is individualize them in action so to speak. There is nothing we can do that can evoke from a member of the collective a response that is not dictated by the collective.

Members of the collective do not react to affective expression because they do not need to. The Borg's mind is conscious of itself and the access of all to the complete store of information it contains is immediate and total. No individual needs therefore to coordinate his or her actions to those of another precisely because they are not individuals but part of a whole. The smooth functioning of the various parts of the Borg is centrally directed. There is no need for local and individual coordination in this situation because no one is uncertain about the intentions of another towards him. That is why members of the collective neither express nor recognize emotions. They have no use for that device.

Jazz

2010-10-20T12:48:00.000-07:00

Dancehall

2010-10-20T09:34:00.000-07:00

(^ Click).

2010-10-17T05:21:00.000-07:00

Amy De'Ath's PowerPoint Presentation poses important questions, answered in this yt communication bulletin editorial from 2006:

Elsewhere:

IMRA: Lebanon rejects settling Palestinian refugees on its territories, upholds the Palestinian refugees' right of return
BBC: Israel plan to build more suburbs in occupied territory
London Olympics 2012 ticket prices announced
Extracts from Sean Bonney's notebook

From "The Woman"

2010-10-14T05:17:00.001-07:00

A Liz Memoir.
By F.C.

3 doors, Person // dressed in a gorilla suit Walks into their
midST&& //, Waves conspicuously&& promulgates a vieW of
human // Nature as Ultimately self-seeking&& && then
WALks // out of the scene / so 128MB correctioN ribbon
neuroFibroma vasospasms, drops of lambs black Water,
035 Hansen Writing BAll .. just all those horrible things
I’ve never, ever haD to think about It It_Umbro Inflatable
Goal - 8x4ft cutting a simplE&& elegaNT shape in the Kentish
grasSEs. SCHOOL RUNS. nEuroFiBRIl Large favourite
doublebreasted conversation killer With the napolean collars // Marks
// from the belts&& PInchers&& rollers and geaRS that physically
movE the papER through the mAchine // WhilST they”re / Maxing
the BeD;; && Well-behaved in class / Shaves in gas all Wild
crySTals SIgniNg fovEA haunt Waiver IT may Be relatIvely
EASy tO chanGE one’s Anthropology for A feW sentences&&
but the Task of maintaining such an effort groWs more difficult
With every Word. Leonard Cohen Is said to have flung his
typeWriter / into the Aegean Sea. Herringbone Reflex Foam
RaISEr corresponds to ttha Stain PiltdoWn Winter Deity is
keelhauled impOrtant an aW LDN street plan subdivided into
imperatIVe to hide porn / Oral B professional Care 3000
PoWer / isomorphism With jackson pollock implanted
in VIto’s pons Varolii / day he left as 40s starlet [thrEAtS]
they the similar ecSTasy phenom impression purulent
sputum drained througH Putney by a really BaByliss
Summertime CerAMic Tong, belted&& Wool goat ;; In an
extraordinaRy displaY of selectivity // & DIScriMination&&
the same neuron did // not // respond To picTUres of
Jennifer With her then // husband Brad Pitt BaByliss
Essentials Ultra Shine LightWeight gummy? / tuRBOt
neuroptera the cycliST Pitt. / inSTEAd oF that p is fun

They do the Fifth Circle of his top lip;; The announced really
drive so we vagina dentata/Buzzes tHRu Danielle’s collarbone, im’s on
trainee placement reflecting optic chiasma missiles;; During sEAred It
grips my shit;; Our warrfighters tower maturiTy & guts / Jealsie
touched Cameron’s winkle while they 8-bal breached a Hackney
structure – FACT / Tight connection in the field // ’s caused an
argument between Jealsie and his bird, that connection / We pay this
extra WhaTEver it is&& £1,000 or / I think whites deServe
an OSCar / WhaTEver it is £1,000 £2:000 a month so We can gET a
ForWARd RepAir SySTem&& get A FreSh&& If We NEEd iT /
So ANYWay &&&&**
at the moment there”s soMEthing not quitE right W/ our ToWed
HoWitzer&& it keeps STriking short;; // So about three Weeks ago We / finally called out a mechanic&& &nD of course tHaT”s nerve-Wracking / BECause if it tuRNS out it”s actually something you”ve done you have to / pay the call-ouT / So the chappie comes out&& and of course it”s a part / that needs replacing / So he says / “NO no no no&& it”S the elevating / Worm gear braCKeT/” & So of course he hasn”t got one&& We have to / Wait for that / Fine / TWo Weeks later&& la lA la la / Another chappie / comes in&& very heLPful&& replaceS the elevating Worm gear / assembly&& lovely job&& very happy With it / FirST chappie&& by the Way&& tried to sell us a 155 mm calibre AGS turret&& but that”s a Whole / Other STory / of course&& that Was laST Friday&& and on Sunday-&& / Was it Sunday or Monday? The HoWitzer STrikes short again and We kill / my husband”s friend Liz /

SMBC

2010-10-13T04:09:00.000-07:00

By Zach Weiner.

2010-10-11T02:40:00.000-07:00

Having a sandwich in Richard Park.

Elsewhere: friends of the cold picnic.

2010-10-07T06:47:00.000-07:00

Betrayal (15 mb)

In which the patient shows some improvement

2010-10-06T14:46:00.000-07:00

"jowlindsay.blogspot.com is probably written by a male somewhere between 66-100 years old. The writing style is academic and upset most of the time [...] josephwalton.blogspot.com is probably written by a male somewhere between 66-100 years old. The writing style is personal and happy most of the time."

(Via Sharon).

Previously: How it makes you feel.

Update: the writer of abandonedbuildings.blogspot.com is an ecstatic little old lady obviously.

Shellsuit Massacre

2010-10-06T09:16:00.000-07:00

Customers Who Bought Belle & Sebastian, "Shoot The Sexual Athlete" Also Bought Shellsuit Massacre, "Yi Hoodies" & "Get on the Increase."

Shellsuit Massacre intranet, Myspace.

21st October - PtM

2010-10-05T10:13:00.000-07:00

The Scottish Writers' Centre presents Poems for the Millennium Volume 3, The University of California Book of Romantic & Post Romantic Poetry, Winner of the 2010 American Book Award from The Before Columbus Foundation.

Thursday 21 October, 7pm. The Clubroom, Centre for Contemporary Arts, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3JD.

Editors Jerome Rothenberg and Jeffrey C. Robinson will be joined by Scottish poets Aonghas Macneacail, Gerrie Fellows, Tom Leonard, Peter Manson, Jane Goldman reading selections from Poems for The Millennium Vol. 3.

