Firewhisky Recipe! Butterbeer Recipe!

The movie Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince has gotten teenage drinking in the news. And it's true, after they point it out, there is a bunch of booze in the sixth movie. In the earlier books, there was always a bit of ambiguity about butterbeer, it was not really clear if it was even alcoholic. By the later books, it's more implied that it does definitely loosen the students up. And another drink appears in the later books called firewhisky, & I recall there being a funny scene when they go to The Hog's Head, the sketchier pub in Hogsmeade. Ron is excited that they might serve him firewhisky, but Hermione shoots him down. At some point, in the last book, doesn't Harry actually drink a shot? They're toasting the memory of a fallen member of the Order of the Phoenix, & I think she describes the burning feeling you get when you first sip whiskey.

Okay, prepare yourself, because these quotes from the New York Times might make you more nauseous than a butterbeer firewhiskey carbomb:

Hermione is tipsy. Neville is serving drinks. Ron is sipping mead and Harry is partying with his professors.

Does Hogwarts have a drinking problem?

This article pretends to present the issue unbiasedly, but the concerned parents they quote are definitely weighed heavier. And by taking the drinking out of their context in the school & the other potions & spells, it might make it more alarming to paranoid parents that Hogwarts is a bad influence.

Liz Perle, a mother of two teenage boys and the editor in chief of Common Sense Media, which reviews books, movies and Web content aimed at children, said she was bothered by so many scenes showing alcohol as a coping mechanism.

“Hermione is such a tightly wound young lady, but she’s liberated by some butterbeer,” she said. “The message is that it gives you liquid courage to put your arms around the guy you really like but are afraid to.”

Seriously, Liz Perle!? Come on! This article actually transitions from the quotes of concerned parents to newsy pseudo-science like: "Even accounting for variables like friends’ drinking habits, the researchers found that children with high exposure to alcohol in movies were nearly three times as likely to binge-drink as those with the lowest exposure."

In Harry Potter, after Harry has been attacked by a dementor, Professor Lupin gives him chocolate to restore him, not exactly advanced magic. All thru-out the books, Rowling understands that there are simpler magics & emotional forces more powerful than some of her sillier spells. What exactly is a potion but a brewed beverage with transformative properties? Alternately, when Ron is recovering from a strong potion, Professor Slughorn gives him a shot of mead which turns out to be laced with a powerful poison - not exactly the positive metaphor for drinking that parents fear. And there's of course two much more potent beverages in the Half-Blood Prince book - love potion & felix felicis (liquid luck). None of this fictional magic is far-fetched from what any teenager or adult has experienced from well-timed libations.

My friend Jenny Ruth came up with a simple recipe for butterbeer, but it involves a beer you can only get in Western America - New Belgium's 1554 Black Ale from Fort Collins, Colorado. Just add a dash of butterscotch schnapps to the top of a mug & it's extremely delicious & tastes exactly like I imagined in the books. The Black Ale is an old Belgian recipe - neither porter nor stout, but a very dark mild ale - and I'm sure the butterscotch will taste fine on top of any mild, dark ale; or any dark beer that's not hoppy.

I'd like to note that the other recipes for butterbeer on the internet sound DISGUSTING. One involves melting butter into cream soda & butterscotch-flavored syrup. And other variants on that. I guarantee these will have no magical properties except in the WC. Please drink butterbeer with real beer, and for the sake of American Society, have a mug with your 16-year-old friends & neighbors, especially when they are dealing with real 21st Century problems or celebrating something worth celebrating. They might need some liquid luck.

When we made firewhisky a few years ago, I used one of the most powerful hot sauces on the market, Dave's Ultimate Insanity Sauce. It's not a hot sauce you can just splash on your food, it has to be heavily diluted for any recipe. I boiled a small pot of water & basically added every spice in the spice cabinet, some fresh herbs, & some of this terrifying Dave's sauce. Then I slowly heated some bourbon in a separate pan (the Half-Blood Prince warns not to boil alcohol lest it become impotent). Then mix them when they're hot, gird up your loins, & take a shot. In retrospect, it makes more sense to use scotch or Irish whiskey, & I'm sure this recipe can be finer tuned or made with any variety of potent spices or chili sauces. But I do recommend the hitting-it-with-everything strategy & serving it very hot. Other recipes on the internet have ways to ignite the shot, but this seems cheesy & unnecessary, & Rowling does not mention the firewhisky actually being on fire. Don't be so literal! The fire's supposed to be in your belly & soul.

