We apologize, once again, for a reduced quantity of blogging over the past few months, and general decrease since the golden years of itwaslost. (It's been a bit busy over here, & other contributors have many other exciting projects going on.) However, to ease back into more regular serious bloggifying, I wanted to start with Louis C.K.'s amazing analysis about fart humor from last night's Daily Show with Jon Stewart: "Let's break down a fart for a second," he said, and then listed on his finger:1. It comes out of your ass.
2. It smells like poop because it's been hanging out next to it for a long time.
3. And it makes a little trumpet noise when it comes out.
He then summed up, "You don't have to be smart to laugh at farts, but you have to be stupid not to." Stewart made some comment that most explanations of jokes strip the joke of its comedy, but this one only enhanced and deepened the understanding of the phenomenon. I propose that this should be published as an appendix to Sigmund Freud's "Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious" (Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten, 1905), which I've been told contains many unfunny jokes.
Almost all men get cancer of the prostate if they live long enough: it’s an undignified thing but quite evenly distributed among saints and sinners, believers and unbelievers. If you maintain that god awards the appropriate cancers, you must also account for the numbers of infants who contract leukemia. Devout persons have died young and in pain. Bertrand Russell and Voltaire, by contrast, remained spry until the end, as many psychopathic criminals and tyrants have also done. These visitations, then, seem awfully random. While my so far uncancerous throat, let me rush to assure my Christian correspondent above, is not at all the only organ with which I have blasphemed …And even if my voice goes before I do, I shall continue to write polemics against religious delusions, at least until it’s hello darkness my old friend. In which case, why not cancer of the brain? As a terrified, half-aware imbecile, I might even scream for a priest at the close of business, though I hereby state while I am still lucid that the entity thus humiliating itself would not in fact be “me.” (Bear this in mind, in case of any later rumors or fabrications.)
I also liked his take on the Jefferson Bible (thanks to Chuck & Josh of the Stuff You Should Know Podcast for quoting this):[...]The Jefferson Bible [...] was what he found was left if he took a pair of scissors and cut out everything in the Bible that could not by any intelligent person be believed. Makes for a slender, convenient read; I recommend it.
This concludes our 2009 celebration of this blog's Three Year Anniversary, wherein, in a special section called Three Years Ago, we re-posted posts from Three Years Ago, exactly three years later, to the minute. Three years ago was a sparse time for www.itwaslost.org, what follows was the only post in December 2006. In celebration of this community weblog's four year anniversary, all thru 2010, we will be publishing posts from exactly Three Years Ago...! (2007 might be a more fun year to repost from anyway. Till next time. -ed.)
Damn it all, I was ready to go see The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus tonight at midnight, but I had some misinformation about when it came out - I think only an advance UK Premier is tonight. There were some great quotes in this joint interview with Terry Gilliam & Tom Waits in the October 6th London Times. About the late Heath Ledger:We hated him. An idiot. Asshole. Good riddance.
Ledger of course died midway thru shooting Doctor Parnassus, a cruel twist to another of Mr Gilliam's cursed projects. I loudly recommend the documentary Lost in La Mancha as a back-story to Terry Gilliam's strange bad luck with quixotic productions. (I'm never quite sure if parts of that film aren't 100% authentic...) & also The Battle of Brazil, which can be found on the Criterion edition of Brazil. Having Mr Ledger die so mysteriously was par for the course for any of Gilliam's major doomed masterpieces.-Terry GilliamI’ve always said, with every film, I’m not making it, the film is making itself. The film gods are up there doing what they do, and this film was making itself. So Heath dies in the middle of the movie. The last roll of film goes through the camera and Bill Vince, the producer, dies. Then a few months later, I get hit by a car and break my back. The gods failed! They weren’t so lucky the third time. They tried to clear away the star, the producer and the director! Wouldn’t that have been tidy? But the world is not so tidy.
He scrapped the project, but then his daughter made him finish it. "Together they hit upon the inspired notion of using other actors to play different facets of Ledger’s slippery, shape-shifting character," it says in the Times. "It is testament to the huge goodwill enjoyed by both star and director that Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell all signed on at short notice, donating their fees to Ledger’s young daughter, Matilda Rose."-Terry GilliamThat’s my warning to all young actors now: Don’t ever not turn up for work, because there are three A-list actors ready to take your part.
