If this be treason—
So I got a copy of Oskar Tennis Champion and now I’m playing track no. 9 to death—
In the Soviet Union
There’s a lightswitch on the wall
In the Soviet Union
And a canteen down the hall
In the Soviet Union
I make faces with a torch
In the Soviet Union
In the mirror on the back of the bathroom door
In the Soviet Union
Shining up the lino on the corridor floor
In the Soviet Union
Eating dead pigeons cold and raw
In the Soviet Union
Drinking vodka through a straw
In the Soviet Union
Weeping for the visions Lenin saw
I like it here, I like it fine
The radiator’s warm
The bus is on time
And healthcare is free
A job is for life
The caretaker is me
I’m switching on the lights
Me, I blame the pernicious influence of Ann “Treason” Coulter.
Today I’m alone
The war hasn’t even begun
But your king hasn’t won
One day you’ll come…
—Bonus pop culture up-to-the-moment meme in Oskar Tennis Champion: lots of pirates.
Rinsing certain tastes out of my mouth.
Tomorrow is the solstice, of course. The sun will reach the zenith of its analemma; the Oak King, distracted, will show the Holly King (who says, I only want to be sure you’re safe; I only want to know how very hard it is to harm you) the one way he can be killed, and the Holly King will turn treacher and strike. And then the days will grow shorter—so slowly that at first we will not notice, tumbling headlong through the high white heat of summer—until the first crisp breeze nips our nose, and we’re well on our way toward the cold dead end of the year.
If anything interesting happens to you in all of that, and you manage to wrap it up in 250 words of less-than-fictional prose by 28 June, slip it into a Word document and email it to Dale Keiger for consideration in the Microstories Summer Solstice 2003 project, would you? I think he’d like that.
Fluff.
Just wanted to counteract the sniggering, condescending, and spiteful links that this piece is sure to generate by noting that my own (admittedly lackluster) interest in seeing Matrix Reloaded just doubled.
No, I Claudius.
From Patrick Farley, genteel proprietor of that of which androids do dream:
The Which I, Claudius Character Are You? quiz.
(Me? I’m Clau- Clau- Claudius. Who else?)
Take the first left after Venus, you can’t miss it.
Venus:
- Diameter: 5.2 inches
- Location: Budget Traveler Motor Inn (0.7 mile from Sun)
- Construction: Styrofoam ball with fiberglass cover
- Constructed by: Caribou Tech Center (Caribou High School)
- Painted by: Jeanie McGowan, Curator of Collections at the Northern Maine Museum of Science and student at the University of Maine at Presque Isle
- Posts constructed by: Northern Maine Technical College, Sonny Michaud and students
- Base constructed by David Tardie and his students, Loring Job Corps, Cement Mason Program
—Via MetaFilter, the coolest thing I’ve seen this morning: a 40-mile-long scale model of the solar system, from the Sun at the Northern Maine Museum of Science at Presque Isle, to Pluto (and Charon) outside the Houlton Information Center at the junction of Route 1 and Interstate 95. It’s the brainchild of Kevin McCartney, a professor of geology at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, and it was constructed pretty much entirely of donated materials and volunteer labor on a budget of zip, zero, zilch. Here’s the Smithsonian’s write-up:
Just now, newspaper ad sales manager Jim Berry is drilling a hole in Saturn’s post and remembering his first encounter with McCartney at a Kiwanis Club meeting. “I went home that night and said to my wife, ‘I met this guy today. He’s a wacko. You can’t believe what he’s going to try to do.’ “ When he got up the next morning he said, “Wait a minute. This is a great idea. I’ve got to get involved in this. This is just too good to pass up.”
McCartney has that effect on people; one day they think he’s crazy, the next day they’re painting Jupiter’s spot. His list of prominent “squirrels,” as he inexplicably calls his volunteers, runs eight pages long. Add the anonymous students who worked on a planet here or a stanchion there, and McCartney estimates that more than 500 squirrels have pitched in so far. Perley Dean, a retired Presque Isle High School guidance counselor who wears a “Maine Potato Board” baseball cap, got the job of persuading several landowners that what was missing on their property was a planet. “Many of them don’t stay up late at night reading about the galaxy,” Dean deadpans.