_________________________________________________________________

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S. Sandrigon - Prophecy and Doggerel 2009

More Sarah Palin Poetry: Small Mayors Quote Unquote

Befoulers of the Verbiage

It was an unfair attack on the verbiage
That Senator McCain chose to use,
Because the fundamentals,
As he was having to explain afterwards,
He means our workforce.
He means the ingenuity of the American.
And of course that is strong,
And that is the foundation of our economy.
So that was an unfair attack there,
Again based on verbiage.

-Sarah Palin

Last November, Julian Gough famously wrote about Sarah Palin as a poet: "What the philistine media take for incoherence is, in fact, the fruitful ambiguity of verse. [...] A great poet needs to leave open the door between the conscious and unconscious; Sarah Palin has removed her door from its hinges." He was referring to a poem he had rewritten in verse & called "The Relevance of Alaska" (we quoted it here last November - "And the relevance to me / With that issue, / As we spoke / About Africa...") Sarah Palin poetry is back like the eskimos: Hart Seeley has a collection at Slate.com, there's some analysis by John Lundberg at the Huffington Post. Someone named Beau Vent is selling an eBook called "Tap That Verbiage, Also". And seemingly unrelatedly, last night, Conan O'Brien had William Shatner read some of Palin's resignation speech as beat poetry with bongos & upright bass:



I love that Alaskan imagery, especially the bit about being midway between extreme temperatures. I've also already posted this, but I feel it didn't get enough notice, the composer/pianist Henry Hey set accompaniment to one of Governor Palin's rambling sentencagraphs in the style of Steve Reich's The Cave:

You know,
Small mayors,
Mayors of small towns--
Quote, unquote--
They're on the front lines.

Repost: Lost & Forgotten Company

I don't suppose Mr Quill will mind if I fully quote his nice ending monologue about our visit & wanderings, & lovely photographs. (I've made them bigger).

Three weeks of joyful madness passed with dizzying speed. While the immediate effect was exhaustion, I am hopeful that it is leading to revitalization. The Big Little is certainly my home of the moment, but it never felt quite so much like it.

For the first time, I could approach activities with confidence that something would happen. It's amazing how much support one's friends can offer without even exerting effort in that direction. I knew that we could step outside with baseball gloves and bats and that something would happen. Cameras and resolve to make movies will lead to movies. I rarely feel that way on my own here.

All of this is horribly vague. It always is so when I try to catch up and explain the past. Soon there will be a movie available for all of you for watching purposes.

Grace has chronicled our misadventures more beautifully than I could ever hope to.

Itwaslost team's visit to beautiful Bulgaria will resound throughout this coming year. For now, it's too close to be seen. But it was good.

-Originally posted here at All Forgotten East.

Special Agent Francis' Prayer

Composed at the oriental cafe in Bucharest, July 2009

And I will no longer smoke my hubbly-bubbly solitarily, as Special Agent Francis knows,
And the sea goddesses don't know,
And he eructates on the verandah, as disposable as his roast beef toes,
Before he's dislocated, like one of his talking animals,
I snogged him in the gazebo.
And we snogged wearing pajanimals--,
And if I wasn't indispensable, as much gum cancer as you can handle.

And I will no longer smoke my hubbly-bubbly solitarily, if you can believe it,
Nor without the yellow blackbird,
Neither wear your cap crookedly unless you see fit.
Special Agent Francis hears our fates clearly in our coffee grounds.
He's heard the opiated herd
Has become Trieste's hellhounds,
Unlimited & undistinguishable--, grant him peace to hear his gladly solemn sounds.

And I will no longer smoke my hubbly-bubbly solitarily, or without nutella banana crepes,
And Special Agent Francis:
He was a silent lover I stole silently from Miss Lousera Comasquerapes.
Dirty mermaids from the Black Sea, like poop droppings from a Hoopoe,
Silent my agent prances,
Like sirens don't know,
Today if not only yesterday Francis promises at deepest a furlough.

And I will no longer smoke my hubbly-bubbly solitarily, pray for war.
His elephant, my mosquito--,
His male elephant seal washing up dead on the shore, my prayer for nothing more--,
I have a dream of outfitting my whole family in white cotton.
Still I can't forgive his veto.
I don't regret his wet body rotten,
Rotting moistly, mostly unforgiven, choicely on the verandah & unforgotten.

And I will no longer smoke my hubbly-bubbly solitarily, rustically but alone but for the trepan
And the filthy sea goddesses.
Elle Mary has the bladder of an eighty-year-old man,
And I suspect already that we'll smoke this last one till the choking fine:
Mutated mammal kisses,
And with mammals drink lilac wine,
Like Special Agent Francis suspects the divine, & I'm still here as a dry Hoopoe unripe on the vine.

Confirmable Knowing: They Did Not Ride This

The metro train in Sofia.

