Moth and Dinosaurs

Correspondences: Pascal T-Rex

Happy Maundy Thursday! I wrote the song El Cerrito last year, with a melody stolen from a Spanish Civil War song, about the passion of Christ, & have had the opportunity a couple times to sing it with some old friends. Mrs Whiting Smith & I sung it while camping in the rain in Multnomah County last autumn. It contains a lyric where I compare the death of the king of kings to the extinction of the king of the dinosaurs:

What did he give up for us?
What did he give up for us?
Extinction of the tyrannosaurus,
Jesus' assassinated,
Flowers have faded.

I just got an e-mail from Mrs Whiting Smith with the above picture of the "Pascal T-rex" & the comment "I saw this and thought of you. Return and Repent! Happy Easter!"
Here's the "strummy guitar" version of El Cerrito:

Correspondences: Dinosaurs are Impossible

Four time zones met today in an undisclosed internet location. This conversation has been abridged, altered, & censored for the public audience, & I also deliberately put some offensive words in Annalee's mouth to embarrass her at her big city job. This is the final quarter of the conversation, including after I departed.

J___ Quill: reverse it?

Annalee: yeah. too little time, too much to do.

ok.

12:02 PM you are sleeping in bed, when there is a loud noise outside.

you look out the window to see a dinosaur, breaking into your teacher's house and stealing his computer.

wait, no.

J___ Quill: wow, Annalee

me: Dinosaurs are impossible

J___ Quill: I had no idea you kept up

Olaf: you wake to find your lover is a dinosaur.

12:03 PM we all do.

Annalee: i do what i can.

:-)

J___ Quill: I guess the kid broke into the restaurant last night

Olaf: same kid?

Annalee: ha, liam, truer words have never been spoken...

J___ Quill: yup

Annalee: whoa.

12:05 PM Olaf: so, is he like some kind of '30s cartoon criminal that the cops like to catch day after day - they lock him up and he sneaks out, or they just give him a talking to. and everybody in town loves him and wouldn't want to see him locked up?

12:06 PM Annalee: i imagine he also dresses like the hamburglar.

J___ Quill: he is pretty short

apparently there's no system for dealing with juvenile crime

me: What's going on?

What's happening here?

Olaf: yeah, i pictyred the eye mask.

me: I love you all, but my brother just got home with his wife & I think lunch-like things are happening.

12:07 PM Olaf: eat, oh brothers.

J___ Quill: brother

wife

me: My brother & his wife & baby & hosue.

Olaf: isn't it a bit early for lunch?

me: house.

Annalee: yes. enjoy.

Olaf: brunch. mimosas!

me: It's 12:09 in the divine 2009.

house.

Annalee.

Olaf: 1:09 in sweet mountain time

me: You will be a terrific mother.

12:08 PM Annalee: i have no doubt. but your words warm me.

me: It's my rappers

Annalee: it's 3:08 here. how'd i lose a minute?

me: tongue

James & I have been hoping Obama eridicates the Time Differences.

J___ Quill: it's nonsense

12:09 PM me: It only sets nation against nation, divides the sun up around the worlds

This is the 21st Century, this series of tubes

Olaf: yes, we all live in one world. one world. one love. one time.

Annalee: if anyone can do it, he can.

12:10 PM i'm excited about the puppies and kitties he's passing out at the inauguration.

only wish i could make it to DC.

Olaf: really? puppies and kitties?

hows about baby cows?

Annalee: for sure.

he's *black*, remember?

J___ Quill: my Turkish tutor had a lamb in his house

12:11 PM Olaf: i just learned that lambs are baby sheep.

Annalee: i will have to admit that's the first time i've heard someone say that phrase.

Olaf: i thought lambs were god

Annalee: or... read someone type that phrase.

Olaf: because they taste so damn good.

J___ Quill: it was a little surprising

he tried to steal my pretzels

Annalee: both these things are true.

dude.

12:12 PM there's your writing comprehension right there.

Olaf: i was also surprised.

Annalee: or is that not so out of the ordinary to be interesting to them?

OR

J___ Quill: haha

I've yet to find anything that interests them

Annalee: you just replace the word sheep with the word dinosaur.

done and done.

or... the word lamb.

dammit.

J___ Quill: check

lamb

Annalee: right.

5 minutes

12:18 PM Annalee has left

Annalee has joined

Annalee: hello?

where did i go?
I really despise [....] people, & also [...], & also people with huge [...]. I hate them.

12:23 PM and now, if there's anyone still out there, i must leave. goodbye, and good luck...

Annalee has left

Special Preview: Sarah Palin Video Game

I hope I'm not one of thousands who have already put forward this idea, but here it is: A thinking tank for our Sarah Palin Video Game, presented here on this blog as a preview & advertisement for our LIVE-BLOGGING of the Vice-Presidential Debates (check back to this website, oftenish, Thursday evening, follow along with our Marxie/Wildean one-liners, from your own home entertainment center.)
Our industrious Mongolian Video Game Technicians are currently fixing some glitches in the software for this game, but here are some ideas for some of the levels.

