One From the Golden Era

An elderly couple had dinner at another couple's house and, after eating, the wives left the table and went into the kitchen. The two elderly gentlemen were talking, and one says: "Last night we went out to a new restaurant, and it was really great. I would recommend it very highly." The other man says: "What's the name of the restaurant?"

The first man knits his brow in obvious concentration, and finally says to his companion: "Aahh, what is the name of that red flower you give to someone you love?" His friend replies: "A carnation?" "No, no. The other one," the man says. His friend offers another suggestion: "The poppy?" "Nahhhh," growls the man.

"You know - the one that is red and has thorns." His friend says: "Do you mean a rose?" "Yes! Thank you!" the first man says.

He then turns toward the kitchen and yells: "Rose, what's the name of that restaurant we went to last night?"

Ods Bodkins

Ah bugger, I'm googable now. From now on I'm gonna have to watch my cussin'.

Speaking of which, a friend & I were discussing the bizarreness of swear words. In our culture it's most often the word itself that is objected to, rather than the meaning of the word. (No surprise there, we're a shallow people.) So whereas "fuck" is outlawed from the public domain, "intercourse," "fornication," & "reproduction" are not. Further, you can often say "fuck" all you want as long as you bleep it. Which means everybody knows what you've just said & your intention still comes across. The only people who don't know it are those who don't know what the word means anyhow. And they'll learn soon enough, especially if you tempt them by withholding it. Point is, the information is still getting across. You've only tampered with the name the information is going under. To me this is like having a Red Scare where no one minds if you dabble in Marxism, so long as you avoid using the word "Marxism" while explaining your economic theories. Very backwards.

Creating a firestorm about swearing naturally fuels the potency of the words themselves. You'll notice "gadzooks" doesn't cause much of a rise in blood pressure these days, though at one point in history uttering something along the lines of "God's hooks" was pretty effin' vulgar. Seems as though as we've lost our interest in the word, it subsequently lost its teeth. We now regard the word as quaint. Imagine that.

On a related note, nipples are apparently illegal in North America. Correction: female nipples. Despite the fact that nearly everyone at one point drank from them. Cleavage is fine, it seems, but the areola itself is right out. Bras are okay, though they imply that breasts will be contained within. Everyone can see that the breast is there, but we must shield it from our vision or it might stir up unholy thoughts & turn us into slavering rapists. By the same logic, shouldn't we make food similarly hidden? When I'm hungry & I spot a juicy looking cheeseburger, it produces a form of lust. Then I scarf down a gluttonous amount of cheeseburgers, keel over from high cholesterol, & wind up in Heck. Far more virtuous it would be to avoid the temptations of the cheeseburger, faint from hunger, & end up in Heaven.

Oh... except that there ain't no Heaven or Heck. Them's fables from some old book. Instead you wind up six feet under with either a size-large casket or a size-small. With swear words graffitied on your tombstone.

Dressed in Yellow Yolk

The people who coordinate such things really should make Easter & April Fool's occur on the same day. That would make more Biblical sense, wouldn't it? That way when Jesus returns after the crucifixion, everyone would say "oh, we thought you were dead." He'd reply, "No, just an elaborate prank the Romans & I cooked up. April Fool's!"

And then they'd pelt him with eggs.

Travels in Nihilon

I saw this hardcore punk band play for a benefit show last night. They followed the punk template to the letter - loud, offensive, confrontational, heavily tattooed, sardonically ironic, with songs that mostly sounded alike (a high voltage buzz). And they successfully shocked a number of elderly women right out of the hall.

I must be getting older. Responsibility is setting it. I enjoy a good bout of nihilism as much as the next fellow, but it makes me very tired to watch all that energy being expelled on nothing. Just leaking into a puddle only to evaporate. Maybe that's fine when you're twenty, but a decade later you start thinking about leaving something in your place. Less wastefulness, please. Let's channel that energy into building something that wasn't here the day before. Let's bottle adolescent angst as a natural resource & use it to power hospitals.

