Apologies: & Re-Spearheading a Re-Initiative of an All-New Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs

Hello, & welcome back to itwaslost.org. & Apologies for the five week radio silence, so much has happened. Actually, nothing has happened, but there is also a Manna Tease tumblr blog - themannatease.tumblr.com - which exists. 

Furthermore, Mr Jason Islas is spearheading an initiative called Advent Bloggifying. This reminds me that in the year of our lord Twenty-Ten, I advent blogged all 24 days leading up to Christmas with a Special Department called the Special Department of Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs. So I hearby [sic] now re-spearhead a new re-initiative of an all-new 2011 Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs.

This is an issue very important to me, & of which I spend 11 months of the year not thinking at all about, & the remaining month thinking of nothing else. My love-hate relationship with Christmas music borders on manic-depression. It is often manic, but it is proceeded by the mid-November chill of death upon hearing the first Carol of the Bells in some Nissan TV advertisement. I realize this relationship to Christmas music isn't unique, but perhaps mine is personally intense. (I propose a six week boycott of any company that uses any Christmas song in an ad before Thanksgiving.) 

So to save the ubiquitous Christmas songs from themselves, I have a project of collecting the best & worst of non-overplayed Christmas songs. My personal collection is already many hours long, but this year is the year of Spotify. If you do not have Spotify right now, you are a fool, because it could be a short-lived Golden Age if record labels are going to pull all of the music from it. My spotified playlist of non-Overplayed Christmas songs, ranging from the worst to the best, is now at least 30 hours long & is still being expanded, pruned, & improved. (Please listen to it on random.)

For the Advent, I'll post a song a day until Christmas. Day 1 of my Advent Calendar I am going to go with a new recording, from Carole King's 2011 album A Holiday Carole (get it?) This album isn't amazing, in fact it's lame, but for a washed-up '70s pop star - "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" - it's better than one of Kenny Rogers' 47 Christmas albums. It contains a bunch of sucky new songs written by her daughter Louise Goffin - but by my calculation, the album is only 25% overplayed Christmas songs, so that's commendable. I think this song "Everyday Will Be Like A Holiday" is strangely satisfying, especially on repeated listening. It's a cover of a song by soul singer William Bell, but I like her singing & production better. Now, come back here every day for a NEW Non-Overplayed Christmas Song. & listen to the spotify mix if you wish.

Introducing: Illuminated Sheet Music - Young Manasseh's Stains from The Manna Stains illustrated digital songbook!

And now, Grainne Proinseas & I are spearheading an initiative to spearhead the genre of illuminated songbooks. The Manna Tease's Epic Murder Ballad Song Cycle, The Manna Sustains, will be a fully illuminated songbook illustrated by Grainne Proinseas, and I'll release little excerpts of individual songs as we create them, practice the project, et cetera.
Young Manassehs Stains, from The Manna Sustains - Illuminated Sheet Music

Please download, print, and play around with as you wish. I'm deliberately keeping the score pretty vague, just the melody and chord progression, with the occasional instrumental melody. Additional verses can differ slightly in melody & syncopation, &c. Here's us singing "Young Manasseh's Stains" live:

Stay tuned for more illustrated songs! & more from The Manna Sustains. Lyrics to "Young Manasseh's Stains" originally posted here. Please "like" The Manna Tease on facebooks here, & Grainne Proinseas here.

Socks with Sandals goes all the way to the top

At Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity last October, there was a man with a sign saying "Socks with Sandals" which I posted here. This is a cause I chauvinistically support. A picture was floating around the Huffington Post that showed George W Bush on vacation when he was president (it was in response to "should the President dress like this?" bullshit about Obama's casual wear in Hawai'i.) Look closely, I believe our movement has a new messiah. He's not only wearing crocks with socks, but the socks have the presidential seal on them!

I hereby Spearhead the Initiative to Introduce a Special Department of Socks with Sandals as a Special Sub-Department of the Department of Fashion (with Grainne's approval of course.)

Introducing The Manna Tease (Working Title), new facebook fan page!

Introducing The Manna Tease (Working Title), our hot new duo, which has a spanking new facebook page. Add us to your musical "likes". More youtubes & mp3s to come. This month, our apartment in Berkeley; next month, the Fillmore. I've added a gadget in the left hand sidebar to get thee to our facebooks, or you can click on this large screengrab below. And we wish you a happy new year!

Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs No. I

Happy December! & It's officially overplayed Christmas songs season, altho I heard my first carol in an advertisement this year before Halloween. So I hereby spearhead an initiative for a Special Department for December 1st thru 24th called "Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs." Whalaa! Let it be so!

In the first pigeon-cubby-hole, we find a lost song from John Denver's 1975 Christmas album Rocky Mountain Holiday. (I think a good place to look for Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs are among those one or two half-hearted originals an artist will throw in their Christmas Album surrounded by the overplayed ones that will inevitably get more radio play.) This song has a twangy upbeat country groove, making it sound like a light-hearted, even mildly comic take on Christmas alcoholism, even with a dopey title "Please, Daddy, Don't Get Drunk This Christmas." But on closer inspection, there's no jokes in the lyrics, & it's actually pretty depressing.

	John Denver - Please, Daddy .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

An excerpt from the lyrics:

Please Daddy, don’t get drunk this Christmas.
I don’t wanna see my Mumma cry.
Please Daddy, don’t get drunk this Christmas.
I don’t wanna see my Mumma cry.

Mumma smiled and looked outside the window.
She told me, "Son, you better go upstairs."
Then you laughed & hollered, "Merry Christmas!"
I turned around & saw my Mumma’s tears.

Introducing: Department of Princess Drawings

Last night, while playing at mahjong & drinking Turkish Raki, some of the contributers to this website spearheaded an initiative to create a new Department of Princess Drawings. So, without further ado, introducing: the new Department of Princess Drawings. The first issuing is by Minnie Molly Mary.

Introducing the Department of Fivers

We have been humongously inspired by - (a friend of Mrs Smith's) - poet F. Keith Wahle's five word poems, called Fivers. The first two:

1.
Write a five word poem.

2.
O.K., now write another one.

Mr Wahle has hundreds, filling many type-written pages. Mrs Smith used them in her interpretation of artist-composer Mark Applebaum's The Metaphysics of Notation, a beautiful graphic score, in the Cantor Art Center at Stanford University this last Friday (there are different musicians interpreting the piece every Friday at noon for a year. Mrs Smith performing it is pictured in the photo below.)

You'll be happy to know that itwaslost writers have already composed dozens of new Fivers, & I am spearheading an initiative to introduce a Department of Five Word Poems at itwaslost.org. I think the format will be, amongst the other clutter this blog produces, a post every other day for several hundred days, each post with a Wahle Fiver, an itwaslost Fiver, & some accompanying artwork (either original or stolen. If the latter, the photo will link to where I got it.) So, for instance:

3.

Your telephone prose is impeccable.
-F. Keith Wahle

i.

I took my eyeballs out.

________________________________________________________________________________

Look for these posts every even numbered day! for hundreds of days to come!
& please submit more itwaslost fivers in the comments.

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

Introducing our New Sponsor: Manatee Brand Man Panties

WWW.ITWASLOST.ORG now brought to you by:

Art by Grainne Proinseas.
Marketing Initiative Spearheading by Essąn Dragone & Enid Darius.
Paid Advertisement.

Three Years Ago: "List"

Premiering, today--, hello readers--, I would like to spearhead the initiative for a new segment called Three Years Ago. We never properly celebrated that this website weblog has been posting for more than three years. So as an extended anniversary party, I'll be RE-POSTING from the exact past, EXACTLY TO THE MINUTE THREE YEARS LATER, the post I had posted three years ago. This post from May 27th, 2006, at 3:51pm, was simply called "List".
______________________________________________________________

