2013/03/12

It Was When the Catfish Were the Only Fish Left Living in the Monongahela River



One of my earliest crushes, my avatar's nemesis' partner, lover, mother of his twin children, code name Barbara Feldon, real name 99, was born 81 years ago today, oh my. I'd be curious how much Mel Brooks and Buck Henry say they consciously stole from and lovingly parodied the two Emma Peel Avenger years, at least 99 the first few seasons of Get Smart, but learning would entail research, and fuck that.





  • Max quick, I'm weakening, dang, me never Max. One of my great sadnesses is that my avatar called in sick and was unavailable for this scene and Brooks and Henry had to bring in Corporal Agarn from Fort Courage Kansas, get him out of his Union blues and into my avatar's costume, had my avatar been there instead of crashed on mushrooms and Mad Dog it would make a far better, far sexier youtube than this one for 99's birthday.
  • Canned laughter.
  • Not the end of times but the end of time: We went from a future focused society to a present-based one. The leaning forward that had characterized our civilization since the invention of farming and text became more of a standing-up. I think this another facet of shock doctrine, this one more towards our conditioning for control by our owners rather than harvesting us for meat - America is still ten years behind Britain, twenty years behind Spain, thirty years behind Greece - but it reminds that because I got sick of saying and assumed long-timers were sick of hearing it I haven't been yodeling recently that the core of my rubiness is that until the past decade I believed unto a faith that in America each generation leaves the next generation a better America than the parenting generation was bequeathed. Cue violins for my daughter's future, it's an old and melodramatic gag, but what world will she live in when she's my age in 2046?
  • Canned laughter.
  • Life is cheap in the New World Order.
  • Fucking Americans.
  • Zizek on Chavez.
  • One more idiot with a twitter account.
  • So it seems I'm back to bullets, fucking blooger, it's the only fucking thing here it will let me change. If enough of you stop reading I can crash this and start start again elsewhere happily bitter at my involuntarily invisibility. Fuck me.
  • Chance is a good librarian.
  • What makes dogs dogs?
  • A young William Carlos Williams writes a letter to his brother.
  • OK, for MOCOMOFOs: a friend just tweeted that Bret Michaels (who the fuck is Bret Michaels?) likes curly fries. Ken Beatrice doesn't like curly fries, though he's told they're very good. Try the Jamocha Shake.
  • At Matanaka Farm.
  • Coetzee, for those of you who do.
  • Roth, for those of you who do.
  • Jim's latest playlist.
  • I don't play enough Morton Feldman here.
  • Holyfuck, forgive me, I love this below, this is the direction my ears are sprinting, I'm so stupid for it I can't believe you're not stupid for it too. Fine metaphors abound.





FATHER, IN DRAWER

Lucie Brock-Broido

Mouthful of earth, hair half a century silvering, who buried him.
With what. Make a fist for heart. That is the size of it.
                                                             Also directives from our  DNA.
The nature of  his wound was the clock-cicada winding down.
                                                            He wound down.
July, vapid, humid: sails of sailboats swelled, yellow boxes
Of   cigars from Cuba plumped. Ring fingers fattened for a spell.
                                                            Barges of coal bloomed in heat.
It was when the catfish were the only fish left living
                                                            In the Monongahela River.
Though there were (they swore) no angels left, one was stillbound in
The very drawer of salt and ache and rendering, its wings wrapped-in
                                                            By the slink from the strap
Of his second-wife’s pearl-satin slip, shimmering and still
                  As one herring left face-up in its brine and tin.
The nature of  his wound was muscadine and terminal; he was easy
                 To take down as a porgy off the cold Atlantic coast.
                 In the old city of   Brod, most of the few Jews left
Living may have been still at supper while he died.
That same July, his daughters’ scales came off in every brittle
                                                            Tinsel color, washing
To the next slow-yellowed river and the next, toward west,
                                                            Ohio-bound.
                This is the extent of that. I still have plenty heart.