MOOSE-HUNTING level. One of the most straight-forward of the system, but some of the targets popping out of the Alaskan Wilderness into the cross-hairs of our political rifle could be: various endangered species, polar bears, librarians, state troopers, & old-man's faces (in preparation for the daily tasks of the Vice President.)

AERIAL WOLF-HUNTING level. Some of the coolest graphics, shooting dogs from a plane. It's basically like fox-hunting for Alaskans, but less dainty or bound by any civilized standards of morality. The Sarah Palin avatar in this section would be leaning out of the plane with an American-flag bikini & an enormous "shootin' dogs from a plane" gun. Instead of being indiscriminately wounded & left to bleed to death in the snow (BORING!), the wolves explode in fourth-of-july fireworks.

BEAUTY PAGEANT level. You get to dress up your avatar, et cetera, basically not much to this level, but good for marketing.

Now, as we progress thru the levels, we get some of the more mundane aspects of a rising political career at the end of the road, U.S.A.

GOVERNING WASILLA level. Donning a pants-suit, Palin roams the streets of her Alaskan suburb, sort of like a community organizer / street fighter but with actual responsibilities. She collects "responsibility" items - like a baseball bat to smash in the heads of tweakers; encounters high-school friends to issue "promotions"; rides atop a Dinosaur, et cetera. We're still brain-storming this level, as right now it's about as entertaining as permafrost. Open to suggestions.

GET IMPREGNATED BY TODD PALIN level. Navigate the Governor's pelvis thru an abstract atmospheric landscape, attempting to collect "spirit" from Todd Palin's fecund family jewels. But watch out! Liberals with coat-hangers & other spirit-quenchers are around every unfolding cloud. Extra bonus points for successfully birthing an infant with Down syndrome. You get to name the offspring - (Suggestions from The Onion for additional Palin children names: Frag, Moss, Scoot, Skiffer, Minnow, Plow, Snatch, Twiglet, and Drum.) It's a tricky level, because sometimes the children themselves get impregnated, which is fine, as long as you can spin it as all-American.

CAMPAIGNING FOR McCAIN-PALIN level. Another "roaming-the-streets"-style level, she has to show off her foreign-policy experience (basically by threatening world leaders with her guns & spotting Russia from her house), avoiding reporters & scorning the media. At the end of the level, she battles larger-than-life Joe Biden at the VP DEBATES.

As we don't know how long or to what extent Gov. Palin will be on the national stage, it's hard to know what levels await. If she is ever Vice President, there could be some amazing Dan Quayle-style parts, roaming the world as a token VP.

VP DEBATE Live-Blog,
Thursday, 6pm Western Time, 4am Bulgarian Time.
Be here!

La Niña

Listen to me, hobos, with your feet not with your ears:
The salvation train no longer goes thru Portland:
One beer-swilling infant caused war for two thousand years,
Like dried-up camel tears,
Next century's preachers will drop from your face, & be forever banned.

The winter is past due, the fine is tremendous,
My love is a dodecahedron upon a fractal mountain,
The prophetess' jaw is locked up, but perhaps she just has Tetanus,
A virgin except for her clitoris,
She does not know the silent futurity, eternal jail for the whisky fountain.

Fall like amber locks, your robe torn off like lust & descent:
The wind hears you partying with another man in Orange County.
This rotten paradise was never meant to be misspent,
I have forgotten to pay the rent,
Pulsing beneath her t-shirt are several answers, lost booty, lost bounty.

You have to come up before you go down on the earth.
Do you remember that nice man with weird hair who killed his monster baby?
She told him it wasn't the antichrist, just more trouble than it was worth:
The birth of a subversive reversal,
So they added an eighth lane to the flaming freeway, no fin whale will judge their infamy.

Hobos & tramps, you need to ask me more questions, I miss her,
We are sober in different ways, missing in America's décolletage.
Pillaging & taxing, & surging with grief, & raped by a dinosaur incisor,
None the wiser until I kiss her,
Your eardrums beating with these vibrations on hell's watch.

The rain is over - Are you paying attention, Miranda? - come ask her apes,
What to bring as a present for a child who will end materialism?
She told him this wasn't the incorporeal rapture, just a stain on the images of cityscapes,
Put those walking feet toward stamping grapes,
And help me celebrate our victory, the chiefest beloved in Folsom Prism.