Tom Waits, who plays the devil, has cameo'd in a few interesting movies - Gilliam's The Fisher King (where he's uncredited), Mystery Men (what a bizarre, bad movie, right?), & his work with Jim Jarmusch. I wonder what he'll be like in this one.-Terry GilliamI said yes because Terry wanted me in the movie. I didn’t care what he wanted me to do. I probably would have painted sets, honestly.
Pitchfork was just discussing the live album Waits is about to release, Glitter & Doom, the second disc of which, labeled "Tom Tales", will be "entirely Tom Waits stage patter!" I fear that Mr Waits, after his monster Orphans, is getting a bit too encyclopedic in his later years.-Tom Waits
Mrs Smith has a website, & I just saw this section for the first time, What people are saying about Bonnie Whiting Smith:
"You look like a vestal virgin. People will mob the stage."
-Frederic Rzewski, 2006
"When you played that drum solo, it was tight."
-Anonymous 5th grader, Culver Elementary, 2006
"You're a good cop. You are handling this well."
-Steve Reich, after a rehearsal of Music for 18 Musicians, 2008
". . . a cross between Laurie Anderson and Meredith Monk, with a little bit of Karlheinz Stockhausen thrown in for good measure."
-Dr. Charles McGuire, after a performance of percussion and text pieces at the Oberlin Conservatory, 2009.
She also has a section in her photo gallery where she's wearing items of clothing from various composers. I think the project got started when Steve Reich left behind his raincoat (he has a famous early tape loop piece called "It's gonna rain", so you would think he would know to be prepared.) The other photos are with Frederik Rzewski & John Luther Adams, respectively, hatless, Mrs Smith in their hats.
On the famous mug of American author John Steinbeck we usually picture a thin private-eye mustache. But I've been reading his later non-fiction Travels with Charley, & in a section where he is describing his camping costume ("utilitarian if a bit bizarre"), he has a fine paragraph in praise of beard:My face has not ignored the passage of time, but recorded it with scars, lines, furrows, & erosions. I wear a beard & mustache but shave my cheeks; said beard, having a dark skunk stripe up the middle & white edges, commemorates certain relatives. I cultivate this beard not for the usual given reasons of skin trouble or pain of shaving, nor for the secret purpose of covering a weak chin, but as pure unblushing decoration, much as a peacock finds pleasure in his tail. And finally, in our time a beard is the one thing a woman cannot do better than a man, or if she can her success is assured only in a circus.
It's a little hard to find photos of Steinbeck's beard. For such a public figure, why is it so hard to find pictures of his bearded phase - is the anti-beard establishment deliberately repressing them? Here's one of Steinbeck lurking behind his son, John Steinbeck IV, a journalist in Vietnam, meeting President Johnson:
Charley is also a fine hairy man. We think of manly Steinbeck, roughing it around the continental United States with his camper & his dog, an American archetype. But Charley is not only a poodle, but a large black French Poodle born & raised in France. (His nationality especially shows in his skill with romance.) With his peacock beard & his French poodle, there's a nice redefinition of American masculinity.
Befoulers of the Verbiage
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:
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
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.
I slowly realized that several of the actors in HBO's Big Love have arty roots - Harry Dean Stanton (the creepy old compound leader with a new adolescent wife) & Grace Zabrinskie (Bill's mother) are David Lynch regulars (she's Laura Palmer's mother!!!). And Chloe Sevigny is from Dogville, Kids, Broken Flowers &c.
This The Onion article about J. D. Salinger coming out of hiding to rave about the new Terminator movie is hit or miss, but this paragraph is gold:
Besides setting the literary community abuzz, Salinger's decision to come out of seclusion has allowed scholars access to his massive archive of unpublished work for the first time. So far, critics have examined three never-before-seen novels, eight novellas, and more than two dozen short stories—all of which appear to be Terminator fan fiction.
"But make no mistake," said Salinger expert Professor Duane Hartworth of nearby Dartmouth College, "this is without a doubt the most personal and affecting body of Terminator fan fiction ever discovered."