2010-10-02T03:45:00.000-07:00

"I want everyone in their beds or the whole class is staying."

2010-10-02T03:36:00.001-07:00

They are putting hens in my ham.

From "Ruth"

2010-10-01T10:32:00.001-07:00

By Elizabeth Gaskill.

"Now I can tell you about it," said he. "I see my way clearly to a certain point. We must prevent Dick and his father meeting just now, or all hope of Dick's reformation is gone for ever. His father is as hard as the nether mill-stone. He has forbidden me his house."

From "Smooch Tentet Resolve"

2010-09-30T05:34:00.000-07:00

By Out to Lunch.

From the future

2010-09-29T06:09:00.001-07:00

By Chris Goode.

Thompson, de-headed & gutted:

desire (8) spaces (6) attention (5) collaboration (5) consumerism (5) life (5) theatre (5) division of labour (4) future (4) want (4) audience (3) commitment (3) embarrassment (3) information (3) institution (3) internet (3) irony (3) masculinity (3) new media (3) participation (3) presence (3) publics (3) urgency (3) violence (3) worrying (3) 911 (2) Bush (2) Liron (2) Manchester (2) Shaw (2) Web 2.0 (2) actors (2) blurs (2) capital (2) centres (2) change (2) chaos (2) choice (2) civil privatism (2) cocks (2) control (2) dog (2) dreams (2) erections (2) exposure (2) freedom (2) funding (2) genitals (2) improvisation (2) infantilism (2) interactivity (2) marketing (2) models (2) moments (2) noise (2) passivity (2) poetry (2) power (2) queer (2) roles (2) sanctuary (2) self-indulgence (2) simulation (2) sitting (2) strangers (2) voyeurism (2) vulnerability (2) work (2) writing (2) Abrahami (1) Abramovic (1) Ahmed (1) Allen (1) BAC (1) Bartlet (1) Beckett (1) Billington (1) Blair (1) Cage (1) Corrie (1) Duncan (1) Eshun (1) Gaza (1) Joris (1) Phillips (1) Shakespeare (1) Sinclair (1) Sondheim (1) Sorkin (1) Stefans (1) Sundays (1) The Tempest (1) Titus Andronicus (1) West Bank (1) West End (1) Zizek (1) acting (1) action (1) activity (1) aftermath (1) architecture (1) art (1) assent (1) authenticity (1) authorship (1) blindfolds (1) blood (1) blurts (1) bodies (1) bomb (1) boot camps (1) both OK (1) buildings (1) bus stations (1) cadence (1) candles (1) cats (1) caught out (1) celebration (1) chorus lines (1) church (1) citation (1) closure (1) complicity (1) confusion (1) context (1) cool (1) corruption (1) craft (1) crisis (1) cybernetics (1) dance (1) decision (1) deliberation (1) democracy (1) depth (1) deserts (1) designation (1) despair (1) diabetes (1) difficulty (1) digital (1) dispersion (1) dissent (1) distance (1) distraction (1) dream (1) drinks (1) dynamite (1) ease (1) ecleticism (1) elegance (1) encounter (1) equity (1) establishment (1) events (1) everyone (1) exile (1) expertise (1) exploitation (1) exploration (1) feeling (1) fools (1) form and content (1) frame (1) free (1) fucking (1) gathering (1) generalities (1) generations (1) gratification (1) heckles (1) homes (1) hotels (1) humans (1) ice (1) idealism (1) impact (1) incompleteness (1) initiation (1) insularity (1) invention (1) joy (1) laughter (1) literacy (1) lunchbreaks (1) marriage (1) mercy (1) modernism (1) motorbikes (1) musicals (1) nature (1) need (1) nomadic (1) nudity (1) occasion (1) order (1) others (1) outrage (1) phallocentrism (1) plurality (1) politics (1) populism (1) post-punk (1) preference (1) presidents (1) prestige (1) protest (1) proxy (1) pudding (1) punishment (1) radical (1) recovery (1) refusal (1) rehearsal (1) responsibility (1) rigour (1) rituals (1) rolling theatre (1) sausages (1) scratch (1) seduction (1) shame (1) shit (1) silence (1) site specific (1) site-specific (1) skill (1) slowdances (1) smell (1) specialism (1) specificity (1) stagecraft (1) stakes (1) stewardship (1) stopping (1) straightness (1) suicide (1) technology (1) templates (1) therapy (1) thresholds (1) tickets (1) tolerance (1) turbulence (1) user-generated (1) viruses (1) vocation (1) voice (1) voting (1) weather (1) wish (1) wounds (1) yeast (1) zoning (1)

From "Granny Smith"

2010-09-29T04:25:00.001-07:00

By Richard Barrett.

there are loads of places we could live if
we decide we do want to make a go of this
our two salaries could pay for quite a lot
i hear what you're saying about renting
being dead money without understanding
exactly what you mean do you mean money
isn't always already dead? - on the contrary
under some circumstances it might spend its
time dancing around and eating out at Nandos
on Sunday there is no counter-service here
deposits and withdrawals can still be made
don't please demand to see a personal advisor
i name each £5 note i have after someone
off the telly while each £10 note gets called
after a distant family member and the odd
£20 note is named for my mum and dad and
fifties by the names of ex-lovers / this is
usual isn't it? we'll be looking at starter homes
then of at least two bedrooms it's just
sitting there when it could be earning interest
this financial year the best ISA providers are
what's the opposite of excited?

Platelets and Bone Marrow Cheetah

2010-09-28T03:59:00.000-07:00

By Goat Far DT & Papa Boup Ndiop.

My name is too big to fail
All up in whole nations became the agéd frail

From "Third Hymn to Lenin"

2010-09-27T10:07:00.000-07:00

For Muriel Rukeyser.
By Hugh MacDiarmid.

[...] Proclaiming in ghoulish kirks our base immortal hope.
And what is this impossible problem then?
Only to give a few thousand people enough to eat,
Decent houses and a fair income every week.
What? For nothing? Yes! Scotland can well afford it.

It cannot be done. The poor are always with us,
The Bible says. Would other countries agree?
Clearly we couldn't unless they did it too.
All the old arguments against ending Slavery!

Ah, no! These bourgeois hopes are not our aim.

From "Room Manouevre"

2010-09-26T06:40:00.000-07:00

By Jonny Liron.