"Fuck you" just isn't a very important message to me. I've heard it before. But I guess they're just discovering it for themselves, rolling their tongue over it experimentally, like a baby's first teeth.

The guitarist sported a really spiffy Gibson Les Paul. Looked expensive - wonder where he got it from. He'd better have stolen it or I'll be disillusioned.

Bonfire

Walking home, I heard a fire truck racing madly down the street, cars swerving to either side, pedestrians diving out of the way. What if it's my house that's on fire, I thought. Everything I own, gone. The material manifestations of my existence wiped out in one short afternoon. Freeing in a sense, but mostly tragic. Especially concerning that which I have produced from nothingness. The contents of notebooks, computer files, recordings, all returning to the nothingness from whence it came. I'm not prepared for that kind of purification right now, quite frankly.

I watched as the fire engine continued down the road without turning down my street. Wait, I protested, you're going the wrong way! I continued on, lamenting the fact that by the time they finally got their directions straight & their course reversed, my identity will have burned to cinders.

Ruminations

"This general died in a trench dug in snow, high in the mountains, wearing an Alpine hat with an eagle feather in it and a hole in front you couldn't put your little finger in and a hole in back you could put your fist in, if it were a small fist and you wanted to put it there..."

~ Ernest Hemingway, "A Natural History of the Dead"

"From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away."

~ Raymond Chandler, The High Window

"This is the moment when I know that a sign reading 'To Versailles,' or a sign reading 'To Suresnees,' any and all signs point to this or that place, should be ignored, that one should always go toward the place for which there is no sign. This is the moment when the deserted street on which I have chosen to sit is throbbing with people and all the crowded streets are empty. This is the moment when any restaurant is the right restaurant so long as it was not indicated to you by somebody."

~ Henry Miller, Black Spring

"What are the stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing?"

~ Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

"People will always be tempted to wipe their feet on anything with 'welcome' written on it."

~ Andy Partridge, "Snowman"

"I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it: we must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and soul. It may be that we are doomed, that there is no hope for us, any of us, but if that is so then let us set up a last agonizing, bloodcurdling howl, a screech of defiance, a war whoop! Away with lamentation! Away with elegies and dirges! Away with biographies and histories, and libraries and museums! Let the dead eat the dead. Let us living ones dance about the rim of the crater, a last expiring dance. But a dance!"

~ Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

"I hate quotations."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, journal entry

World's Forgotten Girl

I reckon most people spent St P's day like I did - at a blue collar bar on New Wave Goth Night, drinking imported beer from plastic cups & trying to avoid clunking your head on the low ceiling.

A few weeks ago I caught a solo performance by Sophia, lead singer from the band Blitzkriegbliss (a moniker I've found extremely difficult to pronounce after a drink or two). She battered a low-slung acoustic & howled passionately in a way that marked her in my mind as a descendent of PJ Harvey. After seeing her in full electric battle regalia last night, though, I've reassessed this impression. A more likely blood relative is Iggy Pop. Whereas she & Polly Jean were probably leaders of rival street gangs in high school. [Cue scene from Switchblade Sisters here.]

Blitzkriegbliss is primal, relentless, & frickin' loud. Sophia is the obvious focal point, right out front with her arsenal of unyielding growls & screams destined to stir up impure thoughts in the minds & trousers of her male audience. But the real sonic anchor is provided by the bass player, referred to by their website as The Sleepwalker (who probably gets mighty sick of being told he looks like Frank Zappa, so I won't mention it). His monstrous basslines are firmly rooted in the mix, like a sturdy corrosion-resistant pipeline running through the more jagged bursts of guitar. Meanwhile, the drummer thunks & whacks with a confidence that proclaims "sure, I could play more if I wanted to, but I choose not to."

It's really pure, immediate, blisteringly cathartic basement rock. What's not to like? They even turn Tom Waits' "Goin' Out West" into Ramones-fueled rockabilly. Clearly they're onto something - take a look at this vehemently negative review for their album from New ("birthplace of punk") Hampshire's 168 Magazine. Sounds suspiciously similar to whitebread America's initial reaction to Chuck Berry, eh? Almost certainly to the first Stooges album. "What's that racket you whippersnappers are listening to? You'll go deaf, mark my words."

