Biographical: & Tarot Investigating

WWW.ITWASLOST.ORG is a literary & arts blog, with unique fashion editorials, political commentary, movie reviews & prophecy (both about the weather & the coming doom.) However, sometimes it drifts into merely the biographical, like so many weblogs in the blogosphere, a public diary of the mundane & fabulous gossip in our sad lives. Today, we venture there. What did I do today? My housemate Jenny Ruth told me of a refrigerator magnet she saw in a gift store that reads "Sometimes I call in sick for work as if I had a job." Well, today, I took a day off, & all sorts of zany adventures ensued:

-I faked my way into a fancy restaurant with an uptight Maître d'.
-I went to a baseball game.
-I jumped onto a parade float & got the whole town dancing along to "Shake it shake it shake it baby now."
-Taught my friends to be bold. In Cameron's words: "I am not going to sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I'm going to take a stand. I'm going to defend it. Right or wrong, I'm going to defend it."

I've also vowed to finish what I have begun. Text message novels, folk hymnals, hip-hop albums, careers in aviation, & reading Thomas Pynchon's long book Against the Day. Saturday Night, Jenny Ruth threw herself a birthday party, which I was banned from, until I was asked to crash it after 11. The girls spread every art supply in the house across our dining room table & set in to make a beautiful deck of Tarot cards. My theosophic Lords, they're stunning, & I hope to get some scanned & displayed on this website when I can. Perhaps spearhead a new Department of Tarot. The Ace of Pentacles was made with broccoli from the crudité, I'm afraid that one will have to be redone before the deck is laminated. Our friend Dr Nelson, who has just finished writing a Symbological novel (think the Da Vinci Code & the works of Tom Martin), crashed the girls party with me at 11 & reminds us that there are no coincidences in Symbology; so I should hardly be surprised that the next day, when I turned to page 605 in Pynchon's Against the Day, there were references to both Tarot Cards & vegan haggis (the themes of my last two parties) IN THE SAME SENTENCE. I'll quote two short excerpts for the context:

One morning Lew [Basnight] walked into the breakfast parlor at Chunxton Crescent to find Police Inspector Vance Aychrome, angelically revealed in early sunbeams thru the stained-glass dome overhead, relentlessly despoiling a Full English Breakfast modified for the Pythagorean dietary here, including imitation sausages, kippers & bloaters, omelettes, fried potatoes, fried tomatoes, porridge, buns, baps, scones, & loaves in various fomats.

[...]

Assuming he was not here to deliver another gentle suggestion from Scotland Yard to back off of the Gentleman Bomber case, Lew took from an inner pocket a Tarot deck thinned to the twenty-two Major Arcana & dealt them one by one onto the table, between the remains of a vegetarian haggis & a platterful of pea fritters, until Aychrome began to nod frantically & waveabout a finger dripping with what Lew hoped was only treacle. "Ggbbmmhhgghhkkhh!"

-Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day (2006), pg. 605-606

Besides Mr Basnight using Tarot as an aid in his private investigating, which really isn't common enough in any symbological novel, I must say that Pythagorean Full English Breakfast sounds delicious beyond words.

INTRODUCING: Department of Arnophilia

In order to keep this weblog hip & modern, to continue to appear to the younger generation of bloggers, I'm spearheading the initiative to introduce several new magazine DEPARTMENTS. Earlier this month, I inaugurated The Department of Beards. Sadly, in recent developments, I have lost my beard, but I & my co-correspondents will continue to chronicle all things Beard at www.itwaslost.org. Today, I am proud to roll out the New Department of Arnophilia. A recurring theme at this website, starting with a discussion of the word "arnophilia", as used in Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day (on page 211) & as defined in the Wiktionary: the only reference they found was the Pynchon. Then, there has been some art by Olaf Mary (pictured above & originally posted here), & a series of quasi-arnophiliacal Christmas compositions to the Nahum Tate text "While shepherds watch'd their sheep by night / All seated on the ground", called Different Shepherds. Seated on the ground, ahem, at the very least. There have been some letters to the editor that we should explore the themes of arnophilia in closer scrutiny, exploit this great word, possibly eventually with its own spin-off blog. (DISCLAIMER: No way should it be concluded that any of the contributers to itwaslost.org are arnophiliacs, or that we advocate the unfair practice thereof, merely that we are bold enough to peer past margins of society & nature where more timid blogs fear to travel.) Look for more postings at the Department of Arnophila (added to the sidebar below) as 2009 expands! I leave you with Billy Connolly:

Dirty Words: Arnophilia

I've been making sure to drop the word "arnophilia" into casual conversation as often as possible. Looking it up, now, it might be that the only use of this word in literature was from the place I got it, this big book we're reading:

[...]brothels dedicated to a wide range of preferences, including arnophilia, or an unaccustomed interest in sheep, some of the ovine nymphs in these establishments being quite appealing indeed, even to folks who might not wholeheartedly share the taste, with fleeces dyed in a variety of fashionable colors, including the perennial favorites aquamarine and mauve, or wearing items of feminine—not to mention masculine—attire[...]