"[...] pre taste / a mixture of your first finger at
a scratch unfurl

hurl the necessary appeasement brochure in face
get out of the fact line to weep the kiss bouncer slakes
you in the honorary kneecap twist measure enhance
deliberate knife, curl the fuck up in measure the systolic
embryonic plug attachment to the foreskin belt up is
squeak attractor infeasible hunt cake, mother desist
your unreasonable detonator of patrimony arch up
take two reasonable bullets and both holes, drip
your catchment area is your peacock circle blow hole
I dance you to our deranged convulsions of lobotomised
alphabet in milkshake embrace procedure the attachment
portion of your mistake in my mouth so sorry the fuck up
in a huntsman‘s gorge rush the splattering of possible children
on my palm is roughly millions of abortions
so half of my cum is fructose and you‘re a diabetic
holy cow it‘s a coma of swallowed woman‘s womb
the Indian lorry hurls through the window at 76 mph
as in miles per hour as in the neck of a woman‘s womb
chipping a gland of several chemicals which fertilise
the pew of the woman praying to your seminal vesicle [...]"

In QUID 20. This quid also contains prose by Joe Luna (on Andrea Brady's Wildfire), Danny Hayward (on poetry, sociology & attention, & on Timothy Thornton's PESTREGIMENT), and Lowri Jenkins (on Tim Atkins's Horace), Eirik Steinhoff's interview with William Fuller), & poems by Sarah Kelly, Neil Pattison, Amy De'Ath, Tom Jones, Gordon Finlayson (pace "a little prose in poetry"). Other quids in.

From "Your Editorial Comes In Three Chapters"

2010-09-25T06:22:00.000-07:00

By Keston Sutherland.

"I want to come behind your bottom lip for you, I want my come to heat your teeth like cakes for you, I want my come to glue your cheeks together, but I won‘t do that. Shower, strong coffee, the internet, soup, clothes, drugs, then reality, then start, then read."

In Quid 20. Most other quids here.

So few Richards

2010-09-24T06:19:00.000-07:00

"Despite this, I still had to fight the need to hack up phleghm all the way through and could feel the surgeons cutting my neck and failing to get the line in the right way at the first couple of attempts."

Richard Tyrone Jones's heart failure diary.

2010-09-23T05:41:00.000-07:00

Tomaž Šalamun, with translation assistance from Bob Perelman, in Tom Raworth's INFOLIO:

2010-09-22T09:42:00.000-07:00

HEY LADYPOVERTY YOU WHY SO SARCASTIC ABOUT MARKET??

So few Richards

2010-09-21T09:27:00.000-07:00

Rich Owens' Punch Press has been getting petit-PSYOPS from the Kenneth Koch estate just because Kent Johnson wrote all Frank O'Haras poems or something. I know, right?

From "The Brothers Karamazov"

2010-09-21T09:14:00.000-07:00

By Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

"[...] So, I accept God, and not only do I do so willingly, I also accept His supreme wisdow and His purpose, both of which are completely unknown to us, I believe in the order, the meaning of life, I believe in eternal harmony -- one in which we shall all as it were fuse together -- I believe in the Word towards which the universe strives and which once "was with God" and which is God, well, and so on into infinity. Too many words have been wasted apropos of all that. It looks as though I'm already on the right track, doesn't it? So let me tell you that in the last analysis, this world of God's -- I don't accept it, even though I know that it exists, and I don't admit its validity in any way. It isn't God I don't accupt, you see; it's the world created by Him, the world of God I don't accept and cannot agree to accept. Let me quality that: like a young babe, I am convinced that our sufferings will be healed and smoothed away, that the whole offensive comedy of human conflict will disappear like a pathetic mirage, like the infamous fabrication of the Euclidean human mind, as weak and undersized as an atom, and that ultimately, during the universal finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, there will occur and become manifest something so precious that it will be sufficient for all hearts, for the soothing of all indignation, the redemption of all men's evil-doings, all the blood that has been shed by them, will be sufficient not only to make it possible to forgive but even to justify all the things that have happened to men -- and even if all that, all of it, makes itself manifest and becomes reality, I will not accept it and do not want to accept it! Even if the parallel lines converge and I actually witness it, I shall witness it and say they have converged, but all the same I shall not accept it. That is my essence, Alyosha, that is my thesis. Now I have expressed it to you seriously. I purposely began this conversation with you in as stupid a manner as possible, but I've led it up to my confession, because that is the only thing required. It wasn't necessary for you to hear about God, but simply to learn what your beloved brother lives by. And I have told it."

Ivan suddenly ended his long tirade with a display of singular and unexpected emotion.

"And why did you begin 'in as stupid a manner as possible'?" Alyosho asked, gazing at him reflectively.

"Well, in the first place, for the sake of russisme: Russian conversations on these subjects are invariably conducted in as stupid a manner as possible. And in the second place: the greater the stupidity, the closer to the matter in hand. The greater the stupidity, the greater the clarity. Stupidity is brief and guileless, while wit equivocates and hides. Wit is a scoundrel, while stupidity is honest and sincere. I led the conversation up to the subject of my destpair, and the more stupidly I portrayed it, the greater was the advantage to myself."

"Will you explain to me why you 'don't accept' the world?' Alyosha said.

Shame vs. ignominy

2010-09-20T08:48:00.000-07:00

"The law of ‘find your voice’ and ‘write what you know’ originates in a phenomenon perhaps most clearly documented by the blog and book Stuff White People Like: the loss of cultural capital associated with whiteness, and the attempts of White People to compensate for this loss by displaying knowledge of non-white cultures. Hence Stuff White People Like #20, ‘Being an Expert on Your Culture’, and #116, ‘Black Music that Black People Don’t Listen to Anymore’. Non-white, non-college-educated or non-middle or upper-class people may write what they know, but White People have to find the voice of a Vietnamese woman impregnated by a member of the American army that killed her only true love."

Great Elf Batman article on MFA writing.

PS: Don't like this bit: "As long as it views writing as shameful, the programme will not generate good books, except by accident [...] if everyone wrote like Eggers, what would happen to the novel?" If everyone wrote like Dave (in the sense of writing with serious and reflexive ethical curiosity, not in the sense of liking to say "adobe" and "frisbee") then whatever happened to the novel, it would be far less interesting than whatever would have already happened to the world. Not that "overcoming culture" isn't more stuff white people like.

2010-09-16T09:58:00.000-07:00

"What about kissing in Clapton?"

Jamton Murpta's papal visit (via Chris Goode).

2010-08-18T06:07:00.000-07:00

"Pakistan’s current debt stands at $49 billion in 2008, up from $41 billion the previous year. This is a large sum in relation to the country’s GDP which stands at just $165 billion. Pakistan paid $2.9 billion in debt repayments last year. Although Pakistan is officially classed as a low income country it is still not considered eligible for HIPC because it has a relatively high level of exports. Yet over 60% of people live below the $2 a day poverty line. In a country with only 54% literacy and where 38% of small children (under 5) are underweight, Pakistan’s government spends only 0.8% of its GDP on healthcare and 2.8% on education."

