Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Giving Civilization Head



An ounce of critical thinking is worth a pound of boor.

I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire


The song was playing in the shop. It strummed from high speakers, working its way into the ears, mind, memory, source of us. While it continued, the sun broke through, lighting half the space, making me notice instantly, before the baristas chirped and incoming customers came in fresh.

There was a mythic quality about it, a moment of youth, of being really young, knowing nothing but the atmospherics of the immediate surround and not of the wider circle, the serpentine, the bog path.

There was a counterpoise that made the innocence stand out even more, causing shine: a flicker that this was NOT a moment 'frozen' in psychologically hopeful explanation for an nuclear annihilation a microsecond into its inception.

Not coincidentally, that irony isn't lost on the makers of Fallout 3, whose marketing includes retro recordings quite at odds with its apparent post-apocalyptic game world. They've used the Ink Spots' song, first released in 1941 -- if you recall a year of Pearl Harbor, Nazi occupation of Europe, the air Blitz over Britain, German invasion of the Soviet Union, and Japanese imperialist conquest of Southeast Asia and voluminous island populations of The Philippines and the Dutch East Indies.

Yet the 40s strike us as 'nostalgia'.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

MarQ'Oz Mixes




Almost with antiquarian breathlessness, I went to the Amazon music and MP3 sections to dig out what versions I could find of 'old pop'.

At first it was a search for Rat Pack and lounge-istic style, upbeat, never-again-to-be-duplicated . . . uh . . . swingin' sounds rising from the optimism and wealth of post-WW2 American (not-yet-even-dreamed-to-be) 'hegemonic' influence over international culture. Vegas, Miami, Hollywood. Supper shows. TV Specials, replete with sophisticated black tie ultimately, often, loosened, glittered with polite perspiration showering diamonds on our appreciative vision.

The task was managed. Rat Pack, certainly, but not overloaded thereby. Also music written by -- and if possible also performed by -- Mancini, Bacharach, Hefti. A pinch of McGuire Sisters, Four Freshman, Four Lads to remind us of the roots of Big Time Entertainment in the harmonically pretty.

Two Discs: Kitsch In The Throat and Son Of A Kitsch.

Embarrassing, sentimental, naive. No one young today would 'get the message' -- not 'ring-a-ding-ding', mind you, but 'how generations pass'.

Friday, March 20, 2009

(For The Most Part) Nicht Was Ich Bin



Adventurous, revolutionary, ideological, devotional, rationalistic, impulsive, insensitive, au courant, dapper, communitarian, rugged, credulous, establishmentarian, ambitious.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Leadership




They must hear something but not what they don't want to hear.

So you tell them what they do want to hear.

If they're good -- right for their job -- they'll 'read you',

See through your (possibly, per force, reluctant) sham,

And value your intelligence at understanding the game -- power.

The 5 Horsemen



Next to War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death . . .

Snow.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

The Bouquet of Bous



Within the fifth layer of cleanliness, by which we understand the lowest, were two people interviewed in the 1990s. To their defense, it might be said that they worked outside, possibly among animals, and whatever habits they might otherwise have had had disappeared as pointlessly, inefficiently, old-fashioned.

The smell was a personal smell, one body crevice outdoing another in its shout for attention.

People have it that human odor is an evolutionary advantage, something like enormous size, red coloring, spines.

We stink, therefore, we are.

As I spoke to them for a long 30 minutes, receiving lethargic answers to bureaucratic questions, my nose closed down for 'maintenance', sign up, facility shut.

Their memory stayed with my clothes until later: a bath, a re-robing, an hour of wash-dry cycle.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

A Handwritten Affair



Uniformity of computer font: a democratic excellence that masks bad smells.

Me own handwrite, though: all of the 2s look different, even when I try for them to be the same. My own mind pitches itself in concert with itself, my taste divagates into richness, my self brings into the universe the new.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Late Snow, Foutre Snow




2nd week March, past the cut-off, snow coming down, rain commingling?

Not all frozen, drifting, white, fluff, fuck you.

(On a beach, on a beach, on a beach, on a beach)