1) Girls who think Sandinistra is the best Clash album.
2) Snow in May.
3) The 1976 elections.
4) Neil Diamond’s "Soulimon".
5) What Hawthorne thought of Melville.
6) A googly during a Sticky Wicket.
7) The deleted ending of Dr. Strangelove.
8) Popcorn cooked over a fire.
9) When, during the last Calvin & Hobbes anthology, Rosalyn (the babysitter) beats Calvin at Calvinball.
10) David Byrne dancing with a lamp.
11) White tea with steamed rice milk.
12) Turquoise found in the hills of the Nevada desert.
13) New York hipster drone music played at deafening volumes on the Hurdy-Gurdy.
14) Good flan.
15) Lily Langtree.
16) The names of Al Franken’s books.
17) Half Moon Lake in Desolation Wilderness.
18) Petzl Headlamps worn at inappropriate times.
19) J.D. Salinger’s longevity.
20) People who smile to themselves at you.
21) Joan Baez singing both parts of conversational songs.
22) Jokes about Sven & Ollie.
23) People who are humble about having read all of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen.
24) Sexagenarians who think The Man Who Wasn't There is the best Cohen Brothers movie.
25) Poor students who would prefer to spend more than $50 on a bottle of good tequila.
26) Mimosa’s Witnesses.
27) My friend who said she saw Wagner’s Siegfried on acid with her father.
28) John Denver’s Greatest Hits, Volume Three.
29) Children who use the word “obtuse.”
30) Life-long vegetarians.
31) Tan M&Ms in a wine glass.
32) Toughannock Falls.
33) The first few chapters of First Chronicles.
34) Houris.
35) When Elizabeth Bishop interrupts & corrects herself in her own poem.
36) Seeing an old friend in a new light.
37) Having a large number of dimes.
38) Jokes about what’s black, white, and/or red.
39) Corn Lily.
40) Shakespeare’s Troilus & Cressida.
41) Butterbeer & Firewhiskey.
42) Caleb Burhans.
43) Merlot drinkers.
44) People who take black & white photos on digital cameras.
45) Jimmy Buffet’s Jamaica Mistaica.
46) Reading Robert Burns out loud with an American accent.
47) Christmas caroling on Halloween.
48) The one who gets to play 4’33” during a John Cage Music Circus.
49) David Bowie as Andy Warhol in Basquiat.
50) Eskimo women chanting.

Earf People Day

In the early days of this weblog, I wrote about Nonviolent Nondriving, my tiny personal movement to not drive a car. Since cars kill more than wars, nondriving is inherently nonviolent. (More people die in Israel from car accidents than from violence. In the US, we kill around forty thousand people a year in car accidents, compared to around two thousand firearm deaths.) ANYWAY, not to mention pollution. Happy Earf Day Earf People & Lizard People! New York to California! 

We just noticed that Brains Aha!, our Sports & Leisure correspondent, has been covertly blogging also at a website called carfreeusa.blogspot.com, which is about many things, but principally about a carfree USA. A few days ago he posted this link to my facebooks wall:

People have been pushing to turn Berkeley's pedestrian-busy Telegraph Avenue into something akin to Cornmarket Street in Oxford, England - buses & lorries okay, there's no reason to have a personal car on it. Parts of Berkeley, like most of Oxford, is just too damned complicated to drive around in anyway, not to mention parking. Also not to mention pollution, & societies & communities ripped apart by car roads.

Also for Earth Day, I recommend this Huffington Post post, a list of statistics about livestock's impact on the environment. Remember it takes six pounds of grain to make one pound of meat, & eleven times as much fossil fuel.

So today I inaugurate itwaslost.org's Department of Nonviolent Nondriving, as part of our larger Imaginary American anti-Lizard People initiative spearheading.

Elsewhere in the Pianosphere: Liberian Congresswoman Malinda Jackson Parker

A few weeks ago, we spearheaded the initiative to spearhead a new sphere, namely the Pianosphere. To validate Mr Olaf Mary's tweeted claim that "TSEGUE-MARYAM GUEBROU IS THE BEST PIANO PLAYER EVER TO LIVE AND PLAY THE PIANO", we vowed to evaluate some similar piano geniuses, like Father Basil Frison.

