2014/04/22

My Attic Hurts, and I'd Like to Quit the Committee for Naming Tornadoes



  • Dave's book arrived, thanks for the extra goodies! Order yours here.
  • The Geography of Poverty. Gorgeous, sad, disturbing, provocative website.
  • The Limits of Libertarianism. Offered for consideration, not chum. OK, for chum too. I confess I now try to maintain a state of Ismlessism, I'm willing - am eager - to hear all flavors torture their contradictions and hypocrisies and attendant justifications while trying to sell me a set of encyclopedias I desperately pray I don't buy.
  • Ismlessism? L asked at Monday Night Pints. You don't make up words nearly as much as you used to, she said. Apathyatrophyitus, I said. K brought up POTUS 16, Team Democrat (serendipitously mentioned this morning by Corrente's Clinton v Warren). Warren isn't running if Clinton tells her not to, L said. I'm fuckbarren, I said.
  • I also confess I've seen Piketty-this, Piketty-that, but have only read this Piketty profile.
  • Re: turning back the inexorable oligarchic slow tsumami in a peaceable manner is not an option, cause they aren't turning back peaceably.
  • Joseph Conrad and contemporary terrorism.
  • The roots and fruits of terror war.
  • Torturers, looters, and oligarchs get freaky.
  • PĂ©ladan, for those of you like me who never heard of him.
  • Joanna Russ, for those of you who do.
  • Hamster just told me I missed Robert Smith's birthday yesterday. Don't know how that happened, but he'll have another one next year.
  • And yes, it's John Waters' birthday today, here is the standard youtube.
  • Woke up with Teardrop Explodes in my head. This is one of dozens of my favorite songs ever.







SCHWINN

Matthew Zapruder

I hate the phrase “inner life.” My attic hurts,
and I’d like to quit the committee
for naming tornadoes. Do you remember
how easy and sad it was to be young
and defined by our bicycles? My first
was yellow, and though it was no Black
Phantom or Sting-Ray but merely a Varsity
I loved the afternoon it was suddenly gone,
chasing its apian flash through the neighborhoods
with my father in vain. Like being a nuclear
family in a television show totally unaffected
by a distant war. Then we returned
to the green living room to watch the No Names
hold our Over the Hill Gang under
the monotinted chromatic defeated Super
Bowl waters. 1973, year of the Black Fly
caught in my Jell-O. Year of the Suffrage Building
on K Street NW where a few minor law firms
mingle proudly with the Union of Butchers
and Meat Cutters. A black hand
already visits my father in sleep, moving
up his spine to touch his amygdala. I will
never know a single thing anyone feels,
just how they say it, which is why I am standing
here exactly, covered in shame and lightning,
doing what I’m supposed to do.