Our neighbor Miss Enid Darius has been up to her ears in Harry Potter, & I was looking up some classic articles for her. There's a lame one in the New York Times from 2007 about Professor Dumbledore's homosexuality, but it brings out an extremely subtle inuendo in the seventh book:
She proposes that when the two friends had a falling out in a dramatic duel, Grindelwald did not fight but “conjured a white handkerchief from the end of his wand and” — the passage then gives way to an obvious (in retrospect) sexual double entendre.
Some of these quotes are old news, but they have a lingering aftertaste on my umami. (As a sidenote, my older brother has worked as a professional taster & brewmaster for a major brewery, & he does not believe in umami. So could umami be like the Quintessence of the tongue? Coming soon, a Special Report: Umami: Liberal Hoax or Fulfillment of our Full Seraphic Flavor Potential?)
Firstly, I love the logic in this quote from The Washington Examiner's Chief Political Correspondent Byron York:[Obama's] sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.
Black opinions are like the umami on the taste-buds of American sentiment: imaginary, but somehow ineffably influential to the National Relish.
Second, do you remember when New York Times editorialist Maureen Dowd asked George Lucas if she was being unfair by likening Dick Cheney to Darth Vader for so many years. He responded that she had got the analogy wrong, that "You know, Darth Vader is really a kid from the desert planet near Crawford, and the true evil of the universe is the emperor who pulls all the strings". Dowd was surprised that "Dick Cheney was more evil than Darth Vader. I hadn’t been hard enough on Vice!" I love that comparing our quasi-Democratically-elected former-VP to evil villains is still relevant, especially now that he's come out from his undisclosed location, & the journalists are arguing about which baddie he better resembles. David Edelstein in the New York Magazine spent 688 words pondering the issue, & fairly concluded:For my money, Cheney is [Emperor] Palpatine with a soupçon of Sauron, a pinch of Voldemort, a dash of Mabuse, a jigger of Fu [Manchu], with some Elmer Fudd and Richard Nixon folded in.
Delicious. Now there is Dijongate. Jon Stewart was mocking the way the cable news spent countless minutes watching Obama & Biden order burgers at lunch. But the right-wing talk show response to what Obama ordered was far more entertaining.I don't even like the way the man orders a hamburger. You're listening to The Laura Ingraham Show. What kind of man orders a cheeseburger without ketchup but Dijon mustard? See, he was trying to do this whole thing with Biden -- "We're like the regular people, we're like every other guy, you know, with our -- on our lunch break, we're going to go grab a burger, two guys, two bros." No....Well, we're gonna -- we're two bros hanging out together all right, man? How was your day? I love you, man. I love you. The guy orders a cheeseburger without ketchup? What is that?
And the left-wing blogospheric responding to the right-wing response:
-Laura Ingraham, on her radio show called The Laura Ingraham Show.
Now, the Gateway Pundit blog pointed out that plain old ketchup, well, it didn't quite cut it for the president. Now take a look at him ordering his burger with a very special condiment... All right, I hope you enjoyed that fancy burger, Mr. President.
-Sean Hannity, on his tv show called Hannity
He eats a hamburger with Dijon mustard -- Dijon mustard. John Kerry couldn't get away with that stuff, but he makes it seem like just like a regular thing to do. Now there's -- I see that some of the left-wing commentators are saying, "Why are people making a fuss about the Dijon mustard?" but that's just an example of the way Obama is able to enlighten us.
-Mark Steyn, from outer space.Grey Poupon is owned and manufactured by Kraft Foods. It is the processed cheese of mustards. It is the fucking Velveeta of faux-French products. Can we all shut the fuck up?
I was trying to think of something clever to write combining umami, the uniform American consensus on hamburger sauces, & freedom fries, but I think those quotes speak for themselves. Lastly, I thought the funniest moment in the White House Correspondents Association Dinner wasn't anything Wanda Sykes said, but the president's shout-out to the RNC Chairman Michael "Urban-Suburban Hip-Hop" Steele:
-The Awl, May 7, 2009.Michael Steele is in the house tonight. Or as he would say, 'in da heezy.' ... Whasup?
 | The Outfield - Your Love |  |
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 | Found at bee mp3 search engine |  |
I'm still totally haunted by the book I read last week, Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven. I don't want to give too much away, because this might be a book that every American should read. The central narrative is about the Lafferty brothers, all of whom started out as fairly normal Mormon boys who drifted into fundamentalism, culminating in some truly gruesome murders. The book does a nice job weaving in all the scandalous & rich history of the Mormon church with much of the other scandalous & rich contemporary Mormon history. So, there's a precedent in Mormonism (and, what, every other religion) to have certain murders & "removals" prophesied by God.