-Thomas Pynchon, Against The Day, pg. 211.

Wiktionary quotes this under "arno-", & sites only this quote for only this word. I challenge the blogosphere to find early uses of this word (or any variant) elsewhere in literature. (Is it in the OED?) The Against the Day Wiki claims the word was invented by Pynchon, (& they can't resist slipping in one pretty good old joke.)

From a chat with Mr Quill, Thu, Sep 11, 2008:

11:29 AM me: [...]She's a fine figure.

She gave me a little of the sheep's-milk cheese last night, if you know what I mean.

11:33 AM J____ Quill: what do you mean?

me: what do you mean?

J____ Quill: are you implying something sexual via sheep's milk?

cuz that's weird

11:34 AM me: When were you so prudish?

J____ Quill: it's not prudish

it's sheep's milk

me: Isn't there arnophilia in Bulgarious?

J____ Quill: loads

Call for submission for arnophiliac jokes.
There's one website of sheep jokes here.

VISIT ITWASLOST.ORG's special DEPARTMENT OF ARNOPHILIA

August Review: "Gushes of Blood, Gushes of Tears: got all these gushes coming out of my VJ"

Welcome to September!
Last night, Jenny Ruth & I were the only staff at a beautiful wedding in a forested park in San Francisco (a small city with a larger population than Alaska.) It was a totally beautiful, small friends & family affair, & the two brides kept asking us what people usual do at weddings: like "when do we do a toast?", or Jenny would say "do you two want to cut the cake in the traditional way," & they'd ask "how's that?" Even tho the brides & the bridesmaids helped set up & clean up, I'm still so sore today on this Labor Day I can barely move my body to the bathroom, let alone the hike thru the redwoods I had planned. And I only mention this, because I believe in love, & altho you may ache the next day, I say to people who are against gay marriages, as a general rule they are so much more fun than yuppie marriages, Jesus ones or drunken Vegas ones.

For anyone just turning in to our spectacularly humble blog, it's been quite a month. A particular highlight was the first-ever international live-blogging, with our correspondences from various cities & countries that begin with the letter 'B', most of us with names beginning with 'B', non-sequentially updating a series of posts about the final night of the Democratic National Convention in Denver. If you'd like to read thru this in order, with all the steppes & mesas of a Tony Hillerman novel, here are links in bold rainbowed chapters.

I. Prelude & The Committee discusses the Logistics.
II. Brains Prematurely Articulates, others have to rush from the bathtubs to set up the live CNN feed.
III. Brooklyn Arrives, Experiments with Zenlike short posts.
IV. Welcomes all Around & Al Gore's Speech.
V. Word from Bulgaria, & the Liberal Crepe Warfare
VI. Gobiden
VII. Climax, Wrapup, Dénouement, Cigarettes

Now that Hurricane Gustav has kept George W. Bush from reminding voters that he's part of the same noble party as John McCain, who knows what will happen this Thursday Night? It might be worthwhile to check this website just in case. Stay tuned in September for Olaf Mary's first posts of artwork from Morocco, white gospel tunes from Berkeley, meditations on the science of dust, poetry based on Wayne's World, & who the frick knows what else.

UPDATE: September 1st, 2008, 11:55am. Talking about the plan of drinking Sazeracs on Friday Morning at 5am in Bulgaria (during McCain's convention speech) may be altered due to the difficulty of finding Peychaud's bitters in the Balkans. From Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day:

They finally parted company in New Orleans after a confused & repetitive headache of a night that began at the establishment of Monsieur Peychaud, where the Sazeracs, tho said to've been invented there, were not a patch, it seemed to Reef [Traverse], on those available at Bob Stockton's bar in Denver, tho the Absinthe Frappés were another matter.
-pg. 368.

I'm guessing Pynchon made up the Absinthe Frappé, altho it doesn't seem to be impossible to duplicate from fiction; & timely, considering the reintroduction of proper absinthe to America & the current shaken & frothy state of New Orleans. I'll call David Chang & ask him how to get sea-foam on the top of an absinthe drink. (Also, considering the murky origins of America's first cocktails, I think it's a bloody good joke that the sazeracs at "Bob Stockton's bar in Denver" would be better than at Monsieur Peychaud's.) We may need a drink of this caliber to get thru Thursday night.

Ukuleles All Across This Series of Tubes

Naturally, I'm not the only one to have covered Beatles Songs on the Ukulele on YouTube, & some of these people are spectacularly more virtuosic musicians than I could want never to aspire to be.