It's blue, chrome, compact, and retro. Hipper than Carla Bruni rejecting the "Wives' Tour" at the G-8 in L'Aquila. Dressed better than Daniel Radcliffe at a movie premier. It's the Niko Case or Christiano Ronaldo or Judith Butler of the subway world. If I stood on its platform, it would ignore me.

In Re: We Didn't Ride These Things

Hello for a final time from the Balkans. It's getting too hot to move here, & so we're coming home.

In response to Mr Brains' inquiries to our use of bulgarous public transit, we traveled most everywhere by bus or foot. It's funny, yesterday, right when you were posting that question about the Ruse train, we were in Ruse attempting to get on a train to Romania, told "there is problem", & so had to go back overto the bus station. (Easier said than done, because the scam-artist taxi drivers are like a nagging combination of vulture & mosquito.) The bus was just a van with only us in it & a hungover chainsmoking driver who looked like Chigurgh from "No Country for Old Men" & kept chewing us out for strange reasons (putting the seat down, bread crumbs, &c.)

The electric buses in Bucharest, pictured in Brains' other posts, are easy to jump on & there seems to be no way to pay for your tickets (in comparison to Bulgaria, where little old ladies on the bus come & collect money.) We had a beer last night in a caffe over one of the temporarily dug-up streets in old town, where creaky boardwalks transport pedestrians over the nasty pits all thru this part of town, a popular neighborhood for stray dog fornication. It's lovely, actually, because there's no cars, just good-looking Bucureşteans promenading & carousing on the boardwalks; every city should be so fortunate to have it's old town all dug up.

Our last week was spent more-or-less around Varna, an old resort on the Black Sea, & various Eastern sites where Mr Quill's friends live. We met the famous Anton. I guess more impressions from our travels will trickle down, & some of the films will appear here. I recommend spending some time with Grainne's travelogue, "Beautiful to Forget, More Beautiful Still to Be Forgotten." (I like if you put those Scribd books into fullscreen & put on the book-flipping option.)

Fancy Asian Prayer

Composed near Varna, July 2009 (for M.P.)

Then the poor are fed with honey cream, & a time for war profiteers,
And escape from our system,
Six feet above a five-foot cloth, up to our ears in reindeer tears,
Up past our craniums in enriched uranium,
Way down past crystal Istanbul,
Down beyond the Jewish doughnut museum,
I found you chewing your cud & I found you dead as Antietam.

Then the poor are fed with honey cream, mixed with Chartreuse,
And more simple syrup.
Tell me, Mr Nixon, why don't we surrender before we lose?
Tell me, Mr Clinton, we know you're a sucker for toilet humor:
We know you're gay as a rancher's stirrup,
Away & forgotten, a dumpster rumor,
Or a freegan minstrel, then the poor are removed like the galaxy's tumor.

Then the poor are fed with honey cream, I'm just staring across
At the cross cleaving her buns, I can sit by the river & drink cappuccino & look lost:
Men patriotically stand up & sing the Greenlandic National Anthem:
"The way of matured civilizations
"It is our zealous goal to bring home."
I'll stay seated & drink slower & look like a lost phantom.

Then the poor are fed with honey cream, monstrously & atrociously silly,
Monstrously misinformed & dead wrong,
I'm just staring across at the pain in her belly,
At the lindens at daybreak & the wise men grown wiser,
Ask to shake a nation long,
Naughtily molested by a fossil incisor,
Ask politely to shake the dust of your flying carpet, ask her nicer.

Then the poor are fed with honey cream, stand up & sing,
The yellow wing will pay one day,
Ruminating past the farthest reach, orphans in the arms of the yellow wing,
Write down your history my friends, point with feeling & gesticulate,
And nothing will be okay,
You wait for the library's circular heriditate,
Learn the names on the gravestones, & be expelled & rusticated before it's too late.

Did They Ride This?

We have yet to hear back from any of our intrepid travelers whether they rode this. For posterity!

Did you ride this?



It's a view of platform two at Rousse Central station. Perhaps you rode this on your way to Sofia? We must know.

slides from the school storage room

beautiful to forget, more beautiful still to be forgotten by g f marlier

Beautiful to Forget

Did They Ride This?

Did you ride this in Rousse?

It's the zero-emissions trolleybus in Русе (Rousse), Bulgaricita's fifth largest city. I once had a coworker who was from this city!

Did They Ride This?

Recently the It Was Lost community convened in Bulgaria. Our charter prevents us from gathering all our sexiness in one place. It would put precious resources at risk and overwhelm the locals we encounter. We left our sexiest contributors at home in a show of due diligence.

Yet everyone plays a vital role! In this series, I, the Secretary of the Department of Nonviolent Nondriving, Soccer, & Roshambo, inquire whether the It Was Lost community rode this. The findings will contribute greatly to our Archive of Confirmable Knowings.