Today, we turn to an old favorite, & in a similar vein. Long ago, Sam Amidon gave me the cd "Songs in the Key of Z", which contains one track of the Liberian Congresswoman Malinda Jackson Parker. Here it is:

	Congress-Woman Malinda Jackson - Cousin Mosquito
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

I recently put this on a gourd-making mix-CD for Friend-of-the-Blog "Big Mama" Raleigh, among thirty other tracks, this is the one she was dying to have identified & was wondering if there was more. There is! I just found out you can get that entire EP, Tubman Goodbye Songs of Liberia, from iTunes, & you can listen to the entire album on LAST Fm - go here. There's even a second movement to the Mosquito song. Here's the e-mail from Big Mama:

from "Big Mama" Raleigh ____@yahoo.com date Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 8:50 AM subject Re: More of Liberian Congresswoman Malinda Jackson-Parker mailed-by yahoo.com signed-by yahoo.com

Thanks for sending this. I like the [first] version you sent better because she sings a lot more of the cousincousincousincousincousin

cousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousin cousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousin cousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousin cousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousin cousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousincousin part. How in the world do you find such obscure stuff? Do your Negro friends recommend these? I LOVE 'em! Speaking of, I just made reservations for us to see Ladysmith Black Mambaso here in July. Thank you, James. Big Mama, Bishop of Bend

Conversations: & notes from the from 22nd Century itwaslost.org board meetings

Grâce has joined

Olaf: sweet potato. delicious.

Grâce: OH MY GOD

so many virtual handsome men

10:34 AM Olaf: hey everyone is here

Grâce: in one chatroom

so much virtual facial hair

it's overwhelming

Olaf: i have been eating a lot of baked potatoes and sausage

me: Not me, I'm as naked as a baby's butt

10:35 AM Olaf: i am returning to my roots. i used to hate these things: oatmeal, baked potato, sausage. what has happened?

i am irish

Grâce: haha

10:36 AM liam's mixtapes are crack. does everyone concur?

me: I call this meeting to Hors d'œuvre

Grâce: I propose a motion to officially say that liam''s mixtapes are crack

me: I second that motion, but forward an amendment

To spearhead an initiative

10:37 AM Of free love on the free love highway

Olaf: hot love where?

Grâce: sounds enticing

me: All in favor?

J___ Quill: why limit it to the highway?

and I think it should be on the freeway

Grâce: yeah. i'm with quill

me: Peg-legged Pete?

J____ Quill: because the hot love is already on the highway

me: "Arrrrrr!"

Grâce: the freeway, and the highway

both

Olaf: hot love on the on the hotlove high way free love on the free love freeway

10:38 AM Grâce: welsch, this dialogue should be included in your text message novel

it should be a chat and text novel

there are too many good chats

fo them to be excluded

J____ Quill: so much intermingling on the internet

everything is a part

10:39 AM Olaf: of everything

Grâce: Quill, what are you wearing?

J____ Quill: boots

Grâce: excellent

J____ Quill: I flooded my kitchen doing laundry

Olaf: muddy? snowy? laced? furry?

10:40 AM watch out!

J____ Quill: they seem to be laced

me: Let's twitter it.

Olaf: soapy flood

Grâce: how does your cat feel about the flood?

Olaf: did you slide around?

me: Tweet

Grâce: is it on the lamp again, or whatever?

10:41 AM didn't the cat go up on top of something and made you jump and cut your head?

I totally don't remember the story right

J____ Quill: he doesn't care for the flood so much

Olaf: Headline news in Santa Fe, "Nurse: 'Fiero Pompous and Drunk'"

i love your photo in the paper james

me: What does that mean?

Olaf: it really does look like harry potter

J____ Quill: Labor!

Grâce: headline news in new York City: "the economy is shit"

10:42 AM me: I'm sick of the economy. Can't we have another election?

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:

Introducing: DEPARTMENT OF BEARDS!

All this talk of James A. Garfield & Chester A. Arthur & Bill Richardson & Herman Melville got me to thinking. So I am spearheading a new Department of Beards on this weblog (available in the sidebar), which will be partially historical (great beards thru time) & partially political. Bearded men are often misrepresented in the main stream media, mocked by comedians, & there is a repugnant bias in many workplaces. For instance, when Mel Gibson was filming Apocalypto, the article about how crazy he had become kept mentioning over & over again that he had grown a beard. Surely his anti-semetic rants was keener evidence, but I digress. BEARDS! Most if not all of the correspondents at www.itwaslost.org are among the bearded. Now, like our President in eighteen hours (Barack Obama), I cannot grow a full beard, so my support of beards is similar to my support of gayness: I support it politically, do what I can, blog about it until the blogosphere is ripped apart by gypsies, but fall short of penetration. BEARDS! It's 2009, I want to see a beard back in the White House by 2020!