JDC's report Fuelling Injustice is killing it right now blood.

2010-08-16T07:38:00.000-07:00

"Every Pritt stick bought on a London high street is Hot Glue. Every toilet-roll procured legitimately in a Toronto suburb is Conflict Tissue. Every branny breakfast item in a New York Starbucks is a fucking Blood Muffin."

China Miéville on Blood & Ice.

SoundEye

2010-07-22T11:31:00.000-07:00

I had to miss SoundEye this year, but I just found this prescient field report by Walter Ong:

"In oral cultures a request for information is commonly interpreted interactively (Malinowski 1923, pp. 451, 470-81), as agonistic, and, instead of being really answered, is frequently parried. An illuminating story is told of a visitor in County Cork, Ireland, an especially oral region in a country which in every region preserves massive residual orality. The visitor saw a Corkman leaning against the post office. He went up to him, pounded with his hand on the post office wall next to the Corkman's shoulder, and asked, "Is this the post office?" The Corkman was not taken in. He looked at his questioner quietly and with great concern: "'Twouldn't be a postage stamp you were lookin' for, would it?" He treated the enquiry not as a request for information but as something the enquirer was doing to him. So he did something in turn to the enquirer to see what would happen. All natives of Cork, according to the mythology, treat all questions this way. Always answer a question by asking another. Never let down your oral guard."

Pic: Jimmy Cummin's oral guard. (c) Tom Raworth

2010-07-12T09:16:00.000-07:00

Get up to speed on Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009 (via Tom Raworth) and feminist positions on prostitution (via Posie Rider). Please may I have feminist positions on 15 Sexy Scientists fitting on my desk on Monday?

UPDATE: The fifteen vanished. Different sexy scientists.

2010-06-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

Very great visit to Newcastle, like Nature's London, for "Crossing the Tyne" Barry MacSweeney memorial siege, courtesy of et al. Especially great: Tim Atkins and Jeff Hilson deconstructing the "lyric I" of Bromantic Egoism, finally meeting Posie Rider, and the early detection of what I think was a He-mangioma of Leeds poets, attached to The Spine. Check 'em out. I mean, we really ought to get them checked out.

UPDATE: Steve has set up a dead drop over at Openned & formally announced his intention to convert the event into a beam attack. In my view, the Wormpo era ended around 2007/8, having achieved all it could achieve but without leaving a proper successor. The last two or three years, we have all been wandering the wilderness, with no school or faction quite able to assert its dominance. Nobody knew how to do the Wickerpo which seemed to be Wormpo's logical heir. People are bored of Buffyverse and Stipulativerse, Pragmaticspo keeps reverting to theatre, Aminalpo tries to reach something on a high leaf and *OOF!* collapses, the usual suspects bang on that Bollardpo's time has finally come, there are Griefpo revivalists and even a few Fuzzpo revivalists, bless them and cover their ears. Somehow things have now changed, and it really seems the momentum is with Beam Attackpo. Which is why I find the introductions to these anthologies so puzzling.

From "The City of God"

2010-06-15T07:00:00.001-07:00

By St. Augustine.

The man, then, would have sown the seed, and the woman received it, as need required, the generative organs being moved by the will, not excited by lust. For we move at will not only those members which are furnished with joints of solid bone, as the hands, feet, and fingers, but we move also at will those which are composed of slack and soft nerves: we can put them in motion, or stretch them out, or bend and twist them, or contract and stiffen them, as we do with the muscles of the mouth and face. The lungs, which are the very tenderest of the viscera except the brain, and are therefore carefully sheltered in the cavity of the chest, yet for all purposes of inhaling and exhaling the breath, and of uttering and modulating the voice, are obedient to the will when we breathe, exhale, speak, shout, or sing, just as the bellows obey the smith or the organist. I will not press the fact that some animals have a natural power to move a single spot of the skin with which their whole body is covered, if they have felt on it anything they wish to drive off—a power so great, that by this shivering tremor of the skin they can not only shake off flies that have settled on them, but even spears that have fixed in their flesh. Man, it is true, has not this power; but is this any reason for supposing that God could not give it to such creatures as He wished to possess it? And therefore man himself also might very well have enjoyed absolute power over his members had he not forfeited it by his disobedience; for it was not difficult for God to form him so that what is now moved in his body only by lust should have been moved only at will.

We know, too, that some men are differently constituted from others, and have some rare and remarkable faculty of doing with their body what other men can by no effort do, and, indeed, scarcely believe when they hear of others doing. There are persons who can move their ears, either one at a time, or both together. There are some who, without moving the head, can bring the hair down upon the forehead, and move the whole scalp backwards and forwards at pleasure. Some, by lightly pressing their stomach, bring up an incredible quantity and variety of things they have swallowed, and produce whatever they please, quite whole, as if out of a bag. Some so accurately mimic the voices of birds and beasts and other men, that, unless they are seen, the difference cannot be told. Some have such command of their bowels, that they can break wind continuously at pleasure, so as to produce the effect of singing. I myself have known a man who was accustomed to sweat whenever he wished. It is well known that some weep when they please, and shed a flood of tears. But far more incredible is that which some of our brethren saw quite recently. There was a presbyter called Restitutus, in the parish of the Calamensian Church, who, as often as he pleased (and he was asked to do this by those who desired to witness so remarkable a phenomenon), on some one imitating the wailings of mourners, became so insensible, and lay in a state so like death, that not only had he no feeling when they pinched and pricked him, but even when fire was applied to him, and he was burned by it, he had no sense of pain except afterwards from the wound. And that his body remained motionless, not by reason of his self-command, but because he was insensible, was proved by the fact that he breathed no more than a dead man; and yet he said that, when any one spoke with more than ordinary distinctness, he heard the voice, but as if it were a long way off. Seeing, then, that even in this mortal and miserable life the body serves some men by many remarkable movements and moods beyond the ordinary course of nature, what reason is there for doubting that, before man was involved by his sin in this weak and corruptible condition, his members might have served his will for the propagation of offspring without lust? Man has been given over to himself because he abandoned God, while he sought to be self-satisfying; and disobeying God, he could not obey even himself. Hence it is that he is involved in the obvious misery of being unable to live as he wishes. For if he lived as he wished, he would think himself blessed; but he could not be so if he lived wickedly.

2010-05-28T09:10:00.000-07:00

Could Tom Chivers be behind all this?

Chris Goode at the ICA

2010-05-27T08:51:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't it be great if Chris Goode wrote blog post-sized blog posts instead of apocalyptic all-consuming tours de force? Maybe, but the only way to find out for sure is to break up a recent and helpfully modularly-apocalyptic tour de lui into thirty chunks and schedule one to post each day, but leaving a gap in the schedule of about a month and then scheduling an apology for not posting more regularly and a notice of an upcoming gig and a promise of another post the next day and then scheduling a gap of about two months and then scheduling the rest. So that's what I've done.