Did you ride this?



It's the very functional looking Metroul Bucureşti, which has four lines and added four brand new stations just last Novemeber 2008.





And did you ride this?



It's the RATB in Bucharest, a huge above-ground system that consists of three rapid transit options. Trams, light rail, and zero-emissions buses for you wonks.

Careful what you say in your responses: S. Sandrigon is wanted in the American state of Oregon for fare dodging!

Mix Tape was lost! Vol. 27: Part 4, the Final Part

THANK YOU EVERYBODY, WE HAD SUCH A GREAT TIME.

And now some Barış Manço videos

Pele once put tons of Balkan music on my iPod - & we pounced on one old Turkish rock track while we were editing the footage to our Bulgarian vampire/zombie flick, possibly to use as the soundtrack for the zombie attack? Thereafter, Barış Manço's 1981 album Hal Hal became our traveling / dancing album for this trip, & also we've been practicing his gesticulations from this video:


According to the wikipedia, he's still huge in Turkey a decade after his death. His older brother was born during World War II & named Savaş, 'war' in Turkish. Bariş means 'peace' & he is supposedly the first Turk with this now-common name. We were wondering if his hapless brother had a life of pillaging & burning villages. (Wasn't there something in This American Life about two brothers named Winner & Loser - Lou became a cop & family man, but Winn was in & out of jail, &c?)

The word "Hal" from the titular track is one of those words with a hundred various definitions in the dictionary, so we've been singing "Hal Hal" in English as "condition condition" or "MO-JO":

Emancipation Prayer

Composed near Varna, July 2009

The sun has been set free of its bonds, dislodged from our system,
Like a unicorn,
Shorn of its horn, its body a weathered mule body,
Its sunny soul quick & mortal as the rest of them,
As worn out as the morn,
As worn out as the river is naughty,
Put bitumen on your bugbites & you'll never win the lottery.

The sun has been set free, chortle, old men you've been right since the beginning.
There'd be an end to this spinning,
Shorn of its gramma-knit sweater, without agony or pity,
The Secretary of Energy's combover is seen graying & thinning,
The city's belly is aching,
The meaty center of this meaty city,
Left behind & all the better for it, weaned from the moon's dried-up mammary.

The sun has been set free of its servitude, with newfound valiance,
There'll be a man in a Hawai'ian shirt,
His plastic ukulele as his weapon, his violin violence & his other talents
Deployed against the Four Horsemen of the Green Party.
The city is a terrific flirt,
The city is a worn-out sortie,
So I'll tattoo your secret borscht recipe onto my buttocks, to be read only glow-in-the-dark by the drunk sorority.

The sun has been set free from sin, set to skip town by local bus,
Like a mastodon,
The earliest Vaalbaran genocide, slippery steppes slimed with blood & pus,
The mess beneath the Poet Laureate's refrigerator,
The broke-down Matterhorn,
Or our slothful-ass Sicilian waiter
Will also be set free from sin sooner or later.

The sun has been free - rejoice, children, & go to bed--
Rest your weary noggins--
Bound to no man, no slave of minimum wage, free to set its own systems & cycles instead,
Free to gyrate, to vibrate, resist the urge to beat the dog when it's misbehaving.
Rest your goosebumps, pumpkins--
Get down your night chords & sing--
It left no note, it's gone with no farewell, no vodka shot & no flag-waving.

Three Years Ago: "E-mails: Three Written Today in Alameda"

I never properly celebrated the fact that this weblog has been around for three years, no small achievement in blogospheric time. So we're spearheading an initiative for a new segment called "Three Years Ago", where the post from three years ago is RE-POSTED, to the minute, three years later. One of only two posts from July 2006, this one, from our Correspondences Department, is relevant because I am currently traveling thru Bulgistan with both the recipient of the first correspondence & the person whom we were discussing in that correspondence.

I'm also happy Mark Burstein's Jabberwocky lecture I linked to in the third e-mail is still online, & I recommend it. When I posted that scandalous exposé about rare punctuation (The Interrobang et al.) on May 14th, I proposed the creation of an Outgribation Point - & I laughed just now when I noticed in the French translation of The Jabberwocky below that "outgrabe" in French is horsgrave.

Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 11:50:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: "James Welsch" <__________@yahoo.com>
Subject:Thomas Stearns
To: "Grace Marlier" <__________@hotmail.com>

"By this grace dissolved in place" -T.S.

"There is a time for Thomas Stearns Eliot / & a time for my middle name" -J.H.

"Don't talk like a book, Dad." -Dolores Haze to Humbert Humbert.