Krakauer has at the climax of the book a seriers of monologues by the murderer Dan Lafferty (again, without giving too much away, but the man sliced the head off of his infant neice!) In prison, Laffery has come to believe that he is Elijah, & here is some of his theology in his own words. "At a certain point Christ gathered all His Children around Him & announced:
"I want to have a party that's gonna last for a thousand years. You interested? You want to party with Me on this earth for a thousand years?"
And we said, "Hell, yeah!"
Se He said, "Okay, that's the good part. Here's the bad part: you can't have something for nothing. ... For six thousand years I'm gonna let the earth become hell before I turn it into heaven. And hell, by definition, is where the devil & his children are running shit. So what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna let the devil populate the earth with all of his assholes, & then I'm gonna sprinkle you, My children, on the earth a few at a time. And every hour you spend on this hell-on-earth with the assholes, you're going to be building up credits for the Big Party. It's gonna take about six thousand years, but by then we'll have all the credits we'll need fo our party. And then I'll come, & we'll harvest the earth - basically, we'll remove all the assholes - & clear the dance floor for our one thousand-year party."
Christ told His Children, "I know life is fucking crazy, but I'm here to tell you there's a purpose behind it. We're working for the Kingdom of God. And the way we do that is we put in our time here. And every hour you put in here is building up credit for the Big Party. That's the promise. That's the covenant. It's going to be crazy down there for a while, but in the end, thru Elijah, I will come."
Since we're all here in hell-on-earth, where the devil & his children run everything that is organized, it makes sense that the children of the devil would trick us into worshipping their asshole god. But before the God of love makes the scene, it will be important somehow to help His children - the children of love - have their eyes opened to who this cool fucker is who will be coming to befriend them on the day known in the Bible as the "Great & Dreadful Day of the Lord" (great for His children; dreadful for the assholes) - which is also known in the parable of the wheat & tares as "the harvest".
It is prophesied that the "Great & Dreadful Day" will be when Christ sends His angels like reapers to gather out of His kingdom all those who are not His & kill them; & that's in part what I was foreshadowing when I took the lives of Brenda & Erica [Lafferty]. I know that might sounds a little gory or something, but it feels like the right interpretation to me. I don't think the angels in this prophecy are beings with wings that fly down from heaven, but more like what Joseph [Smith, Jr.] & Brigham [Young] called "avenging angels": men already living here on earth who will just be taking care of their Fathers' business like I was, once they learn who their Father is & have been properly instructed.
_________________________________________________________________
Laurence Fishburne on Frank Gehry:
"He was my motorcycle buddy. And sometimes I'd, you know, smoke a bit of marijuana & he would be riding with me & I would think, Oh, my God, I have the greatest living architect on my motorcycle, & what if I crash?"
I'm still reading about early American sacred composer William Billings. I'm inspired by the ironic non-Puritan braggadocio with which he introduces his hymnal Singing Master's Assistant (1778). This was the first printing of American music to be published in the young states after the Revolutionary War. (The authors of "William Billings of Boston" suspect he might have been influenced in tone by the comic novelist Henry Fielding, which sets Billings apart from the "technically instructive to pious" tone of other introductions of the day.) Remember this is the preface to a puritan hymnal of psalmnody:Kind Reader, No doubt you (do, or ought to) remember, that about eight years ago, I published a Book entitled, The New-England Psalm-Singer, &c. And truely a most masterly and inimitable Performance, I then thought it to be. Oh! how did my foolish heart throb & beat with tumultouos joy! With what impatience did I wait on the Book-Binder, while stitching the sheets and putting on the covers, with what extacy, did I snatch the yet unfinished Book out of his hands, and pressing it to my bosom, with rapturous delight, how lavish was I, in encomiums on this infant production of my own Numb-Skull? Welcome; thrice welcome; thou legitimate offspring of my brain, go forth my little Book, go forth and immortalize the name of your Author; may your sale be rapid and may you speedily run thru ten thousand Editions, may you be a welcome guest in all companies and what will ad tenfold to thy dignity, may you find your way into the Libraries of the Learned.