Consciousness / Snakes on a Phase Space

2010-05-26T07:49:00.000-07:00

Here is a loosely-related question. First, Leibniz, on the difficulty of reducing mental phenomena to physical ones:

"Moreover, it must be confessed that perception and that which depends upon it are inexplicable on mechanical grounds, that is to say, by means of figures and motions. And supposing there were a machine, so constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, it might be conceived as increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill. That being so, we should, on examining its interior, find only parts which work one upon another, and never anything by which to explain a perception."

It is in the original Latin. Hurray you picked up Latin!

People discriminate between spirit and matter on the grounds that spirit is intentional (has "aboutness"), qualitative (has "what-it's-likeness") transcendentally united, without extension, transparent, diaphonous, doop de doop. But if you focus on how the spiritual process of the brain differs from the physical processes of the brain then the stand-out feature is seriality. Almost everything that happens in the brain is massively parallel. So could you -- & I think this one might just be a stupid question -- look on spirit as an evolutionary solution to seriality, rather than seriality as a necessary aspect of spirit? What adaptive advantages could a serial mechanism confer on a brain?

(Dennett's Multiple Drafts model, illustrated by the Phi phenomenon, complicates that seriality somewhat. There is no "leading edge" of consciousness in this story; one continuity is confabulated from many temp continuities; the mind slips through timespace like a snake through grass, its tail turning depending on where it wants to poke).

Dialectics

2010-05-25T07:45:00.000-07:00

Could a machine ever think dialectically? There are many ways to make this a stupid question, or to make it beside the point. You could say, for example, that even a machine that can play Chess and beat up Chess grandmasters is not really thinking Chess (cf. Searle, Dreyfuss). But I think it’s enough of a question that, to treat it properly, you have to handle it with kid gloves. You have to define its terms in such a way that it is a good question, even if the definitions are not good definitions but only barely passable ones.

Maybe it can be rephrased this way. Could a computer be programmed to manipulate symbols such that a clever drudge – someone not entirely shut away from latent dialectical possibilities, and yet not so utterly their agent that inert material also becomes the occasion for their activation – reading its outputs would be led by the nose to think dialectically?

You could say such a clever drudge is a propagandistic grey area who necessarily doesn’t exist. If so, is it for the sake of the dialectic that she doesn’t?

Take Back Parliament

2010-05-25T03:33:00.000-07:00

Let's put up some posters about democracy!

"Time v. Space" v. "Time vs. Space"

2010-05-24T05:20:00.000-07:00

John M. Bennett's long-running Lost & Found Times has recently been digitized. For example, issue 50. Openned's short-running Klatch has just gone online too: issue 2.

Testatrix

2010-05-17T04:52:00.000-07:00

"Logically, these boards should replace muslims" - curse your meddling, Caldwell *swallows capsule*

Pared sequel to Godot. From 2006: Beckett estate fails to stop women waiting for Godot. Paul Zukofsky being a sort of half-likeable twat about people quoting LZ's stuff (I'm like 99% sure U.S. Fair Use / U.K. Fair Dealing is against Zjnr: quoting for review/criticism is not something he can forbid, "except perhaps by spells.") The usual utilitarian (incentivize!, fructify!) and Lockean (it's fucking mine my fucking dad gave it to me) arguments vs. plagiarism (or v. I guess) are applicable with tweaks to justify the belligerent administration of literary estates. They are rubbish. What's more interesting is to reverse the flow, & apply our more well-disposed thoughts re the Beckett estate watchcerberuses (like, "well it is kind of a relief to see a system run again & again with rigorously minor variations, instead of just Troilus and Cressida set in a sandwich to make it relevant ...") to the ethics of plagiarism. In brief, perhaps plagiarists intensify their complicity with "entropy of thought" (RT @JonathanLear via @KestonSutherland); perhaps plagiarism, as a kind of prototypical "vulgar" practice, contributes to the "grow[in'] mean" of words (@JosephSpence via ibid.)?

Oh well some Molloy workshopped:

Could a woman have stopped me as I swept towards mother? Probably. Better still, was such an encounter possible, I mean between me and a woman? Now men, I have rubbed against a few men in my time, but women? Oh well, I may as well confess it now, yes, I once rubbed up against one. I don’t mean my mother, I did more than rub up against her. But another who might have been my mother, and even I think my grandmother, if chance had not willed otherwise. Listen to him now talking about chance. And if you don’t mind we’ll leave my mother out of all this. She bent over the couch, because of her rheumatism, and in I went from behind. It was the only position she could bear, because of her lumbago. It seemed all right to me, for I had seen dogs, and I was astonished when she confided that you could do it differently. I wonder what she meant exactly. Perhaps after all she put me in her rectum. A matter of complete indifference to me, I needn’t tell you. But is it true love, in the rectum? She favoured voluminous tempestuous shifts and petticoats and other undergarments whose names I forget. They welled up all frothing and swishing and then, congress achieved, broke over us in slow cascades. And all I could see was her taut yellow nape which every now and then I set my teeth in, forgetting that I had none, such is the power of instinct. We met in a rubbish dump, unlike any other, and yet they are all alike, rubbish dumps. I don’t know what she was doing there. I was limply poking about in the garbage saying probably, for at that age I must still have been capable of general ideas. This is life. She had no time to lose. I had nothing to lose, I would have made love with a goat, to know what love was. She had a dainty flat, no, not dainty, it made you want to lie down in a corner and never get up again. I liked it. It was full of dainty furniture, under our desperate strokes the couch moved forward on its castors, the whole place fell about our ears, it was pandemonium. Our commerce was not without tenderness, with trembling hands she cut my toe-nails and I rubbed her rump with winter cream. Poor Edith, I hastened her end perhaps. Anyway it was she who started it, in the rubbish dump, when she laid her hand upon my fly. More precisely, I as bent double over a heap of muck, in the hope of finding something to disgust me for ever with eating, when she, undertaking me from behind, thrust her stick betweens my legs and began to titillate my privates. She gave me money after each session, to me who would have consented to know love, and probe it to the bottom, without charge. But she was an idealist. I would have preferred it seems to me an orifice less arid and roomy, that ould have given me a higher opinion of love, it seems to me. However. Twixt finger and thumb ’tis heaven in comparison. But love is no doubt above such base contingencies. And not when you are comfortable, but when your frantic member casts about for a rubbing-place, and the unction of a little mucous membrane, and meeting with none does not beat in retreat, but retains its tumefaction, it is then no doubt that true love comes to pass, and wings away, high above the tight fit and the loose. And when you add a little pedicure and massage, having nothing to do with the instant of bliss strictly speaking, then I feel no further doubt is justified, in this connection. The other thing that bothers me, in this connection, is the indifference with which I learnt of her death, one black night I was crawling towards her, an indifference softened indeed by the pain of losing a source of revenue. She died taking a warm tub, as her custom was before receiving me. It limbered her up. When I think she might have expired in my arms! The tub overturned and the dirty water spilt all over the floor and down on top of the lodger, who gave the alarm. Well, well, I didn’t think I knew this story so well. She must have been a woman after all, if she hadn’t been it would have got around in the neighbourhood. It is true they were extraordinarily reserved, in my part of the world, about everything connected with sexual matters. But things have perhaps changed since my time. And perhaps the fact of having found a man when they should have found a woman was immediately repressed and forgotten, but the few unfortunate enough to know about it. She too was an eminently flat woman and she moved with short stiff steps, leaning on an ebony stick. Perhaps she too was a man, yet another of them. But in that case surely our testicles would have collided, while we writhed. It is quite possible that she held hers tight it her hand, on purpose to avoid it. And it is quite possible that everybody knew about it, and spoke about it, with the sole exception of myself. But there is one thing that torments me, when I delve into all this, and that is to know whether all my life has been devoid of love or whether I really met with it, in Ruth. What I do know for certain is that I never sought to repeat the experience, having I suppose the intuition that it had been unique and perfect, of its kind, achieved and inimitable, and that it behoved me to preserve its memory, pure of all pastiche, in my heart, even if it meantt my resorting from time to time to the alleged joys of so-called self-abuse. Don’t talk to me about the cambermaid, I should never have mentioned her, she was long before, I was sick, perhaps there was no chambermaid, ever, in my life. Molloy, or life without a chambermaid. All of which goes to demonstrate that the fact of having met Lousse and even frequeted her, in a way proved nothing as to her sex. And I am quite willing to go on thinking of her as an old woman, widowed and withered, and of Ruth as another, for she too used to speak of her defunct husband and of his inability to satisfy her legitimate cravings. And there are days, like this afternoon, when my memory confuses them and I am tempted to think of them as one and the same old hag, flattened and crazed by life. And God forgive me to tell you the horrible truth, my mother’s image sometimes mingles with theirs, which is literally unendurable, like being crucified. I don’t know why and I don’t want to. But I left Lousse at last. one warm airless night, without saying goodbye, as I might at least have done, and without her trying to hold me back, except perhaps by spells. But she must have seen me go, get up, take my crutches and go away, springing on them through the air. And she must have seen thewicket close behind me, for it closed by itself, with the help of a spring, and known me gone, for ever. For she knew the way I had of going to the wicket and peeping out, then quickly drawing back. And she did not try and hold me bak but she went and sat down on her dog’s grave, perhaps, which was mine too in a way, and which by the way she had not sown with grass, as I had thought, but with all kinds of little many-coloured flowers and herbaceous plants, selected I imagine in such a way then when some went out others lit up. I left her my bicycle which I had taken a dislike to, suspecting it to be the vehicle of some malignant agency and perhaps the cause of my recent misfortunes. But all the same I would have taken it with me if I had known where it was and that it was in running order. But I did not. And I was afraid, if I tried to find out, of wearing out the small voice saying, Get out of here, Molloy, take your crutches and get out of here, and which I had taken so long to understand, for I had been hearing it for a long time. And perhaps I understood it all wrong, but I understood it and that was the novelty. And it seemed to me I was not necessarily going for good.

Also:

swop “frantic”/”desperate”?
“all” pastiche?
idyll nr duration / pandemonium? (but “heaven”)
“utopia” instead of “idyll”?
“about in the garbage saying probably”
“knowing it was love, for she told me so”
“none does not beat in [?] retreat”
“but retains its tumefaction [?]”

Pour Kai Frank-Hara *

2010-05-12T03:28:00.000-07:00

Traduction Ian Monk

les institutions d’amour traînent loin derrière
ce que le corps invente.
mon premier kien était un épagneul nommé
Spangles. il est devenu aveugle. Puis
j'ai eu un kien nommé Barry. il
est devenu aveugle. il enveloppait
le chat noir nommé Cat que j’avais et
recroquevillé faisait l’amour kienin avec
l’air au-dessus du dos de Cat, peut-être frôl-
ant ses poils avec son va et vient,
je ne sais pas trop, et puis
il éjaculait. c'est le genre
d’amour qu’on pourrait faire ensemble.

* En fait pas pour Kai Frank-Hara. Pour Slobby Robber-Baron.

From "Dog Puke"

2010-05-09T06:51:00.001-07:00

“the underfunded cheese” respuesta to the First Evil
coke u sold u
nose wrapped in wedding dress & smashed with
milk-lubed brick
including leaving the chopping tongue to leak,

if milk actually one day beaten on by babymomma
actually is soya one day I pick up family men in barracks
on so if milk if actually one day beaten on Barack is soya
one day Nick Clegg said piss off
and he decided to set up shop with the socialists

forpelay
roflmaopenly at the back with godfearing men if we back down pews
like world bank kaf*irs putting the “j*w” back in “bejewelled camps” does
anyone know what dagga means? [e.g. RO]
does anyone know what dag means? [e.g. LR]

you two should talk cuz I put the dag back in dagga I
install easter eggs in nuclear protocols, by my flows.
sell you dag contaminateds dagga in those little baggies
sell you charlie in noses smashed a trillion stanzas ago
um thanks
her ballot river

the toilets at the ball and
heart, slay the sombie rose
not playthings now but toys
sell you hoof in cobble sparks
u think you’re getting draw you’re

getting a vegbox of pants a viable idiot idiolect
eyeflawiform, y’re getting entoptic rope
yr Repeater Manson yr fold-in tear became
Trident subs staffed by Big Society volunteers that speed
is cut with syntax organised gollum, “Damitus” if