To infinity and beyond!
Film at elevenses.
Medley’s noting another disquieting example of the government threatening experts who speak out against a proposed government policy. This time, it’s about the dismantling of Head Start, which, despite years of sketchy funding and grudging support, is still one of the more impressive federal success stories. Ah, well; scratch off another opportunity for your tax dollars to do some good in this world. —Elayne ties it to a venerable PBS institution in trouble because of a lack of cartoon figures ripe for exploitation on jammies and lunchboxes.
From one Sara to another: Sara Ryan links to the text of a great speech Sara Peretsky’s been delivering these days.
Ampersand is all up in Congress’s face about the “Partial-Birth” Abortion Ban: it’s patently unconstitutional, and he makes his case quite clearly here, here, and here (with a sidetrack to [shudder] the Corner here). A fourth part of his series will be coming up next week, looking at what we might expect from the Supremes, given that O’Connor will almost certainly resign before this travesty of law reaches their chambers; look for it.
I never got around to pointing out that Fantagraphics needs your help, but since everybody and her sister was on top of it, my slacking doesn’t matter so much in this hill of beans. The which said, here’s a quickie update on how they’re faring, and a reminder that now’s a great time to pick up a copy of Safe Area Goradze, a Maakies collection, or the TPB of Small Favors.
Judging from the comments section, and much to his puzzled bemusement, Kevin’s two-week old post on the Dixie Chicks and FUTK still has freakishly gawky legs. I point it out less for any insight the ongoing discussion might offer (pretty much nil) than for the entertainment value it offers as a curious singularity.
And, well, it’s mildly instructive to note the differences in headlines covering Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix’s final address to the Security Council: “US deaf to arms inspections pleas,” says the New Zealand Herald; “Blix decries coalition’s intelligence on Iraq arms,” says the International Herald Tribune; “Blix: Inspections could yet turn up banned weapons in Iraq,” MSNBC; “Blix: ‘No surprise’ if WMD found,” CNN. —Take from that what you will, which is the point, really.
If you read one book review this season
make it John Dolan’s review of James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces. (Thanks, ’hat!)
78 luftballoons.
Yeah, it’s running up the blogdex like a thing that climbs up something else really fast, but it’s worth it: the ’80s Tarot. There are some truly inspired choices in there, and if your memory is long enough to have looked past the rather blandly mediocre nature of That ’80s Show to appreciate just how frighteningly, subtly spot-on the production designers and set dressers were in capturing That ’80s Look—not so much the bar or the record shop, those were gimmies; I’m thinking of the condo they lived in, the generic hotel-lobby furniture, that weird mix of wall and decor colors, neutral cools and mellow pastels that manage to be prickly and uncomfortable despite their best efforts: slick salespeople too studied, too mannered in their insouciance, smiling too much, their hands behind their backs holding other shoes about to drop. —Where was I? If you caught more than one episode for some variation on this queasily fascinated nostalgia kick, then the Tarot will make you laugh in delight, and you’ll think of Howard Jones for the first time in ages.
Luftballoon bonus: the 99 Luftballoons installation at Project Blinkenlights.
So small and flat.
How can I trust you if you write to me, but do not include an URL to your photoblog? How can I tell, first, what your face looks like? Isn’t that enormously important? Secondly, without a photoblog I cannot know if your perception of the world is stale or fresh. I cannot know if you look around you, and, if you do, what you’re looking at, and how. I cannot know how you dress, and whether it would be appealing to undress you. I cannot know to what canon of beauty you subscribe unless I can subject you to rigorous style analysis.
You may be a brilliant writer, like Ian Penman, and you may have a blog stuffed with lively wordplay and interesting opinions. But the world is already full of opinions, of commentaries on commentaries, glosses on glosses, and spins on spins. Photos, in a world where the word-snake dines on its own tail, give me hope. Maybe photos can break the ever-narrowing vicious circles of language. Break them with textures, colours, forms; the peculiarly irreducible specificities of the visual world.