Just as long as they don't find it boring. A review to be damn proud of.

Human Alchemy

Here's a delicious little film I stumbled upon not long ago, which goes by the name of Grace. It was directed by Lorelei Pepi (who according to her credits had some sort of hand in the '99 South Park feature film, among numerous other things).

Grace is a nightmarishly beautiful metaphor of transformation. Amateur reviewers at Atom Films mention David Lynch, Tool videos, & Jan Svankmajer frequently when grasping for comparisons.
(Who are some of these nitwits, with their "it can't be a film, it doesn't even have a conventional storyline" mentality? What, no dialogue? No car chases? Absurd!)

Word on the street is that Ms Pepi is currently putting together a satire of Max Fleischer-style cartoons, to be named Happy and Gay, which looks to be a crafty full-thruster guerrilla attack on various hypocrisies in our society. The soundtrack is certainly destined to swing mightily, with contributions from macabre merchants Leah Callahan & The Beat Circus.



Looking forward to its mischievous birth. A splendid time is guaranteed for all.

"What Are You Rebelling Against, Johnny?"

Holy credenza! That's Bud Cort in The Life Aquatic as the bond company representative. Now there's a transformation.

The whole aging, evolving, maturing concept is not one I can grasp easily. How did Brando get from Stanley Kowalski to Superman's dad? I've been around just long enough that I'm starting to get concrete glimpses of people turning into their parents. It's still a bit of a shock to the system, watching all the former young cocky gunslingers of the eighties buying station wagons so they can drive to their PTA meetings. Having back surgery. Practicing their golf swings. Joining Republican fundraisers.

I'd like to watch a timelapse film of a person, from baby to corpse. Shot at an interval of every six months or so. Growing up, out, muscles forming, strength developing, flourishing, stabilizing, then beginning to wrinkle, sag, decay. And die out. It's a similar arc for both plant & animal forms, but attaching a personality to it adds quite a stirring new dimension.

Funny how most people are repulsed by the aging body, creeping closer towards inevitable death. The fear that one day it will be us slowly falling apart. Recognizing our fate. And all that. Not really worth spending much brain energy on, I suppose, other than as motivation to drink from the well before it dries up forever.

This isn't supposed to be a morbid post. Stop looking at me like that.

Spam-Free Oz

Stand back, I've got some vitriol to spit.

I'd like to take a moment to point out the obvious - that spammers are the most despicable loathsome putrid scatmunchers on the face of the earth, barring only pedophiles & totalitarian dictators. They deserve nothing but immediate banishment to the bog of eternal stench where they shall rot forever in their own fleshy decay. They are mosquitoes with no purpose whatsoever except to annoy. Bandits along the information highway, only the word "bandit" sounds too romantic to use on these gutless wonders. They are selfish ogres, ripping wood from the hull of our ship to sell as spare timber, unconcerned with the consequence of the ship sinking, just so long as they make their paltry bucks. At least revolutionists are opposed in principle to the existence of the ship in the first place. Spammers have no principles.

They must be hunted down & slaughtered, strangled with their own foul intestines. There are so many problems that need repairing on this planet, how dare they poke their greedy snot-encrusted snouts into the works & make things harder than they already are. They deserve to be ripped apart by rabid wolves, an explosive charge jammed up their urethras & detonated, strapped down with Clockwork Orangean brutality & forced to endure endless tape loops of David Hasselhoff songs. I want every single one of them to hurt. Their pain should be legendary.

And what pisses me off the most is that even if we spend five years launching technological warfare against these cretins, designing computers to explode instantly when "send" is pressed on an unwarranted email or whatever - even if we are victorious in battle, we will only have returned to a state in which we should have been all along, were it not for these vomit-engorged Visigoths. What needless agony.