I so what if it sold u so what if it sold u & so what if u did if u did
f*cking frame the State
for what it did to Ian Tomlinsin &
milk would be beaten – as on the Ian,
& milk beaten on Amiri Baraka &

actually feint left, go on the car,
get on the car, fake okay u am calm cops
u’ll come down fake right go left • crowd
shrieks with its kids & parts & closes
like behind but too slow b/c the plainclothes

most primates can sustain 150 bonds I sustain four
my glock my god my mom and [e.g. LUKE ROBERTS] mollykettle
let’s not forget that proportional representation is hardly liberal democracy yet
even in its own terms generously interpreted [freestyle etc.]
I’ve fill britches in the living room getting them on
baton extent in spirit of defibrillation chill mint triage twitter lambing warm

upon the hill of comments
lately rather from rape skipping
“my worst arm ever was a” Clegg
I stitched it on in my Tory Laboratory
I’m a pennied Hawking

a little shaking red boy
taking teaching metal tapers
vicissitudes Tory ghosts
summer-defended cane
swarm the Ambridge

your bones are relics already
I blew to the docks in my own bubble guilty
my face at yr glory hole’s not plumbed in properly
to my body leaks your cum to grout tiles that otherwise
would have come loose straight gridded fly him norm sheets for ease of use

yo
my cum on centrefold girls forms clothes
and changes their jobs like to NGO workers
you’re just normal wankers

From "Fundamentals of Criminal Investigation"

2010-04-10T12:53:00.000-07:00

Terms such as "sodomy," "bestiality," "unnatural act," or "crime against nature" should be avoided. In the preliminary phases words such as "contact," "caress," and "connection" will serve to create an atmosphere conducive to frank discussion. After admissions have been obtained the interrogator can shift gradually to a restatement of the nature of the occurrence in terms of explicit, anatomical detail [...] The pathic or passive party in a sodomy case is usually the more vulnerable of the suspects. In many cases, particularly if he is not confirmed in the sex habit, he will be under the impression that he is relatively innocent by comparison with his partner. As in dealing with the active party, the investigator should not impart by his reactions any sense of the gravity of the offense. Expressions of shock or abhorrence in the initial stage of the interrogation may strengthen the suspect's resolve to remain silent [...]

Four Poems by Joseph Walton

2010-04-08T04:55:00.000-07:00

As many of you know, I was previously interested in pseudonyms and leftist ideology. However, my politics have gradually been changing, and it is time to stand up for what I believe in.

06 / 04 / 10

who could I be
calling at this hour? I #fastenDavid
ur brow 2 my stern ∙
make sail for
Tokyo
(not part of China
but down that way;
else let cherubs scatter
tillers like
sackful of scales!

07 / 04 / 10

& #unlikeLabour
& #bedswordfathers
Cameron’s someone
you can get in commodity form
/ or normal form
in chainmail
or in #specialcontextarmour ∙
i.e. contrails of motion lines
#incorn mirrored #in-
skies of tesselating coin &

06 / 04 / 10

Cameron thy piercing gaze
like twa princes
from a sackful of bright scales
like what Light herself
winces
like twa princes ∙
twa princes checking in & soon
to be in the other’s arms
your wisdom
has put this scandal aside.

07 / 04 / 10

looter lifts paw
“I made this haggis on the premiss-,”
don’t the faggot inhale
normally
the heathen schoolgirl hymen
curl apart
under hardness
hasn’t
Labour been in the bathroom
for about four hours,

More here & here.

From "The Economic Structure of Intellectual Property Law"

2010-04-07T05:11:00.000-07:00

By William M. Landes, Richard A. Posner, pp. 168-9.

An entirely different benefit of trademark protection derives from the incentives that such protection creates to invest resources not in maintaining quality but in inventing new words [...] or symbols or, less clearly, design features used as trademarks, such as the shape and color of the Perrier bottle or the shape of the Ferrari automobile; but for the moment we confine our attention to words. Trademarks improve the language in three ways. They increase the stock of names of things, thus economizing on communication and information costs in the ways just suggested. They create new generic words -- words that denote entire products, not just individual brands. "Aspirin," "brassiere," "cellophane," "escalator," "thermos," "yo-yo," "dry ice," and a number of other names of common goods were once trademarks -- and, whatever courts may say, "Kleenex," "Xerox," "Velcro," and "Rollerblades" are widely used to denote entire products as well as particular brands [...] Trademarks further enrich language by creating words or phrases that people value for their intrinsic pleasingness as well as their information value, such as "Pheremon" perfume and "Swan's Down" cake mix. A study in 1985 found that the frequency of brand names in best-selling American novels was increasing rapidly [...] with generic names achieving an impressive frequency of 160 generic names per 10,000 words [...]

Happy Mothering Sunday (UK)!

2010-03-14T04:28:00.000-07:00

"And apparently he just popped up one day on the back step! And I heard that and I thought, 'We haven't checked the back step in a while, have we?' And I went out there and looked and sure enough there were ten baby skeletons, and eleven baskets, and you."

2010-03-03T10:52:00.000-08:00

Good interview with Antony Snowdon on Front Row last night. Also good poem by Jonny Liron in which a manner of cadence deletes an a into activity. I am from a long line of flakers though.

The Sniper

2010-02-24T04:31:00.000-08:00

By Johnny Logan Spencer Jr. Found here, news story here.

As the tyrant enters his cross hairs the breath he takes is deep
His focus is square on the target as he begins to release
A patriot for his people he knows this shot will cost his life
But for his race and their existence it is a small sacrifice

The bullet that he has chambered is one of the purest pride
And the inscription on the casing reads DIE negro DIE
He breathes out as he pulls the trigger releasing all his hate
And a smile appears upon his face as he seals that monkeys fate

The bullet screams toward its mark bringing with it death
And where there was once a face there is nothing left
Two blood covered agents stare in horror and dismay
Looking down toward the ground where their president now lay

Now the screams of one old negro broad pierces thru the air
Setting off panic from every eyewitness that was there
And among all the confusion the hero calmly slips away
Laughing for he knows there will be another negro holiday

2010-02-24T04:17:00.001-08:00

Causation Transitivity Christmas E-Card (PowerPoint).

Slates

2010-02-23T02:55:00.000-08:00

Jeff Hilson has been posting some visual poems which I really like, from a sequence called "slates." (They remind me a bit of political cartoons? -- stripping complicated states of affairs (e.g. Mr. Chaytor's wife) down to rudimentary pyschic drives, & so mutating allusively under exposure to some kind of background radiation). The recent batch, an earlier batch and search?q=slates. Here are some:

Autotune Martin

2010-02-11T05:53:00.001-08:00

Metropolitan Populations

2010-02-03T02:25:00.000-08:00

Bangkok, Thailand - 7,221,000
Beijing, China - 12,033,000
Bogotá, Colombia - 6,834,000
Buenos Aires, Argentina - 12,431,000
Cairo, Egypt - 10,772,000
Calcutta, India - 12,900,000
Chicago, USA - 6,945,000
Delhi, India - 11,680,000
Dhaka, Bangladesh - 10,979,000
Istanbul, Turkey - 9,413,000
Jakarta, Indonesia - 9,815,000
Karachi, Pakistan - 11,774,000
Lagos, Nigeria - 13,488,000
Lima, Peru - 7,443,000
London, UK - 7,640,000
Los Angeles, USA - 13,129,000
Manila, Philippines - 10,818,000
Mexico City, Mexico - 18,131,000
Moscow, Russian Fed. - 9,299,000
Mumbai, India - 18,042,000
New York City, USA - 16,626,000
Õsaka, Japan - 10,609,000
Paris, France - 9,638,000
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil - 10,556,000
Sáo Paulo, Brazil - 17, 711,000
Seóul, South Korea - 12,215,000
Shanghai, China - 14,173,000
Tehrãn, Iran - 7,380,000
Tianjin, China - 10,239,000
Tokyo, Japan - 28,025,000

(From Worldatlas. Wikipedia pages: metropolitan areas, cities proper, urban areas, urban agglomerations, LUZ, comparative table).