Grace,

I saw the tallest lifeform on earth, the tallest tree, "Giant Tree" in the Humboldt Redwoods. It made me think of Melville. We're trying to find a place to live, in the "bay area".

Did you know that Liam & Virtue are in Brasil! Did you know it's winter down there, but not the white kind. Jenny just told me: "you should write her back like you're a black person, too." I suggest that your entire nice, despite street-wise, e-mail to me was a formality to get Liam's information! Well it didn't work, my liege! Except that I think he does now possess an electronic mail address, including all of his middle names, ljowg at yahoo dot com. He refuses to answer my inquiries regarding the dubya. Thomas Fucking Stearns! Bah! Joanne Kathleen? I love her. L.J. Olaf W.G. contacted me trying to find postcard locations for Ben, Hannah, Melinda, Rachel, of which I had none, only e-mails for two. He falls off the face of the planet & then expects everyone to resubmerge from Atlantis when he's lonely in Latin Land? The scoundrel!

I'm house-sitting for my sister in Alameda, a carefully preserved mid-century community (tupperware & nuke scare) sausaged between "The City" & "The East Bay". We plan to use this old house as a haven while we do our reconnaissance into scary Berkeley, our perhaps new hood. Everyone has a different idea for me. All I want to do is stay in the mountains & live the life of the idle rich. Cosmic forces conspire to move me to urban Dis. Count me momentarily 'in' on B.A., despite the rigamarole which will keep me from you.

Peace & Robert Allen Zimmerman,
J.H.
______________________________________________________________________________________

Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 11:16:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: "James Welsch" <________@yahoo.com>

Subject: Le
To: "Bonnie Whiting Smith" <____________@gmail.com>

Bonnie Anne,

First, some initial thoughts about the Jabberwock:

I recommend immediately securing a copy of Martin Gardiner's amazing "The Annotated Alice" which contains the most thoro introduction & footnotes to both Alice Books. The section on the Jabberwocky is pages of footnotes, definitions, & translations. I just found the wikipedia entry, which also has definitions & more translations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky

It also has a long section on pronunciation, which you may want to study! before pronouncing it "wrong" for a bunch of nubiles.

The French:

Il brilgue: les tôves lubricilleux
Se gyrent en vrillant dans le guave.
Enmîmés sont les gougebosqueux
Et le mômerade horsgrave.

Several suggestions for other things you can do or add to the play:
I would recommend using the Humpty-Dumpty dialog as a framework, because it's hilarious & explains the idea of a portmanteaux. Perhaps you could make a humpty-dumpty costume into an instrument!

Look into Joyce's Finnegans Wake - it quotes the Jabberwock repeatedly, & the whole book is inspired by Carroll's innovation of the portmanteaux. If you were interested in quoting other nonsense besides the Jabberwock, perhaps you could sing the quotes from FW. (I'll look them up for you). The major themes of the Joyce are the toppling of the tower of babble-babel-baba, i.e. the nonsensization of language, & it is overlapped with the fall of Carroll's Humpty-Dumpty, & fall of drunk Tim Finnegan from the old Irish song. (Finnegan falls off a ladder & wakes up at his own wake, i.e. Jesus. The whole nonsense novel is supposed to be his dream-death-drunk.) Look for references to Humpty-Dumpty on the first page!

If you're interested in other nonsense verse, there's a good dover edition of Carroll's complete poetry. You might want to include the "Mad Gardner's Song" to your act, always a favorite. Edward Lear is the other famous nonsense poet. I also love Robert Burns, the Scottish bard, & I was going to send you this poem I recently found:

Ye gallants bright,
I rede you right,
Beware o' Bonnie Ann;
Her comely face sae fu' o' grace,
Your heart she will trepan:
Her een sae bright, like stars by night,
Her skin is like the swan;
Sae jimply lac'd her genty waist,
That sweetly ye might span.

Youth, grace, and love attendant move,
And pleasure leads the van:
In a' their charms, and conquering arms,
They wait on Bonnie Ann.
The captive bands may chain the hands,
But love enslaves the man:
Ye gallants braw, I rede you a',
Beware o' Bonnie Ann!


Secondly, our party:
It was mostly people from my work, afterall, plus James Quill & Darren Southworth, my only old friends who made the journey. Three of my ex-coworkers got into a dramatic threesome, rife with yelling & crying, which complicated my simple festivisties. Jenny & I are looking for a place to live in the bay area, house-sitting for my sister in Alameda this week. We were just up in Ashland, Oregon, seeing Shakespeare's King John, & then camping in the redwoods. We saw the tallest tree in the world, the tallest life-form on eath, "Giant Tree", a humbling experience; then drove down the coast, beautiful! I'm reading Nabokov. More later - stay in touch - I have help my sister with the newest baby, one month old, baby Will, already twelve pounds.