a word or two on politics...Obama post-election, etcetera

I got a text from my friend James today and had a brief exchange about the current hullabaloo around Obama's (mostly unconfirmed) cabinet picks. The talking heads, I see, are babbling away about the fact that Holder, Craig, Emanuel are quote old Clinton White House hands, and therefore "not changey" enough. As if there is some sort of betrayal going on here and Obama was going to stack the deck with...well...me and james and liam and quill, and oh hell, a couple of you guys reading this- why not? or perhaps draw from the hidden well of extremely experienced tried and tested political talent in the Democratic party that NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD OF BEFORE.
reality check. It has come from others and I will simply reiterate. The majority of Dem talent that does not actually serve in the Congress or currently govern a state, and who are not senile, are career people who served (mostly successfully) in Bill Clinton's administration. The pool of top-notch people in any given political party at any given point in time is not anywhere near the infinite depth and breadth that the need-2-talk 24 hrs a day folks seem to be implying with their faux outrage here. Nobody should be surprised at these appointments, and they certainly should not be equated with the tragic early death of the promise of change.
The other options Obama has (and he has shown a willingness to exercise them as well), are basically to siphon Dem talent from the Congress (Biden and quite possibly Hillary in the near future), and from the Dem governors. I'm sure NOW and their like would like to see Janet Napolitano and Claire Mccaskill get a spot in the cabinet, but Obama has to be careful when he pinches this talent, to ensure that Repubs won't jump into the breach and make governing more difficult by fucking up key majorities or near-majorities and replacing deputies in key spots.
With all this said, as I told James, I look for Obama to do his real moving and shaking mainly outside of these traditional core cabinet positions. It is clear from the talent-recruiting initiative going on through the transition team's web presence, that they are throwing the net far and wide. They are bound to get thousands of resumes from young, tech-savvy, innovative talent. My brother, who is a systems engineer, is applying to work in the Office of Urban planning...He is offering the incoming administration his talent to work on issues of technology, web infrastructure and urban development and sustainability. He is just one example of the cornicopia of talent (particularly young talent) that Obama will have to pick from in staffing the offices that he will spearhead to address urgent issues that were ignored under the current Administration. Don't look for the fresh blood in the cabinet folks- look for decentralization of power and important activity to outlying offices- and not evil Bush-Cheney secret prison shit-. JFK authorized some of the most groundbreaking initiatives of his presidency through relatively obscure offices like the presidents initiative on juvenile delinquency which was overseen by RFK and an old friend of his from high school who had previously been only peripherally involved in politics but was interested in addressing the inequity blocking youth in ghettoes from advancement. The peace corps and Americorps both originated outside of the core Cabinet. Obama has already made "spreading power and ownership around"- decentralizing command, re-constituting the traditional hierarchy and allowing the grassroots to initiate when it is most effective- the hallmark of his leadership style. I expect he will continue to do so as President. Filling the cabinet with the people who essentially exist to fill the cabinet is only a prelude. Don't get caught up in this bullshit-hype. Instead, why not go over to Change.gov and apply to work in the administration yourself?

E-mails & sundry late October Correspondences

Date:	Mon, 30 Oct 2006 14:39:58 -0800 (PST)
From:	"James Welsch" <_________@yahoo.com>
Subject:	Happy Nevada Day!
To:	"Kristin Jarvis" <_______@yahoo.com>

Mrs Jarvis,

Actually, Nevada Day is tomorrow, but never too early to celebrate.

Some quotes about appreciating life:

Well, I got me a fine wife, I got me a fiddle,
When the sun's comin up, I got cakes on the griddle,
Life ain't nothin' but a funny, funny riddle,
Thank God I'm a Country Boy!

-John Denver

Just like Michael Haverty!