I'm not sure of the figures - is it six million spam messages sent per day? Bogging down the servers & flooding inboxes across the network. What's probably going to happen sooner or later is the formation of an electronic postal system under which each individual email will cost xx cents. This would deter spammers, but would be a hassle for the rest of us as well. So much for the beauty of free electronic mail.

Those fuckers.

And now back to your regularly scheduled white noise.

Mother Whale Eyeless

At the risk of becoming the Unofficial Site for the Rampant Plagiarism of Brian Eno, here's a fantabulous idea from the Mad Professor himself, proposed during his recent BBC interview with Alan Moore on Chain Reaction.

• Note the license number of the next car you pass.
• Visit your local library.
• Use the license number as the basis for a Dewey Decimal search.
• Check out the resulting book.
• Read it.
• Acquire new profoundly unexpected knowledge.

Try it out. Let me know what you dig up about Le Pétomane or wolfbagging or what may be.

New From Blammo!

I'm not overly fond of the word "blog," I confess, so I've decided to refer to mine from hereafter as a blargh. Just so's you know.

~~~~~

I'm reading David Foster Wallace's essay on political talk radio in the latest Atlantic Monthly, & just reached the point where he explains about identifying an audience by the station commercial spots. During this, I had a sudden epiphany - something suddenly became clear which I had simply never considered before. And that is this: commercials are intended for me. They are a plea for me to buy a business's products. Sound obvious? Well, I've never thought of it like that before. To me, commercials were always "breaks" in the teevee shows I watched as an imp. A short intermission in which to refill soda, piss, play with cat, thwack nearby sibling, annoy parent, etc. It never occurred to me to actually pay any attention to them, absorb what they were saying, to react to them in any way.

Thinking back, there are only a handful of commercials I can actually remember, & even those I can't remember what products they were supposed to be identified with. I remember the "where's the beef?" campaign. I'm guessing that was for Wendys (the Ross Perot of the fast food burger chains). I do vaguely remember the Slinky Song, though I remember The Log Song from Ren & Stimpy much better. I remember those GI Joe "knowing is half the battle" segments, although Inspector Gadget had a similar safety-minded epilogue, I seem to recall. Then there were all those commercials for "feminine freshness" showing a zestfully clean woman in a bathrobe walking along a beach. Those had me baffled for years.

Commercials were like telemarketers. It never occurred to me to actually speak to one. A telemarketer was someone you automatically hung up on without a second thought. Or pretended to stutter for until they got so frustrated they hung up on you. Or someone you asked to sign your "Joey Ramone for President" mailing list. But not someone you dropped what you were doing to devote your attention to. More relevant these days is email spam, which provokes an instant smiting with the delete key. No second thought.

I haven't had television for a decade now, so the subject rarely arises. No telling what the advertisement landscape out there is like these days. But just who are these 1% of the population who do apparently respond to marketing ads, enough to keep it a profitable business? Whoever you are, you're spoiling my view.

"What rolls down stairs alone or in pairs
Rolls over your neighbor's dog?
What's great for a snack and fits on your back?
It's Log, Log, Log!

It's Log, Log, it's big, it's heavy, it's wood.
It's Log, Log, it's better than bad, it's good!
Everyone wants a log! You're gonna love it, Log!
Come on and get your log! Everyone needs a Log!"

Look What the Cat Dragged In

There's a dwarf peering in the funhouse mirror, the flower in his lapel sprays poison. The mute horsegirl dances a tango down Transvestite Alley. A bloodshot eyed Kurt Weill can be found slumming among the reeferbahn, stoned on the fumes & whistling a tune he'll use later. From a corner booth Otto Dix draws sketches of the beautiful madness, ignoring his martini. Under a crumbling balcony the ghost of Django Reinhardt performs a nylon string serenade to all the lovely girls eating boysenberries as cannonfire thunders in the distance. Leah Callahan observes all this from the recesses of the night, in her Dietrichian tophat & fishnets, cigarette holder issuing snaky smoke, wine glass tipped over & bleeding onto the cabaret floor.

"Red Eye" makes a lopsided lurch through the very same junkyard where Tom Waits routinely scours for spare parts. This song is capable of burrowing into your subconscious like some sort of demonic earworm. And a most welcome one, at that. "Vampire Heart" takes us on an accordion-laden boatride under a chalky Paris moon. "Valentine" is a ransom note for the soul of Edith Piaf, held captive by gypsies somewhere on the outskirts of town. Her voice sounds so deceptively innocent, weaving in & out of the sparse acoustic arrangements, that you're not even aware of the knifeblade being unsheathed down near your elbow. The macabre can be beautiful & this album is testimony.

Drink Nike

I had a dream that Michael Jackson had another accident with his nose. The doctors assure him they've got everything patched up as good as new. He leaves the infirmary in conspicuously normal street clothes, looking like a bug in a ballcap.