Love,
James Henry

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________


Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 13:52:32 -0700 (PDT)
From: "James Welsch" <_______@yahoo.com>
Subject: P.S.
To: "Bonnie Whiting Smith" <__________@gmail.com>

I found the great lecture I saw, where I was first introduced to the Carroll-Joyce connection:

http://www.lewiscarroll.org/bander.html

Scroll down to the section called "Joyce Carroll Notes" for the quotes.

But, if you have time, that whole essay might give you a lot of inspiration & suggestions. Also, I can put you in touch with Mark Burstein if you want to ask him for ideas. There's already been a lot of music/theater/addition writing about the Jabberwocky, & I'm sure he knows everything inside out. There's also a movie based on it from the 70s, directed by Terry Gilliam (Monty Python / Brazil).

Too much information?

James

Mix Tape was lost! Vol. 26: AZEROMBULTURKZAHKISTAN 3

ItWasLost Creates the World

rolling mills of new joisey in the underpasses of Bulgaria (I apologize for the missing beginning of this song)

Remember Artie Wongay

This poem was writ on the bus from Rousse to Sofia - - - - - & here it is now!

I.
Remember Artie Wongay? refusing to write another Latin opera,
He spilled himself another tall glass of Terra Firma.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- Your highest note is my most guttural,
You may be an archvillain but you'll never be my motherall.

Remember Artie Wongay? the same galactic superstar from our rediscovered kingdom--
The same false prophet of the ancients has been lurking home.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- The forest set cyclically on fire,
Balancing on daffodils like a whale on a wire.

Remember Artie Wongay! & don't forget him!
He'll follow you in your dreams, eat you as an obese madam.

II.
Remember Artie Wongay? the flames? & the rodeo disco stirrapes?
Are you paying attention to this, come ask her apes.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- Now don't let's repossess,
Flight of the flammivomous scarecrows, loser, a coma, scary piss.

Remember Artie Wongay? like swingers, we'll swing from here to there-ish,
Tangents that come out of everywhere like a coked-up priest coming out of his parish.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- Your lowest note is my most pathetic.
Spiriduş, spiriduş, you go thru me like a big borscht diuretic.

Remember Artie Wongay! & don't let him be forgotten-- --
Till there's cucumber sandwiches in summer & highways are made out of cotton.

III.
Remember Artie Wongay? the tobacco brush combust again,
The tobacco brush in & out of love, but I mustn't complain.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- Tell it to the whores of night justice,
They'll spill for you another tall glass of the earth's crustice.

Remember Artie Wongay? today I've virulent & vital.
I'm the vanguard seer of capitalism, I'm the actuary's meat-hole.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- You're a mixture of scum & bismuth,
We will do vorpal battle except for from Thanksgiving thru Chrismuth.

Remember Artie Wongay! & please don't forget him,
Lock him in gyves & smell the ocean if you've ever met him.

IV.
Remember Artie Wongay? savages fornicating on the side of the road,
He was my enemy & he will be again soon when the stars explode.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- Your lowest note is my noblest nebulous,
There isn't room enough in any register for the two of us.

Remember Artie Wongay? he torched the redwood,
In a century where you could still smoke on the bus, the living could, the dead could.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- This planet is not your abattoir.
Snow on Mercury, rain in Uranus, scrape the ozone with her claw.

Remember Artie Wongay! Don't let him be forgot!
Don't let him be a robot in this wilderness of rot!

V.
Remember Artie Wongay? he wronged you too late & too little,
A villain of Marfan stature & a troublingly easy riddle.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- The embers of prudence & fortitude,
A virgin except where we couldn't see, wine & dining her with a platitude.

Remember Artie Wongay? remember his gelatinous melodramatic smirks?
I tell you what I recall, his foulest & least forgiving quirks.

Remember, Artie Wongay-- -- Slabs of granite diving up to the jive,
Spiriduş, spiriduş, come inside of me & stay inside & thrive.

Remember Artie Wongay! keep repeating till you can't be forgotten:
The most Pyrrhic ping-pong tourney we ever fought in.

girls just want to have fun at the train station in Popovo

Sandrigon in Bulgarigon: ПОСЛЕДНАТА ГОСПОДНЯ МОЛИТВА ("Final Lord's Prayer"?)