But I had a good uncle, my late Uncle Alex. He was my father's kid brother, a childless graduate of Harvard who was an honest life-insurance salesman in Indianapolis. He was well read & wise. And his principal complaint about other human beings was that they seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we were drinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, & talking about this & that, almost buzzing like honeybees, Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather to exclaim, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

So I do the same now, & so do my kids & grandkids. And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, & exclaim or murmer or think at some point, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

-Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country (2005). I'm planning on sending this book to Barbara Lee, Berkeley's representative, & Nancy Pelosi, when they win next week, especially if Pelosi is the new House Speaker. He says our country has been taken over by people without consciences. Because of our government, one of America's great writers in his old age has given up on the human race, like Twain & Einstein before they died, & now Hawking! I also plan on sending Richard Pombo (R-Stockton) an e-mail saying "I hope you die poor!" Can I get arrested for that?

When it will be questiond "When the sun rises do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?"
"O no no I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty!"
I question not my corporeal or vegetative eye any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look thru it & not with it.

-William Blake, A Vision of the Last Judgment.

You know, I just went with "Brian Aha" (Cuban guy I lived with in Slonim 11) to a Halloween party full of gay lawyers, & you were the first person he asked about. I guess you impress a certain fine film on people's memories. Ah memory, my theme, that wingéd host that soared about me...

Diet of champagne not beer... Hardly stops one adding weight, but keeps the scrotum crisp.

-Professor Veen, in Nabokov's Ada or Ardor.

Well, a happy 27th to you & 145th to Nevada!

Peace & Love,
Mr Welsch

Posted on the New York Times Caucus Blog as a comment on "Nancy & Denny: Hanging the Drapes in the House", today:

They are going to villify any rising Democrat, anyone who could potentially take over leadership! If she were Jim Webb, they’d paint him as a gay activist. The fact she’s a woman from San Francisco is enough, they don’t even have to mention her record, ambition, or specific ideals. Even if she doesn’t represent Unamerican values like peace & taxes.

Aren’t Fox News watchers getting nauseous of everyone accusing everyone of just playing politics? Isn’t that how we get things done in this country? It was the Republicans who tried to impeach a president when the third-in-line was an ambitious Republican. Throw in a little more corruption, & Pelosi could be a true leader.

— Posted by Hardrhythm

Date:	Thu, 12 Oct 2006 15:32:02 -0700 (PDT)
From:	"James Welsch" <______@yahoo.com>
Subject:	Quarter way thru life
To:	"Kristin Jarvis"

Mrs. Haver-jar (?)

Hmm, what is your last name(s)? I always address my e-mails to ex-Bonnie Whiting as "Mrs. Smith", the last thing she wants to be called, love of her husband notwithstanding.

What are you up to?

Thanks for being one of two (the other: Melinda Rice) who sent me a birthday note. I was alone in a bar at midnight, & I got a free drink for answering a quiz question correctly (Only sports star who makes his own bed at hotels? I deduced "Tiger!") Sorry, it actually wasn't depressing, nor am I lonely, but it's an easy style of self-deprecating birthday-humor. Also, incidentally, I just re-read our last correspondence so as not to be redundant in this one, & there was a bit of miscommunication: I wasn't harrasing you for not ever visiting Tahoe, I was just describing why moving to the bay area had its advantages. In two months, I've been visited by a staggering amount of old friends.

I could be commissioned, by the way, to write a series of arguments, if you're ever at the point when considering pros of moving here. It's expensive, for instance, but I have a totally-super-sweet-ass apartment (huge, central location, 1905 building) for only $1k/month. But that's just bragging. Ha ha ha, suckers! I've also yet to find employment, but that may not be wholly the economy's fault.

Politics: Don't vote for warmongers / war-profiteers - the general sentiment in Berkeley, so I'm told. Jenny's working as a peace-canvasser. Is the situation hopeless / beyond our democratic control?
Beer: Boont, a brown ale from Mendocino, I think; Abbey Cat, & others from the Lost Coast Brewery in Eureka; anything made by Anchor Steam, in SF.
Literature: Nabakov, Vonnegut, & the Death's Jest-book (1829, a strange neo-Jacobean play by late-Romantic proto-absurdist mock-gothic Thomas Lovell Beddoes). I might be writing a secret sensational novellette in my free time, but can it be sensational if it's secret?
Music: The bay area is amazing. I've already seen an opera & several concerts for free. I've been playing at an open mic every tuesday & singing sacred harp every monday, both good practice, for something. As for "popular" genres, I can't figure out why, 40-years since Dylan plugged in at the Newport Folk Festival, people have yet to figure out how to mix live rock music. & hip-hop is even worse! These are genres not only about volume, but about lyricisim & lyrics, & you can never hear what they're saying & you ears hurt! Bah! It's frustrating, having a classical training, & always trying to see as much various music as possible. But the two days of live free bluegrass in Golden Gate Park, every year, last weekend, was incredible - Gillian Welch, Emmylou Harris, Freakwater (who you should "check out" if you've never heard of them), five stages, &c.