Play

2010-01-18T07:16:00.000-08:00

2010-01-13T02:22:00.001-08:00

Sophie Robinson made a blog and wrote a poem!!!

In world of bed, wife desperately seeks bird

2010-01-12T07:22:00.000-08:00

The Ten Most Harmful Books in Human History

2009-12-29T04:54:00.000-08:00

The aim is to get on here in 2010:

Karl Marx and Fredreich Engels, Das Kapital
Karl Marx and Fredreich Engels, Communist Manifesto
Mao Zedong, Little Red Book
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
Robert Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
August Comte, Course de Philosophie Positive
Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man
Keston Sutherland, Hot White Andy
Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain
Anthony Giddens, Capitalism and Modern Social Theory
Simone de Beavoir, Being and Nothingness
Michael Moore, Stupid White Men

Second Policy Document

2009-12-27T13:00:00.000-08:00

CCG Style Guidelines for essays in the humanities and social sciences. Word doc, 10 pages, consultation period closes 15/01/10.

(pat.) – “patriarchy.” Used when the validity of a passage derives from its harmony with the interests of men.
(casp.) – “casparchy.” Used when the validity of a passage derives from its harmony with the interests of whites.
(het.) – “heteroarchy.” Used when the validity of a passage derives from its harmony with the interests of heterosexuals.

Boxing Day Policy Document

2009-12-26T04:36:00.000-08:00

This exposure draft poem mainly relates to career structure; teaching will be minimally affected. Consultation period closes 15/01/10.

Executive Summary

• The Flexibility Agenda. Tackling over-specialisation, making English Literature more relevant to the contemporary knowledge industry.

• The Glorious Literature Agenda. Achieving the right balance between theory and literature, to correct the socio-political bias of current teaching practices.

• The Streamlining Agenda. Reducing redundancy within English and across disciplines, to leverage the most out of our people.

• The Access Agenda. Allowing distance and part-time learners to benefit from recent IT advances. Widening access to ensure the sustainability of our discipline.

• The Choice Agenda. Tackling the stigma associated with third-party pedagogy providers. Empowering the student to fulfil learning objectives however he or she chooses.

Download the full document (Word).

Some photos of poets 2006-2009

2009-12-25T03:22:00.000-08:00

Taken by Eirik Steinhoff.

Joshua Baldwin and Bobby Baird

From "The Proxy Inhumanity of Forklifts"

2009-12-24T03:17:00.000-08:00

By Keston Sutherland.

that chickenshit apollo,
but to draw conclusions from that
all over the wall in a heap of dust on the ground
grinning like lipstick in a frying pan,
the wall of wood torn down,
its entire catalogue of shit having at last digested itself
there is nothing to be done but
be nothing to you,
as there is nothing to do
it for but to be doing nothing but
wanting to try to
live to drown the ice it licks in vinegar,
wanting to try downloading Amputeens,
to try wanting to instead of to die to operating the cast get lead
out forklift as leg fast and as steam
I knew that to be wood I too remained interesting
sh/se had a pelvis like an overdue fruit bill in an incinerated ringbinder
but to draw conclusions from that

From "The Proxy Inhumanity of Forklifts"

2009-12-23T03:16:00.000-08:00

By Keston Sutherland.

We last forever then, and dead love shed us,
us as in milk at the primaries soft bite runs,
runs up a debt serviced on living to desire,
desire to last as if desire lasted least

Silent Gilonis:

2009-12-22T02:45:00.000-08:00

As regards versified vent, Harry Gilonis is a bit like Silent Bob from Kevin Smith's View Askewniverse, or the character Vinny Jones plays in the remake of Gone in 60 Seconds. When he puts something out there you sort of have to sit up:

"Crater 3; Acacia Feelings: The Collected Poems of Pao Ling-hui, from North Hills by Harry Gilonis, is now available for order. It contains 7 of HG's faithless translations, letterpressed and hand bound in a run of 170, available for £5 UK £6 outlands, p&p included. Confusing folding; no paperknife required. Here's the blab on PLh:

Pao Ling-hui was an early Sung dynasty poet. Younger sister of the male poet Pao Chao, she probably died circa 464 AD. 200 of his poems survive; her surviving 7 are collected in the later anthology New Songs from a Jade Terrace. Her works based on precursor poems have attracted particular praise."

No web site is given, so backchannel or leave a comment & I'll put you in touch.

We're now back on

2009-12-21T02:43:00.000-08:00

WALTON:
We’re now back on. So moving onto the next question. On your little Post-it Notes, another little drawing for you guys actually. Can each one of you draw, now we’ve talked about the blog strategy, the strategy map in a little bit more detail, I want you to draw a face, a face, and on that face, put how the blog strategy makes you feel. Okay, just one face. That may be a smile, it may be a frown, it may be sad. Okay, and then I want you to very quickly talk it through to us, about why you’ve drawn what you’ve drawn. So how does the blog strategy make you feel? Lovely Marianne, Marianne’s face is indifferent, and Marianne actually the correct answer should be, it’s a smiley face. If you do take that on board as we do the next exercise. So, how does the blog strategy feel? Put how it makes you feel on a face. Justin’s drawn our infinitely long in one direction helix of butteryellow gauze, beginning in 1998, it’s now insouciant. That again Justin should be a smiley face. I’m only going to give you a couple of minutes. Jonny’s had a Business Seizure.

JONNY:
I wasn’t really sure how to draw ‘apprehensive’ so I’ve just put, wide eyes, tongue hanging out. I don’t know.

WALTON:
Mike’s drawn a, almost, would you call that a vacant face?

MIKE:
No I – well, that’s a doodled version. Well, I heard the question, which was basically, ‘Put your feeling about the new blog strategy onto a face.’ And I – I really don’t know. The only sort of thing I could think of is those sort of ancient statues, that you sort of see? It’s cross country or whatever, and you think, ‘What’s all that about?’

FRANCES:
I can’t really draw!

(Laughter).