Billings also included a dissonant song called Jargon in response to "critics of the harmonic vocabulary of his first tune book." He includes a long discourse, addressed "To the Goddess of Discord":DREAD SOVEREIGN,
This goes on for several more pages, & continues with a response from the goddess herself:
I have been sagacious enough of late, to discover that some evil-minded persons have insinuated to your highness, that I am utterly unmindful of your Ladyship's importance; and that my time, as well as my talents, was wholly taken up in paying my divoto to your most implacable enemy and strenuous opposer, viz. the GODDESS OF CONCORD, which representation is as false as it is ill-natured; for as your Ladyship may believe me without hesitation, when I assure you on the word of an honest man, that knowing your Ladyship to be of a very cautious disposition; I have always been very careful of trespassing on your grounds for fear of incuring your displeasure, so far as to exite you to take vengeance (which is well known to be your darling attribute.)
I have likewise been informed, that some of my most implacable enemy's are some of your Majesty's privy council, and that your Majesty's Secretary at war, viz. Lord Jargon, was about to send some of your other Lords in waiting, viz. Lord second, Lord 7th, Lord 9th, alias 2d, junior [i.e. dissonant musical intervals], with some others, to beat a tattoo apon the drum of my ear, with so great a number of contra-vibrations without the intervention of a single coincidence, and with so much Forte as to dislocate my auditory; upon which was, to repel force by force, and we had even proceeded as far as to order Lord Consonance, our Secretary at peace to furnish our life guard with an infinite number of coincidences, without the intervention of one contravibration; and altho we have the majority on our side, yet we held it in scord to take any advantage from our numbers, therefore we had selected an equal number of those who had attained unto the first three, viz. Lord Unison, Lord Diapente, Lord Octave, alias Lord Unison, jun'r, and for their Aid de camps, we had chosen two twin brothers, viz. Major and Minor Trio, together with Major Sixth, &c we had proceeded thus far when in turning over a very antient history I met with the following passage, viz. "by wise council thou shalt make thy war, and in multitude of cousellors there is safety." [...]A RECEIPT.Received of the Author, a peice of Jargon, it being the best piece ever composed, in full of all accounts from the beginning of time, to and thru the endless ages of eternity. I say received by me,GODDESS OF DISCORD
GIVEN from our inharmonical Cavern, in the Land of CHAOS: from the year of our existence, (which began at Adam's fall.) Five Thousand Seven Hundred & Eighty Two.DEMON DREAD, Speaker.
ATTEST, HAMAN HORROR, Secretary.
It concludes with another long page of instructions for performance ("let a hog who is extream hungry squeal the counter"). I hope this puts to rest any myth that the weird harmonies in early American sacred music were done in naivete. I scanned this photo-copy of Jargon, which appears to have modern text attached to it by Tom Malone (2004). I'll look for a recording.
I'm reading a book called "William Billings of Boston", (about the great hymn & psalm composer, essentially America's first composer, & one with a real voice.) The authors point out that it was the conservative elders who, earlier in the 18th Century, established the singing-schools, to educate the masses how to read music & sing the English hymns right (things were getting kind of folksy & enthusiastic); & it was this singing-school movement ("ironically" they point out) that made it possible for some of the more adventurous hymns that the New Englanders in the 1770s-1800 produced. The book's pretty dry, but there's some good quotes about the controversies surrounding music in the colonies: The singing of Psalmes, tho it breath forth nothing but holy harmony, and melody: yet such is the subtilty of the enemie, and the enmity of our nature against the Lord, & his wayes, that our hearts can finde matter of discord in this harmony, & crochets of division in this holy melody.
-The Whole Booke of Psalmes
(Cambridge [Stephen Day], 1640), p. [1] of preface.
