Category: Reading

the difference between one and not the other – four random recent things written down

The difference between one and not the other will never make sense.

The straight makes the not-straight great.

The static nature of anything is nothing,

It’s really hard to do anything authentic in a stadium.

 

not to be all critic guy but the wait for daft punk’s finally fucking here album Random Access Memory was well worth it.

“A smartphone in heliosynchronous orbit was issuing human screams.”

This from Harper’s “Findings,” May 2013

I love the word heliosynchronous!
It makes me high.
I would swear that it even pitches my voice higher.
I also think it goes very well with smartphone.
Orbit.

You can’t leave out Orbit!
Another outta-space word right there!
Contains Orb and
telegraphs Orbital.
Orb is religious, sacred. Space bends back in on itself.

Earth the size of a pool ball would be smoother.

Why, it begs, is there a smartphone orbiting Earth? Makes sense that it’s on time and in tune, however, being that it’s a smartphone. But why is it screaming?

I prefer to remain in the dark as to the undoubtedly reasonable explanation and instead stay heliosynchronous to my ignorance.

And in a nod to the power of reasonable explanations, also from “Findings”…

“Scientists proposed that male lions’ skill at ambushing prey in dense vegetation was previously unknown because of scientists’ fear of being ambushed by male lions in dense vegetation.”

Right on, that.

Hagiography

I can’t say how much I love how Edward St. Aubyn skewers the holy, high and mighty, landed, nam-ed, people of his Patrick Melrose novels. But I also feel a similar anger toward his own prodigious talent. Like, well, fuck you, Eddie, with all you got through whatever genetic re-redistribution that led to your own genius! You are the heir to whatever it is you do. You skewer them with the same unabashed cruelty and poetry that they do others. Yes, you are infinitely better and more able, while they skewer, you fillet. And I Iove you for it. But I hate you, too. That cruelty doesn’t come from nowhere.

And that’s the point, I guess. I love you again.

We’re just buggin’ the shit out of each other

It started out with stopping by, droppin’ in and poppin’ over. Cave to cave. Cabin to cabin.

Then we learned to write with letters and along came letters written to drop in the box and on to whomever.

The telegraph turned letters into tweets – instantaneous and terse.

The telephone turned everything else upside down, inside everywhere – voices over lines of metal – spoken in Spokane heard in Japan. Conversations across the universe. There was nothing more to say. And when they got into homes, there was nowhere to hide. They had you in your house. The perfect crime.

Then phones divided into cellphones and proliferated. Popping up everywhere, public spaces, intimate places. Joined at the hip. Cool shit. The crime perfected.

Emails hail down upon your desktop, your laptop, iPad and cellphone. Damage occurs.

But that was not enough – we’ve rebuilt the telegraph from man to man, phone to phone. Tweeting everything. Leaving out nothing.

We’re dropping by all the time.

We’re just buggin’ the shit out of each other.

Thoughts for October 6

Follicle Law

Why are there so many men with square-staches and bald heads? They’ve been proliferating exponentially for the last decade. Where did all that hair go? Why not beards? It’s as if a rule were decreed by the king of these things making it illegal or immoral for a man to have some hair but not all hair, and that upper lips and chins must be covered by a thin layer of whisker.

The Mother Ship

What has happened to Uptown? When Prince wrote about it, quite frankly, it was still rather a dump, but the arrival of the much-maligned Calhoun Square kicked off a renaissance that ushered in the unique, chic and local boutiques. Now there’s an LA Fitness. An LA Fitness. And somehow, like a fleet of alien spaceships, great big blocky condominium buildings with silly names are moored all around the place. I can’t see the sense in any of this. Who, at one point, looked around and thought, “Congestion. This place needs more residents.”

Skinny Little Lovers

Prisons provide weights – apparently so the hardened criminals can develop even more hardened physiques, making them stronger and more dangerous upon release. I propose we remove all the weights, limit the caloric intake to reduce the physical mass, encourage long distance running (within the confines of the yard), broadcast only Lifetime movies with the likes of Valerie Bertinelli and Marcia Gay Harden, serve up 19th century romantic poetry if anyone wants to read, and drip a steady stream of ecstasy into the water supply.