I hope you're well. I should have some new pictures digitalized soon. I always love seeing yours, of puppets, &c. "Halloween show"? "Exotic ghosts?"

Peace, Love, Roberta Joan Anderson, by Jo,
James

Date:	Fri, 13 Oct 2006 07:41:03 -0700 (PDT)
From:	"kristin jarvis" <_________@yahoo.com>
Subject:	Re: Quarter way thru life
To:	"James Welsch" <_______@yahoo.com>

James,

Sounds like a lovely way to spend the quarter century mark.  While being around others is great fun, I
always need a little time for reflection when I round anoter year.  I believe I celebrated with a bellini
that night, which is a mimosa except with peach juice. From what I can remember twenty five was swell.  In
fact, it was my first time as an adult in San Fran... Speaking of that lovely city, if we had the resources
and a job waiting we would move there in a second. While perhaps we saw only a portion of the city, and
spent way too much money on the amazing food and drink, I can imagine it could be just as lovely on a
smaller budget.  That said, as we were dreaming of moving there, a new Walmart opened in Oakland and
there was an article about the throngs of fairly educated folk beating down the door trying to get a
job.  But we did love the city, saw lots of performances, went to the Asian, modern and mechanical
toy museums, ah, it was incredible.  That said, I think I have decided not to attend grad school, which
makes the possibility of moving there even slimmer. I'm actually fairly happy in this city and we've
finally started finding a place in the arts community here.

I'm in a show right now at the Center (for puppetry arts) which is incredible fun.  I'm part of a piano
trio of sorts for the show and we get to play and sing great music but also create some of the foley and
narrate the stories.  We perform Mr. Ghost Goes to Town, The Blob!, Danse Macabre, Funeral March of the
Marionettes, the great song from the 1920s called "Creepy" among others.

So you're singing sacred harp?  We performed a few songs in that tradition for Michael adaptation of
Gilgamesh.  He's singing in a group regularly here so we went to the Southeastern conference.  The sound was
just incredible.  Have you seen the documentary?  It's called Awake my Soul: the Story of the Sacred Harp.
It's a little low budget but tells the history of the music and the southern tradition quite nicely,
although they do point out a few too many times that the form defies any classical notion of musical
structure.

Well, I should go as I need to start the day.  Before my call tonight we're going to the last weekend of the
Lakewood junk/antiques fair.  It's this incredibly huge fair set on an old fairground in the middle of
the city quite near our house.  You can find pretty much anything there.  They are tearing the beautiful
and quirky location down to make way for condos. I hope you the best for your 25th year.

With love,
Kristin (Jarvis)
(I've kept my last name because I am quite fond of it
and Michael seemed to have no objections.  So,
officially, I guess I'm Mrs. Jarvis, although when you
attach the Mrs. it sounds rather odd...)

To:	[someone I don't know on MySpace]
Date:	Oct 23 2006 5:30 PM
Subject:	The Mimosa's Witnesses
Body:	[_____], Well, I've been trying to get Lisa Rybovich Cralle, our mutual friend apparently, back out here to have a Mimosa's Witnesses "service", an organized semi-religious event for our semi-religious organization, the Mimosa's Witnesses, which congregates & transubstantiates on Sunday Mornings, & occasionally, but not yet tangibly, goes canvassing evangelically, with platters of champagne & orange juice, you see. So, if you have any interest in our secular cult, our tithe is low (only 9% of your income!), & the rewards are high (earthly paradise, at least on the Sabbath), & services are held regularly (I'm trying to spearhead an initiative this weekend) in Berkeley your home town! & postings thru YourSpace. Peace, The Archpope of Transubstantiation

Maude and the Triangle of Death