Mr Anton Abadzhiev has struck again, translating one of S. Sandrigon's Seven Prayers - Jesus Prayer (pictured in illumination above.) He's already translated Song of Defecation, Report from the Dee, & there's rumor that a Saga of Jenny exists, which he wants to publish in an illuminated bilingual edition. I'm not sure when they'll actually get published in Култура, Искуство, Литература (Culture, Art, Literature), where he published Mr Quill's story, but they exist now on the internet:

ПОСЛЕДНАТА ГОСПОДНЯ МОЛИТВА

Вий се присмивате на мен, обични мои и мерзавци, за мойто екстатично боговерие?
Не ще откарате задълго след моето проклятие.
Че никой тирбушон не е чак толкоз къс и няма майка на издръжка тъй мързеливо
лицемерна.
Видях как произведен от цивилността моралът отива във канала и напуска сцената
Говоря сериозно – аз съм причината.
А вий сте долни гащи на вселената.
Така че, намалете малко, обични мои и мерзавци, че моят онколог хегелианец е, и
нямам капка настроение.
Молете се за мене бездиханно, че животински ток да тръкне по козината на сънливеца
и скъса туй болезнено спане.
Или поне налейте го с кафе.
Свети Августин не се реши да разруши покоя на историчните калугерки там,
в Покипси.
Но аз не съм изтънчен тип, уви, и каня се да разтреса една многовековна нация
С вибрации от баритон и бас
Дали е правдата във всичкото движение за нас?
Дали я има правдата в какво-било, освен в петрола и всички сквернословности?
Я, зарежи. Щом е готов не с люлчина песен човекът се буден държи. И изключи звъна
на телефона си.
В най-смелите фантазии аз вярвам, но не мисля, че Канада е готова за чернокожа
Президентка,
Освен сервирана със сос.
Добре ми е да разиграват масите, не вярвам на заемодавците, обичам да си плащам
рентата.
Ще ви помогна да излезете от усмирителната риза, дано не кажете , че съм говорил сам, под нос.
Ще превъзнасям
и без, и с Уитман кръста ще възславя,
а вие цялата си искреност вложете в молитвите за вече невидимото, но тая книга не забравяйте
без срам наред със другите на най-високата полица я поставяйте.

I don't know why he made "peace" in yellow? I took his Report from the Dee to a reading circle, & read both the original & the babelized. But with Bodily Purification & Final Lords, the re-translated google translation is too chaotic with too many untranslatable words to get anything solid. But there's a few beautiful moments in the re-re-translation:

...that my oncologist is Hegelian, and no drop of humor...

...Or at least draw him with coffee...

...But I am not sophisticated type, alas, and ask to shake a nation long
With the vibration of the baritone and bass
Is it righteousness in the movement for all of us?
Is it righteousness of what has-been, except oil and skvernoslovnosti?

...In most courageous fantasies I believe, but I do not think Canada is ready for black Prezidentka
Moreover served with sauce...

...Will help you exit the straitjacket, I hope not say that I talked myself under the nose...

...And you all put into their sincerity prayers already invisible, but this book does not forget without shame along with others at the highest policy put it.

Nunarput, utoqqarsuanngoravit: Greenland's National Anthem

Near the end of June, my friend Mrs Eley-Nelson & I were drinking mint juleps & reading up about Greenland - a country larger than Alaska that has a population half the size of Berkeley. The National Anthem's language in Greenlandic is really something - I'll quote in full from http://www.greatestplaces.org/medias/greenland/songs/nunarput.htm

1. Nunarput, utoqqarsuanngoravit niaqqut ulissimavoqq qiinik. Qitornatit kissumiaannarpatit tunillugit sineriavit piinik.

2. Akullequtaastut merletutut ilinni perotugut tamaani kalaallinik imminik taajumavugut niaqquit ataqqinartup saani.

3. Atortillugillu tamaasa pisit ingerlaniarusuleqaagut, nutarterlugillu noqitsigisatit siumut, siumut piumaqaagut.

4. Inersimalersut ingerlanerat tungaalitsiterusuleqaarput, oqaatsit "aviisit" qanoq kingunerat atussasoq erinigileqaarput.

5. Taqilluni naami atunngiveqaaq, kalaallit siumut makigitsi. Inuttut inuuneq pigiuminaqaaq, saperasi isumaqaleritsi.

English:
1. Our country, who's become so old your head all covered with white hair. Always held us, your children, in your bosom providing the riches of your coasts.

2. As middle children in the family we blossomed here Kalaallit, we want to call ourselves before your proud and honourable head.

3. With a burning desire to develop what you have to give, renewing, removing
your obstacles our desire to move is forward, forward.