~~~~~

One of my favourite jokes, yanked from a footnote in Brian Eno's A Year With Swollen Appendices. If you don't find it at least darkly amusing, we'd better part ways right about here.

Scene 1: Brigadier calls the sergeant-major into his office. "Just received notification that Private Jones's parents have been killed in a car crash. You'll have to break it to him, Sar'nt-Major, but please be a little delicate about it this time, will you?"

Scene 2: On the parade ground. Sergeant-major addresses his troops: "All those with living parents one step forward! ... Where d'you think you're going, Jones?"

~~~~~

The mark of literary success is when you publish a novel & Iron Maiden writes a song about it.

An Anecdote

A woman with a golden nose & a monkey in her arms had her driver stop the Cadillac so she could roll down the window & ask Fellini in her high metallic voice, "how come there's not even one normal person in your film?"

Sometimes It's Better to Play Dead

Lo Galluccio's spell comes blurting from the dented radio of a sunscorched convertible, churning up dust along a stark soundscape of rattlesnakes, barbed wire fences, & bleached cattleskulls. Her voice evokes a haunting motif in this desert film noir as we pull up to a ramshackle filling station, advertised as the last stop for gas in the next hundred miles, & discover the attendant is the tortured ghost of a Hopi medicine man with a story to tell.

Like her spiritual godmother Patti Smith, Lo hoists her bandolier, sharpens her bayonet, & moves with the delicate swagger of an angel on a battlefield. In "I Put a Spell on You" she casts Hawkins' wax figurine voodoo back on its author, resulting in an even spookier rendition, mercilessly feminine. "Let Em Think My Wings iz Broke" creeps in like a thief in the chicken coop, amid jagged eggshells & droplets of blood. The children of foxes in "Back Porch" can be heard drumming on oil casks & tree stumps for a salivating audience of vultures, salamanders, & wild dogs. Existential torch songs on an imaginary jukebox. This album isn't afraid to get its hands dirty.

Science Made Stupid

Smithsonian Institute
207 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20078

Dear Mr. Williams:

Thank you for our latest submission to the Institute, labeled "93211-D, layer seven next to the clothesline post...Hominid Skull." We have given this specimen a careful and detailed examination, and regret to inform you that we disagree with your theory that it represents conclusive proof of the presence of Early man in Charleston County two million years ago.

Rather, it appears that what you have found is the head of a Barbie doll, of the variety that one of our staff, who has small children, believes to be "Malibu Barbie." It is evident that you have given a great deal of thought to the analysis of this specimen, and you may be quite certain that those of us who are familiar with your prior work in the field were loathe to come to contradiction with your findings. However, we do feel that there are a number of physical attributes of the specimen which might have tipped you off to its modern origin:

1. The material is molded plastic. Ancient hominid remains are typically fossilized bone.

2. The cranial capacity of the specimen is approximately 9 cubic centimeters, well below the threshold of even the earliest identified proto-homonids.

3. The dentition pattern evident on the skull is more consistent with the common domesticated dog than it is with the ravenous man-eating Pliocene clams you speculate roamed the wetlands during that time.

This latter finding is certainly one of the most intriguing hypotheses you have submitted in your history with this institution, but the evidence seems to weigh rather heavily against it. Without going into too much detail, let us say that:

A. The specimen looks like the head of a Barbie doll that a dog has chewed on.

B. Clams don't have teeth.

It is with feelings tinged with melancholy that we must deny your request to have the specimen carbon-dated. This is partially due to the heavy load our lab must bear in its normal operation, and partly due to carbon-dating's notoriously inaccurate results.