Where there is no Rule, Men's Fancies (by which they are govern'd) are various; some affect a Quavering Flourish on one Note, & others upon another which (because they are Ignorant of true Musick or Melody) the account a Grace to the Tune; & while some affect a quicker Motion, other affect a slower, & drawl out their Noted beyond all Reason; hence in Congregations ensue Jarrs & Discords, which make the Singing (rather) resemble Howling.
-A Brief Discourse Concerning Regular Singing
(Boston: B. Green, Jr. for John Eliot, 1725), pg. 7
William Billings published The New-England Psalm-Singer in 1770 at age 24, with a Hundred-Twenty-Something original compositions--, that increased more than tenfold the amount of American-written music ever published in America. In the preface, he defends some of his unconventional harmonies (illegal parallel fifth & octaves, et cetera); in a time when puritan music was supposed to be somber, he had a lot of explaining to do.
Perhaps it may be expected by some that I should say something concerning Rules for composition. To these I answer that Nature is the best Dictator, for all the hard dry studied Rules that ever was prescribed, will not enable any Person to form an Air any more than the bare Knowledge of the four and twenty Letters, will qualify a Scholar for composing a Piece of Poetry, or properly adjusting a Tragedy, without a Genius. It must be Nature, Nature must lay the Foundation, Nature must inspire the Thought.
-William Billings, New-England Psalm-Singer (Boston, 1770), pg. 19
I have read several Author's Rules on Composition, & find the strictest of them make some Exceptions, as thus, they say that two 8s or two 5ths may not be taken together rising or falling, unless one be Major and the other Minor; but rather than soil the Air, they will allow that Breach to be made, and this Allowance gives great Latitude to young Composers, for they may always make that Plea, and say, if I am not allowed to transgress the Rules of composition I shall certainly spoil the Air, and cross the Strain that Fancy dictated.
-ibid.
For my own Part, as I don't think myself confin'd to any Rules for Composition laid down by any that went before me, neither should I think (were I to pretend to lay down Rules) that any who come after me were any ways obligated to adhere to them, any further than they should think proper: So in face, I think is best fr every Composer to be his own Carver. Therefore, upon this Consideration, for me to dictate or pretend to prescribe Rules of this Nature for others, would not only be very unnecessary, but also a great Piece of Vanity.
-ibid,
Suggesting that we stop recognizing married people:
Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend.
She says, correcting me, “He’s my husband,”
“Oh,” I say, “I no longer recognize marriage.”The impact is obvious. I tried it on a man who has been in a relationship for years,
“How’s your longtime companion, Jill?”
“She’s my wife!”
“Yeah, well, my beliefs don’t recognize marriage.”
Barack Obama [asking about Barbara Walters' dog]: "Cha Cha?"Barbara Walters: "It's short for Cha Cha Cha."
Obama: "What is a Havanese?"
Walters: "It's like a little terrier and they're non-allergenic and they're the sweetest dogs.."
Obama: [Face suddenly changes.] "It's like a little yappy dog?"
Michelle Obama: "Don't criticize."
Obama: "It, like, sits in your lap and things?"
Michelle: "It's a cute dog."
Obama: "It sounds kinda like a girly dog."
Michelle: "We're girls. We have a houseful of girls."
Obama [with hand gestures]: "We're going to have a big rambunctious dog, of some sort."
I do also believe that this is the finest & wittiest Obama impersonator:
Go read Dave Eggers' funny Thanksgiving play in the New York Times,
& Sarah Palin Poetry:
And the relevance to me
With that issue,
As we spoke
About Africa and some
Of the countries
There that were
Kind of the people succumbing
To the dictators
And the corruption
Of some collapsed governments
On the Continent,
The relevance
Was Alaska’s.
What the philistine media take for incoherence is, in fact, the fruitful ambiguity of verse.
Here she is, in a work I have taken to calling “The Relevance of Africa.” (Not a single word or comma has been changed, but the line breaks are placed where they naturally fall.) In it, Palin blends the energy of free verse with the austerity of a classic 14-line sonnet... A great poet needs to leave open the door between the conscious and unconscious; Sarah Palin has removed her door from its hinges. A great poet does not self-censor; Sarah Palin seems authentically innocent of what she is saying. She could be the most natural, visionary poet since William Blake.