I want to know what you look like, and what the world around you looks like. It’s tremendously important to me, because in the end I don’t care a fig about whether you pronounce in favour of this or that book, film or record, or what life has taught you. Don’t tell me, show me! I want to look at the new shapes you’re seeing, viddy the texture of your lips and the colour and condition of your teeth. I want to see your face and use your eyes, damn it, because mine are always stalling and failing.
You have no choice but to start a photoblog. It’s a course requirement in the art school of life.
—That’s pop star Momus on photoblogging. Lots of icy cool links, too. —And if what little work I’ve done in graphic design convinces me that reproductions of the teal blue of his shirt are just as untrustworthy as the words, “teal blue,” well. He nonetheless has his point. (Several, in fact.)
The final Buffy.
As opposed, I guess, to the Buffy finale? Anyway. I didn’t end up watching it, what with one thing and another, and the fact that the show never really recovered from its sixth-season slump, a couple of decent shows this past year notwithstanding, and, well, there was the one thing and another I was up to. Washing my hair, I think, or something. But it seems I made the wrong call: the finale actually sounds like it was a hoot and a half.
Ah, well. I’ll end up catching it on DVD sooner or later.
Since I seem to be in a short and pithy mood.
I bagged this from last week’s New Yorker, which I’m just now getting around to reading, but which they already seem to have taken off-line or something. Omar al-Issawi, the “smoldering Lebanese” hotshot correspondent at Al Jazeera, was told by a fellow CENTCOM journalist: “You’ve risen to star status.”
“Let’s hope not,” is what al-Issawi says in response. “They say the light from a star reaches us long after it has depleted its resources.”
The case for Appalachia.
So Mr. President, you have all the elements you need: weapons of mass destruction, a nearly third world enemy, potential terrorists, someone to call evil, and an easy path to victory. Now all you have to do is attack. And please, do it soon. We need the reparations, better schools, better infrastructure, universal healthcare, and a fair share in the wealth of our own resources.
You also promised Iraq democracy. We could use that here as well.
—from “Mr. President, Please Attack Appalachia,” posted over at Common Dreams last week, via largehearted boy (who also led me to—well, hear for yourself).
O, eldritch Godwin!
It’s come up twice in separate conversations over the past few days, which means it goes up here, darn it. (“What I tell you two times gets blogged.”) So: that alternate history where H.P. Lovecraft gets elected president and invades Canada, among other things.
(Written by John J. Reilly, whose crankery I’m finding quite endearing this fine, damp evening, despite the inevitable cocked eyebrow or three.)
They say, everything could be replaced.
Nina Simone is dead, alas.
Alabama’s got me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi goddam!
I think this awkward, broken translation of Pravda’s obituary says it best, in a 7.30-in-the-morning first-cup-of-coffee sort of way:
Why are cigars lit at a match? They are lit with a strong and natural flame of a match which unwillingly slips from under professional hands; the flame sputters, resists, envelops rolled tobacco leaves; it gives the leaves the passion and the flame. The head of a match falls off in a second. It is only in hands of a professional that a match lights straight away.
Mostly because she isn’t here to say it herself anymore.
Lord have mercy on this land of mine
We all gonna get it in due time
I don’t belong here
I don’t belong there
I’ve even stopped believing in prayer
Don’t tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due
I’ve been there so I know
They keep on saying “Go slow!”
Twisty. Little. Different.
At End Of Road
You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully.
>which end of the road is it?
I don’t understand the question.
>I mean, if this is where the road ends, did I walk down the road to get here? How else would I get to the end of the road? Or is it the other end of the road?
Why does it matter?
>I don’t know if I should walk up the road, which might be repeating myself, or walk past the end of the road and see if it goes somewhere.
It doesn’t matter which end of the road it is, and you didn’t come from anywhere—you’re just here.
>how is that possible?
Possible isn’t important in this game.
>Oh.
Which reminds me of a bunch of other stuff I mean to catch up on when I’ve got the time.
Never attribute to malice.
Kevin has an oddly—touching?—postscript to his cartoon from earlier this week. Turns out the shock jocks thought it was “totally awesome,” and offered this defense:
it wasn’t nessesarily just a tirade about her, just us acting like three year olds saying fat bitch on the radio.
Aww. Isn’t that sweet?