Sadly, we must also deny your request that we approach the National Science Foundation Phylogeny Department with the concept of assigning your specimen the specific name Australopithecus spiff-arino. Speaking personally, I for one, fought tenaciously for the acceptance of your proposed taxonomy, but was ultimately voted down because the species name you selected was hyphenated, and didn't really sound like it might be Latin. However, we gladly accept your generous donation of this fascinating specimen to the museum. While it is undoubtedly not a Hominid fossil, it is, nonetheless, yet another riveting example of the great body of work you seem to accumulate here so effortlessly. You should know that our Director has reserved a special shelf in his own office for the display of the Specimens you have previously submitted to this Institution, and the entire staff speculates daily on what you will happen upon next in your digs at the site you have discovered in your Newport back yard.

We eagerly anticipate your trip to our nation's capital that you proposed in your last letter, and several of us are pressing the Director to pay for it. We are particularly interested in hearing you expand on your theories surrounding the trans-positating fillfitation of ferrous metal in a structural matrix that makes the excellent juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex femur you recently discovered take on the deceptive appearance of a rusty 9-mm Sears Craftsman automotive crescent wrench.

Yours in Science,

Harvey Rowe
Chief Curator
Antiquities

Lysdexia Skrites Aigan

"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Feraknig amzanig huh?"

Ironing Out the Wrinkles of the American Flag

The blueprints for America's future have already been drawn and, since at least as far back as the nineteen seventies, are well on their way towards total implementation. The America of the future is a land that celebrates uniformity and convenience, where one can drive into a new town without the slightest fear that it will look any different than the previous one. Every exit ramp provides access to a plethora of instantly recognisable franchises, each one providing selections of risk-free foodlike products. Individually-owned restaurants are nearly obsolete. Travelers no longer have to take a chance with an establishment called Edna's Beaneria when the familiar stench of a Big Mac awaits them in a fast food cluster overlooking the interstate.

Every third intersection is flanked by a drug store with a recognisable name housed in a cheap prefabricated structure and facing a competing chain on an adjacent corner. Building materials are cheap and indistinct. Streets are laid out in convenient gridlike patterns, eliminating unpredictability for drivers. Each business is surrounded by a parking lot. This makes it convenience for inhabitants of the town to encase themselves in their vehicle, drive to their destination, find a parking spot, conduct their business, and return to their home with a minimal amount of contact with the outside world. Sealed inside their capsule, they can travel along the highways with little to no interaction with their fellow townspeople, thus making it much easier to ignore such unpleasantries as poverty and homelessness. The most common form of communication is the occasional irate burst of automobile horn.

Domestic houses are arranged along rows of suburban streets, all identical, differentiated only by house number. The prevalence of the internet makes leaving the house a less frequent event. Television keeps the inhabitants constantly notified as to what the rest of the nation is thinking, doing, saying, wearing, watching, listening to. Younger generations are free to drift along in complacency. The urge to escape and see the rest of the country, once a motivation for their restless forbearers, is defused by the fact that the rest of the country is no different from their own hometown.

This blanket of uniformity admittedly still has a few holes in the fabric. Mountain states have an unfair advantage of picturesque scenery, as do coastal towns. Urban engineers will undoubtedly have this problem licked within the next few decades. An increase of billboards may be a partial remedy. Some of the bigger cities have certain cultural landmarks which give them an unfair edge. New York City in particular has a large share of deconstruction ahead of it in order to provide an even playing field across the nation. I'd say given another twenty-five years this country will have slipped entirely into the soothingly indistinct state of monotony which its current architects seem so intent on fashioning. Sleep well, brethren.