Fake Magazine Cover from Testpattern: Late for Fucking Everything

This mockup magazine cover from Mr Chadwick Crawford's blog. He writes: "The streetcar photo is by Tony DiLorenzo, and I greatly appreciate his allowing me to post it here!"

Special Report: Is Dolly Parton Anti-Gravity?

We need an emergency band meeting to discuss the lyrics to the Dolly Parton single Jesus and Gravity. It seems to be a new song from a year ago, (wikipedia says she performed it on American Idol in April 2008) and it is released on her last album, Backwoods Barbie, her 42nd studio album. The song, Jesus & Gravity, by songwriting legend Craig Wiseman & Betsy Ulmer, is an uplifting spiritual, about the forces giving her wings & holding her down. Here's the video:


I was disturbed by the ambiguity Ms Parton showed toward gravity. The great majority of the lyrics in the song are about Jesus lifting her up. Of gravity, she says very little, juxtaposing it with Jesus in the chorus:

Something lifting me up,
Something holding me down,
Something to give me wings,
And keep my feet on the ground,
I've got all I need: Jesus and Gravity.

"Holding me down" has a negative tone, but we assume it is useful to keep people from bumping their heads on the ceiling. It is tyrannical oppression. "Keep my feet on the ground", tho, implies sound reasoning & keeping it real. So is gravity a heavy but necessary evil preparing the singer for spiritual ascension?

But wait! Since when has gravity been the baddie in gospel songs? The devil, as a metaphysical force compelling one towards immoral behavior, is a stock villian. There are the forces of nature, sexual desire, deadly sins, and other natural impulses tying mortals to the cycles of Mother Earth, these are often treated with resentment from the sacred songwriter & grumpy poets like T.S. Eliot. But Gravity?

"I've got all I need," sings Dolly. Other lyricists might beg to differ, that gravity is superfluous when she has Jesus. So what is her definition of gravity? Creationists could remind us that, like Darwin's suspect Theory of Evolution, Isaac Newton's ideas are mere theories and unproven. Perhaps Kansan school boards have their sights too narrow, and we should have notices in text books casting doubt on the Laws of Motion. The standard theory, after all, would make certain biblical miracles unlikely, not to mention rising from the dead.

Before I take this too far, I'll conclude that Dolly Parton's gravity is a synecdoche for many natural forces - which both tie us to this earth & help us walk thru life. In my final college thesis on the Gospel of John (in which Jesus offers himself as a better way to satisfy many different hungers), I wrote "Desire and hunger, with their upper reflection of love, are the metaphysical laws of gravity and attraction." I was thinking in neoplatonic terms, that there are indeed hierarchies within these attractions, and that earthly love is a fallen version of heavenly love. They are related, a sort of greyscale between them. Therefore, natural gravity (which is the attraction of bodies) can be seen as a version of spiritual gravity. On this corrupt earth, it may seem that one force is holding you down & another lifting you up, but when things have been righted, all bodies will be pulled towards the Godhead. Dolly Parton is experiencing strong pulls in both directions, which may be why she appears so skinny these days. And besides her huge faith, in other ways, other parts of her have always defied gravity.

Su Diarrea Diaria

Miss Proinseas, this was pointed out by a blogger named E.A. Hanks over at the Huffington Post. Just as, after a major blackout in New York City, the hospitals are packed with babies exactly nine months later, to the day, so too should we expect a lot of babies exactly nine months after the amazing night America experienced after Obama's victory. I admit to a strong desire to impregnate some of the beautiful Obama revelers at San Francisco's street party at Valencia & 19th. I'm not so sure I didn't, as the photos from the evening show my face covered in lipstick kisses (see above), & there is even one video that shows me being kissed by a stranger, who I then let sip from my champagne (see below). I have very few memories from then on.

The amazing part - in sync with a lot of the Lincoln-Kennedy coincidences & the weird curses & repetitions in American Presidential lore - is that 9 months after Obama's victory is August 4th, Barack Hussein Obama II's birthday. If you see where I'm going with this, he was born on August 4th, 1961, exactly nine months after Kennedy's election. I'm sure Sarah Vowell would love this. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And no! if that's what you're thinking, I'm in no way suggesting that Obama is destined to be assassinated! He can't be, he wasn't elected on a year ending in zero! (It is my belief that Reagan broke that curse by escaping an assassination attempt, & then was gradually plagued with the foreshadowings of Alzheimer's; twenty years later, Bush would carry on the tradition of brain-dead presidents, a clever update on Tecumseh's Curse.) But there is a curious Lincoln-Kennedy-Obama Axis of Imagination & Gravity, as also evinced by the similarities in Lincoln & Obama's biographies. (Great article on that from the Fredericksburg Freelance-Star here.) Former California Republican Congressman Tom Campbell, whom I heard speak at U.C. Berkeley's International House last night, also pointed out that Kennedy had close political ties to a Chicago Mayor named Richard Daley, & now Obama has close political ties with a Chicago Mayor named Richard Daley. "Some things never change," said Campbell.

You might also want to peruse next August's Obama Babies for 2052's unlikely President.

Lift Him Up

Up thru this gorge, stone steps past waterfalls,
Each summer, from the beach up to the tree line,
Three thousand foot ascent, this bicycle –
I only used it for revolutionary calls –
The fall’s like how non-divine angels recline –
Is at my side, now a burden, still a protest;
O tall’s the fir, but deeper the freefalls of the stalactickle,
So is my climb defined by its proceeding rest.

She as my guide has abandoned me to gravity,
Her lust is closer stronger, farther more theoretical;
My feet & hands guided by imagination
Can construct, literally build this fantasy,
My tinker’s brain can destruct this reality,
Can fashion roots of kingdoms more than magical;
A virgin songwriter begins by imitation,
Then returns to his muse this autumn in a pumpkin.

I have forsaken the news, the history of today,
Each stone tablet is a false prophecy of the present!
Was it towards Guillaume Dufay I should direct my focus?
I’ve eaten my map, my compass is wrapped up in my tent,
I’ve started singing limericks about the non-linearness of time,
My way has become – not mud! idiots! – but wet utilizable clay;
I forget again, each road sign I chew like a lotus,
And lay me down, no fuss about the lack of pay –
At this elevation, only marmots can ask me for rent.

I think I’ve achieved something, not a poem about Everest,
Was it only three thousand feet? I convince myself of success,
What little I can do with a rusty bicycle, some reason to act all righteous,
Clean up in my tiny corner my own self-fulfilling mess,
Stay up here not as a mystic or guru, more like a social hermit,
I’ll never tell people why it’s not completely wise to eat pig meat,
I’ll just act according to modern liberal guilt, did I do it alone?
I find love only be keeping my travel plans flexible,
I change a broken civilization only by writing secret sad songs –
I am elected vice-president! I procreate ten thousand firstborn sons!
American Literature has left desolate all sincerity, but it’s thought of some great puns.
One poet is king but I am the silent prophet of the Saracen.
I’ll repeat myself until I am remembered,
I’ll shut this closet door & transcend irony.