This man (Jake Shimabukuro), for instance, a wet-dream for sixteen-year-old ukulele groupies, I've been told, can fill stadiums with his ukulelism:



There are countless others to include here - searching for "beatles ukulele" gets 610 hits - my post not even making the first tier. I was impressed by my 25-hundred views until I saw Shimabukuro's 1.9 Million.
I like this man's "Dear Prudence", very deadpan & soulful, altho I doubt I would come out & play with him:



Note the mispelling [sic] of "ukelele".
And getting a motherloving load of these wankers!

On this island, as you will have begun to notice, no one ever speaks plainly. Whether it's Cockney rhyming codes or the crosswords in the newspapers--all English, spoken or written, is looked down on as no more than a string of text cleverly encrypted. Nothing beyond.

-Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day (2006), pg. 224

What else are American Artists up to? Spencer Tunick has been getting hundreds of people to stand naked in precise formation. This was at the opera house in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne:

Excerpt: Reverend Moss Gatlin's Sermon on Dynamite

The picture above is representative of a gallery on Miss Lisa Rybovich Cralle's website of artwork: here.
I feel compelled, because of how much it relates to just about every thing we've been writing about, to post in full an excerpt from Thomas Pynchon's Against the Day (2006). Note that this Christian sermon converts the character Webb Traverse, a disaffected miner in Leadville, Colorado, around the turn of the previous century, into a life of terrorism & anarchy - one of the first glimmerings in the novel of the new technologies of the 20th Century being used for violence. [Notes on these pages here.]

Reverend Moss Gatlin's Sermon on Dynamite

One night in Shorty's Billiard Saloon, some poolplayer had propelled his cue ball on the break perhaps too forcefully & with scarcely any draw onto it into the triangle of shiny balls, which happened to be made of some newly patented variety of celluloid. Upon being struck, the first ball exploded, initiating a chain of similar explosions across the table. Mistaking these for gunshots, several of the clientèle drew their pistols & began, with some absence of thought, to contribute in their own ways to the commotion.

"Nice break," somebody was heard to say before the noise got too loud; Webb [Traverse], frozen in terror, delayed diving for cover until it was all over, realizing after a while that he had been standing in a roomful of flying lead without being hit once. How could this be? He found himself in the street wandering hatless & confused, colliding presently with the Reverend Moss Gatlin, who was stumbling down a long flight of wood stairs from a sojourn up at Flourette's Cloudtop Retreat, not exactly at the moment looking for uninstructed souls, which didn't keep Webb, in a torrent of speech, from telling the Rev all about his miraculous escape.

"Brother, we are stripes & solids on the pool table of earthly existence," the Rev explained, "and God & his angels are the sharpers who keep us ever in motion."

Instead of dismissing this for the offhanded preacherly drivel it almost certainly was, Webb, in what you'd have to call a state of heightened receptivity, stood there as if professionally sapped for another quarter of an hour after the Rev had moved on, ignored by the pernicious bustle of Myers Street, & the following Sunday could be observed in the back room of the faro establishment where Reverend Gatlin preached his ministry, listening as if much, maybe all, depended on it, to the sermon, which happened to take as its text Matthew 4:18 & 19:

"And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, & Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.

"And he saith unto them, Follow me, & I will make you fishers of men."

"And Jesus," elaborated Moss, "walking out by some American lake, some reservoir in the mountains-- here's Billy & his brother Pete, casting quarter-sticks of dynamite into the lake, for they are dynamiters-- & harvesting whatever floats to the surface. What does Jesus think of this, & what does he say unto them? What will he make them fishers of?

"For dynamite is both the miners curse, the outward & audible sign of his enslavement to mineral extraction, & the American working man's equalizer, his agent of deliverance, if he would only dare to use it.... Every time a stick goes off in the service of the owners, a blast convertible at the end of some chain of accountancy to dollar sums no miner ever saw, there will have to be a corresponding entry on the other side of God's ledger, convertible to human freedom no owner is willing to grant.

"You've heard the suggestion that there are no innocent bourgeoisie. One of those French Anarchists, some say Emile Henry as he was going to the guillotine, others say Vaillant when they tried him for the bombing of the Chamber of Deputies. Answering the questions, how can anyone set off a bomb that will take innocent lives?"

"Long fuse," someone hollered helpfully.

"Easier with a timer!"

"Think about it," when the remarks had faded some, "like Original Sin, only with exceptions. Being born into this don't automatically make you innocent. But when you reach a point in your life where you understand who is fucking who - beg pardon, Lord - who's taking it & who's not, that's when you're obliged to choose how much you'll go along with. If you are not devoting every breath of every day waking & sleeping to destroy those who slaughter the innocent as easy as signing a check, then how innocent are you willing to call yourself? It must be negotiated with the day, from those absolute terms."

-Thomas Pynchon
Against the Day (2006), I.viii, pg. 86-87

Also, not unrelatedly, Miss Proinseas was trying to post this edifying link about fashion & the Beijing Olympics: Neatness Counts