4. The way of matured societies is our zealous goal to attain; the effect of speech and letters we long to behold.

5. Humbleness is not the course Kalaallit wake up and be proud! A dignified life is our goal; couragously take a stand.

The first half of the fourth verse - "The way of matured societies is our zealous goal to attain" - is only three words - "Inersimalersut ingerlanerat tungaalitsiterusuleqaarput". I'd really like to know the breakdown of the word tungaalitsiterusuleqaarput. Not to mention, what a depressing verse for an anthem - "the effect of speech and letters we long to behold"!?
It was written by Jonathan Peterson & Henrik Lund, & adopted in 1916. Wikipedia says there's an alternate anthem used by the Kalaallit Inuit people called "Nuna asiilasooq" ("The Land of Great Length"), which also appears to have been written by Jonathan Peterson.

orphan girls in Sofia

Rain in Boston

After what felt like forty days wandering in the wilderness - - - actually only a week -- en route from San Francisco to New York to Bucharest to Rousse to Sofia to Vratsa to Lom -- sleeping on a different couch or floor every night -- we finally arrived at Mr Quill's digs at the BIG LITTLE, a village of 1,497 Turks & 3 Bulgarians in Northeast Bulgarity. I felt deeply beat up from the heavy traveling, and the first day was spent leisurely recovering, a little weed-picking in Quill's Boston -- a watermelon field, & also the American city of his origin, a pun which no small affair has been made of in his year here, you may recall it featured prominently in the newspaper TRUD (Labor). To get mint for mint juleps, we visited a baba & chatted for an hour, she was about 4'10" & wearing those awesome dumpy pants. We ended up leaving with more delicious fresh produce than we could carry. Mint juleps, gross bulgar beer, Olaf's genius vegetable creations, turkish nargileh, & game of durock (Quill's Russian card game of choice & college nostalgia) that lasted late into the night, & we are recovered & ready for the week's work - - - making a movie with his schoolgirls. It's storming like burnt toast today, rain, Allah, rain, grow Boston, grow. (Above is an old photo with his clever sign, before the good people of Boston began to prosper. Below is my favorite classiest photo of Mr Quill with his friend Martishka, taken last June, with whom we've been traveling around for the past few days. I'll leave the photography to the giants of the earth, there's many pictures if the Big Little & the Boston at allforgotteneast.blogspot.com)

Mix Tape was lost! Vol. 25: Part 2 of turk/bulgo/centrasia

LISTENING TO THIS IS LIKE BEING WITH THE MAJORITY OF THE ITWASLOST! BOARD AS WE TRAVEL THROUGH THE LANDS FROM WHICH THIS MUSIC COMES FROM.

Report from the Danube

The second half-length river report/eastern European edition.

I've stopped eating, I stick with the velcro mobs,

On a yacht in the beautiful polluted wearing a floral May dress,

I embarrassed myself by ordering ten blowjobs from the waitress,

And she blushed hard as if I had just ordered ten blowjobs.

Some have said our love is growing inward,

Like a festering blister on St David's Day,

She didn't look thirteen, she was immortally pretty,

She was a member of a grumpy butt-chinned cricket horde.

Work it. Drops dript,

Now leaving the small city for exponation only,

My long intestine has never felt this lonely,

A child is boring, the wings of a swallow clipt.

Alexander Phonoff

In Sofia last night, we finally met up with a man we had been referring to as "Alexander Phonoff", because he had said "sure! come stay" but then proved impossible to track down. He found us by the stadium, we bought some beers & went into a park which was formally a zoo, where a bunch of his friends began to congregate with backpacks full of climbing gear. Apparently the plan was to go to these two large trees in the middle of the big park & string a zip line between them. The precision & patience of the setup reminded me of the stealthy rigging for Philippe Petite's Twin Towers tightroping (in "Man on Wire"). The rides on this lasted many hours & many beers, long long after dark, after Olaf & Grainne had wandered back to their hostels, & after I had fallen asleep in the park. I woke up & they were doing progressively crazier things, & suddenly a guy & girl zipping together caming crashing down from the high tree. Everyone was okay, but he went to the hospital to have his purple finger xrayed, & I imagine she'll be a bit bruised today. It took another hour to pack up the rigging & then it was a long ride home.

We took a taxi way out to the old communistic bloc he's lived in for 11 years, since he moved here with his parents & now as an adult with his cousins. It's a crazy world out there, today in the extreme heat it felt more Indian than European. Okay, then, we're going to find Mr Quill in Vratsa today, keep in touch. Wish you were here. Live long & prosper.

TRAUMMUSIK Episode XIII - "But I Can Walk Much Faster Than You"

AND NOW, another classic radio show from Sarah Lawrence College WSLC 105.7, from Spring 2002. TRAUMMUSIK, Episode XIII, "But I Can Walk Much Faster Than You". Drug up from the archives while we're shagging & carpetbagging in Bulgaria.



Again, I suggest, download the mp3s of this show HERE, put them on your Fancy Music Player, burn them onto a disc, play them on your boombox while you walk around the Bronx.

Listen to human-programmed radio!
Listen to classic college radio!
Listen to TRAUMMUSIK!