We [The Republicans] cannot be a majority governing party when we essentially cannot compete in the Northeast, we are losing our ability to compete in Great Lakes states, we cannot compete on the West Coast, we are increasingly in danger of competing in the mid-Atlantic states, and the Democrats are now winning some of the Western states. That is not a formula for being a majority governing party in this nation.
Similarly we cannot compete, and prevail, as a majority governing party if we have a significant deficit, as we do, with women, where we have a large deficit with Hispanics, where we have a large deficit with African American voters, where we have a large deficit with people of modest incomes and modest financial circumstances. Those are not factors that make up a formula for success going forward.
-Minn. Gov. Tim Pawlenty, surveying the challenges for the Republican Party.
At least they're still popular in Real America. I have a solution for the GOP, don't be evil, & you can spread your base beyond the wealthiest & naivest of white male Americans.
In related news, exactly what kind of humor is this article from The Onion? Violent, political slapstick?
Bush Tumbles Wildly Down Washington Monument Staircase
WASHINGTON—President George W. Bush sustained 24 broken bones, massive internal hemorrhaging, and a severe concussion Monday after falling down the entire staircase of the 555-foot-tall Washington Monument. According to White House press secretary Dana Perino, Bush was making his weekly climb to the monument's observation floor when he lost his footing on the top step, slipped, and struck each of the obelisk's 897 stairs with the back of his skull during an uncontrolled descent to the base of the structure. President Bush is resting comfortably in Bethesda Naval Hospital.
As for Sarah Palin's belief that Africa was a country, if you haven't heard, that rumor was leaked by a "top McCain advisor" named Martin Eisenstadt from the "Harding Institute for Freedom & Democracy" (named for one of our worst presidents), & jumped on by the news networks & spread around quicker than it could be debunked:
“With the 24-hour news cycle they rush into anything they can find,” said Mr. Mirvish, 40.
Mr. Gorlin, 39, argued that Eisenstadt was no more of a joke than half the bloggers or political commentators on the Internet or television.
An MSNBC spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, explained the network’s misstep by saying someone in the newsroom received the Palin item in an e-mail message from a colleague and assumed it had been checked out. “It had not been vetted,” he said. “It should not have made air.”
But most of Eisenstadt’s victims have been bloggers, a reflection of the sloppy speed at which any tidbit, no matter how specious, can bounce around the Internet. And they fell for the fake material despite ample warnings online about Eisenstadt, including the work of one blogger who spent months chasing the illusion around cyberspace, trying to debunk it.
-Richard Pérez-Peña, New York Times, 12 Nov. 2008
And speaking of processed beverages & community gatherings in the American South (to which many local California singers travel for the many August & September singings), the Santa Cruz Organic (produced in Chico, California) makes the best sweet tea I've ever tasted, & it's saving me from surely wilting on this hot day in Berkeley. I had heard that it was against the law to sell tea in a restaurant in certain counties in the south without also selling Sweet Tea, but looking at Sweet Tea's wikipedia entry, apparently that was just an April Fool's joke. Well, who's laughing now, Georgia House of Representatives? God, I can't handle some of these hot days, tho - I become very inertial.
Which brings us to what's missing. I apologize that politics & live-blogging have immoderately usurped itwaslost.org, but we're taking steps to remedy this. We plan on live-blogging one or two of the debates, & of course not completely ignoring the next two months of this "close" election--; but noticeably missing are the gaps in the narrative from Bulgaria, Morroco & Indonesia, the latest new tunes from my microphone, the completion of several unfinishable epic nonsense poems, every & any words from our traveling ice-climbing correspondent, & reports on this website's progress & ongoing projects. This post should do something about that last category, & I'll report about this post's report in coming days. In the meantime, a few quotes from the convention:
"George W. Bush came into office on third base, & then he stoled second."And please note the following links:
-Gov. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio), 26 August 2008,
Democratic National Convention
“I’m sure you remember a girl from Kansas who said there’s no place like home. Well, in John McCain’s version, there’s no place like home & a home & home & home."
-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-Kansas) 26 August 2008,
Democratic National Convention
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