Colin Moulding is 58 today. XTC is in the innermost circle of bands/musicians that rotate in and out of the two open spots in My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game, have been for thirty-five years, and if I prefer on the whole and by more than a smidgen Andy Partridge songs to Colin Moulding songs (and recognize that XTC is a Partridge project, which is technically the entity that rotates in and our of the spots) that doesn't mean I don't love Colin Moulding songs.
- So much for the one Clusterfuck Link of the Day plan.
- Also, this past Thursday's post's title is from a Colin Moulding song (song embedded in post), serendipitous rather than planned.
- Communism and neoliberalism.
- Everything paleo is neo again.
- Illogical economics.
- Spying an Americans: summary update.
- Breaking the rules thousands of times.
- How to trap a whistleblower.
- Despicable human, powerful Democrat.
- Remembering Leonard Peltier.
- Cowardice or avarice? Death to the either/or!
- Clearly.
- The history of the world in a chart.
- A song of flood and fire.
- Postcards from Google Earth.
- I got two emails re: my comment yesterday in TNP conversation about blogs that limit readership to an invitation only format. I called it "lame and cowardly." My apologies, I meant to imply that it would be lame and cowardly for me to go to that format after almost ten years of not. I understand completely why someone would choose, in posting personal items among friends - or in posting whatever the fuck you want, it's your blog - to limit the readership to only the people one wants reading.
- Yes, there was an overnight post for my daughter - hope you saw it - it's saved, will be back whenever I need it.
- Breaking kayfabe.
- Authentic ruins.
- Posted solely for the few of you who know why I'd post it. As for the movie itself, I've no idea.
- Mansionalization.
- Ten forgotten classics. Hey, D, your favorite Defoe is one of them.
- The infinity of poetry lists.
- The Snowmass Cycle.
- Charles Olson in Mexico.
- Another riff on Against the Day.
- New Pynchon reviewed. It's a peculiarity of musical notation that major works are, more often than not, set in a minor key, and vice versa. Bleeding Edge is mellow, plummy, minor-key Pynchon, his second such in a row since Against the Day (2006)--that still-smoking asteroid, whose otherworldly inner music readers are just beginning to tap back at. But in its world-historical savvy, its supple feel for the joys and stings of love--both married and parental--this new book is anything but minor. On the contrary, Bleeding Edge is a chamber symphony in P major, so generous of invention it sometimes sprawls, yet so sharp it ultimately pierces. All this, plus a stripjoint called Joie de Beavre and a West Indian proctologist named Pokemon. Who else does that?
- HOLYFUCK! HOLYFUCK! HOLYFUCK! (h/t Mr Alarum) Yes, I posted that last night too.
FIXED IDEAS
Kenneth Slessor
Ranks of electroplated cubes, dwindling to glitters,
Like the other pasture, the trigonometry of marble,
Death’s candy-bed. Stone caked on stone,
Dry pyramids and racks of iron balls.
Life is observed, a precipitate of pellets,
Or grammarians freeze it into spar,
Their rhomboids, as for instance, the finest crystal
Fixing a snowfall under glass. Gods are laid out
In alabaster, with horny cartilage
And zinc ribs; or systems of ecstasy
Baked into bricks. There is a gallery of sculpture,
Bleached bones of heroes, Gorgon masks of bushrangers;
But the quarries are of more use than this,
Filled with the rolling of huge granite dice,
Ideas and judgments: vivisection, the Baptist Church,
Good men and bad men, polygamy, birth-control . . .
Frail tinkling rush
Water-hair streaming
Prickles and glitters
Cloudy with bristles
River of thought
Swimming the pebbles—
Undo, loosen your bubbles!