Biographical Resolutions

I've been trying to be better at knowing where my phone is, having the ringer on, answering it when it rings - three things which are sometimes difficult to me. I tried to cut down on beer & coffee these past few months before I go traveling, but ended up drinking more in total, just less regularly. Isn't that often how resolutions go? Who cares anyway, with this moderation of these earthly crutches, it's not like I'm trying to moderate a crack habit. I was just trying to clear my head of the apathy & lethargy which has kept me hitherto from becoming a famous billionaire artist, but I doubt it's the caffeine or alcohol, neither of which I intake at the levels of the Ancient Sumarians or Elizabethans. Did I mention that the remainder bookstore I've been working at sells a kids sticker/coloring book called God Created the Dinosaurs of the World, which has stickers of Adam & Eve feeding dinosaurs, & (my favorite) a viking ship with a prehistoric dino-fish swimming beside it. Another sticker has a quaint group of semi-naked humans planting crops, & one with a hoe is trying to scare away a foraging dinosaur. "Shoo, you rascally dinosaur!"

This could be the dilemma many people in my age or position face in America today - an immense & devastating drop in creativity & energy. Now, I'm not going to play fickle with lady inspiration - I agree with John Adams that if you work hard at anything, inspiration comes when it needs to. The issue is the motivation - I believe writer's block is more of a chemical imbalance than a mystical ennui. But why, for example, do I get so bored when I'm writing music? The last few weeks, I was sketching out a piece for piano, bass & percussion, & it was the physical process of putting notes on a staff that I just couldn't focus on. There was nothing great nor mediocre about the quality of music I was creating, but the fairly meditative & tedious process of scribing it, which I used to fly thru, enjoy, or hardly notice, now, after about fifteen minutes, I find myself surfing the internet or pacing the room. Several obvious problems: a) no commission or deadline, b) no community of artists to discuss with or try to impress, c) no specific stylistic argument I'm trying to make, to necessitate an example piece, d) no long stretches of time where I'm by myself, not working, where I can really get into some creative process. But even in combination, I should be able to transcend above all of these problems & write for writing's sake, build up a portfolio or repertoire for an audition or for whatever future needs, with the youthful motivation I used to have - (I'm only fucking twenty-five!) - unhinderable.

There is one huge reason I have squandered my hours at this boring job for so long (five months) - I am never asked to do anything. They pay me next to nothing to do next to nothing - wait hold on...

Bookstore Conversation #1,493

Costumer: Excuse me, do you have any fabric paints?
Your Hero: No, there's no more art supplies - only books here now. The art store went out of business.
Costumer: Wouldn't you know. Is there another art store around here?
Your Hero: Yeah, four blocks down, at University & Sixth, called Blick.
Costumer: Okay, thank you.

Where was I? O yes - being payed just to sit here started out as a fantastic boon. I read a ton. But the last month, I haven't been able to focus on anything, frustration of frustrations. So that's it, time to move on. When I knew I was truly bored, six weeks ago, I bought a plane ticket to Alabama & Atlanta, the first time I've been on a airplane since college, the first time I've ever been to Alabama - I've been to forty-nine states of our huge union, this will be my fiftieth. I'm freewheeling it for the first week in Alabama, I intend on attending two annual sacred harp sings in churches in small towns in Alabama - the second Saturday of every May at the Oak Grove Primitive Baptist Church in Sylacuaga, then the second Sunday of every May at the Old Flatwoods Primitive Baptist Church near Nauvoo. I'll probably be staying in Tuscaloosa, so I've been e-mailing & calling Sacred Harp singers looking for rides to & back from these singings. Yesterday, I spent forty-five minutes on the phone with a ninety year old woman who won't be attending this year. Here's an e-mail from the pastor at Sylacuaga:

From:	"Bufrey D___" <______@bellsouth.net>
To:	"James Welsch" <_____@itwaslost.org>
Subject:	Re: Singing in May
Date:	Mon, 2 Apr 2007 21:41:50 -0500

Hello Brother James Welsch,

Thank you for your e-mail. Since you will be staying in Tuscaloosa for a week with a friend around May 12th, I especially want you to come to our singing. When you arrive in Tuscaloosa, please contact the following:

T___ & L___ Smith at 205-___-____ and

H___ & M___ E___ Jones at 205-___-____

Both of these couples are very good singers and hope to come to our singing in Sylacauga, Alabama at Oak Grove Primitive Baptist Church on Saturday, May 12, 2007. I called them both and they want you to call them when you arrive. I look forward to seeing you. May God richly bless.

Then, I'll be watching my friends put on a puppetry festival in Atlanta. When I come back I will only be working part time while I look for more inspiring & fiscally remunerative employment. I'll try & report about my travels a bit on this blog, so stay tuned! I'm bringing Joyce's Ulysses to try & finish before Bloomsday in San Francisco next month. I'm sorry to be so "biographical", one thing I have promised to do infrequently on this page, but I thought it would be better writing than a review of Grindhouse or something. (It was really gorey.) P.O.E.!

It's as uncertain as a child's bottom

-Simon Dedalus