Some Multibody Hid His Second Exoneural Projecto-Self in a Pocket of Subspace, Masking It Over with Molecules of Landscape-Sim

• Three more Ashley pieces.
• Rebumping In Memory of Robert Ashley.
• Rebumping Ashley's Ubuweb page.
• Rebumping Imperfect News but Art in All Directions.
• Kyle Gann remembers Ashley.

• Remember to give to WFMU during their marathon, widget over in left column. Do it for me.
• I'm reminded that during Big News Spasms - Ukraine in this instance - Blegsylvania, at least my Stringtown in Blegsylvania, slows up. It no longer surprises me - people go to their usual and favorite big sources to keep up with latest news/assimilate their tribe's common wisdom on the event. 
• How the internet is narrowing our minds: As our options have grown, so has the overwhelming dominance of a generic set of crowd-pleasing blockbusters. Mainstream culture, aided and abetted (or thwarted and warped) by the frenetic pace of the Internet, has fallen into a punishing pattern: a few books—the ones that win prizes, are heavily promoted, or feature at least one vampire—rake in all the media attention and readers. All others are flops. In the book economy, the middle class is dying. The idea of an eHarmony for books is similarly a way of narrowing choices in the face of an overwhelming field of options. Paradoxically, because personalization relies on shared categories, its results can flatten the real differences between individuals.
• Food links.
• Belward Farm!
• Delmore Schwartz, for those of you who do.
• Philip Roth, for those of you who do.
• Thanks to Hamster for the above and below links plus for finding me the Ashley vimeo page.
• Berio, for those of you who do.
• Alex Chilton, for those of you who do.
• UPDATE! Yes yes yes, I know it's Mark E Smith's birthday today, a The Fall cascade is already in the can, will be posted later this afternoon.

DOOZEY

Albert Goldbarth

"A bun in her oven? Geez Louise, isn't that
malarkey? Estelle? Miss Goody-Two-Shoes?"
      "I thought it was bunkum too,
when I heard it. Really: you coulda knocked me
for a loop. But Alice told me, and she's jake."
Alice: the provenance, the gatekeeper. So it wasn't all hooey.
It was the real goods. Aunt Ruby
hadn't shown up for her visit last month and,
well, Estelle was in a pickle, was between the proverbial
rock and its cousin the hard place, friendless,
paddleless up that famous defecatory creek and down
in the dumps, and while vernacular studies

isn't my speed, I love the way we used to talk.
We also used to say the autumn light is lambent
on the lake top, and the waves display a heraldic curl
as in halcyon days . . . and that was also a fine,
fine thing to say. Or that some multibody hid
his second exoneural projecto-self in a pocket of subspace,
masking it over with molecules of landscape-sim
. . . that's how they talk in sci-fi-ville, while over
in the empirical records of science, someone is saying
the reagent deliquesces although
in its previous state it underwent resorption. All
of the languages are appropriate to their purposes—are

fine. Jack Gilbert's poem in honor of wabi
—that's the Japanese word for, roughly,
finding a beauty in ruin that one can only
find in ruin—reminds us that to lack the word
for a concept is really to lack the concept.
Let the word occur, though, and then suddenly
in a fingersnap, in a trice, and like a bolt out of the blue,
I can see my friend for whom Estelle is an avatar
in stanza one, and the formerly unacknowledged
stores of dignity and perseverance
that carried her through the shame of the abortion
—her wabi—flower forth. One story goes
 

she fucked up big-time, Mick was a saint but
nooo, she had to get knocked up by an asshole
like Kenny. Another story: her mind is part dissociative, and
so requires positive reinforcement from multiple sources.
Actually they're the same story, only told in different languages.
Or actually because they're different languages, they're
different stories. In mine, she's just returned
from the doctor, and needs to tell Mick. She's sitting
surrounded by thousands of happy memories—the light
through the louvers is lambent—but we all know
how the story goes: life is jim-dandy, a peacheroo, then
words get spoken, and overnight the whole world goes kablooey.

As the World Now Becomes without Sequence, or: Born Eighty-Eight Years Ago Today

Berio's birthday, an Egoslavian Holy Day before there was Blegsylvania, Egoslavia, reminds me now of my early blogging days. I was invited to join a group blog called Best of the Blogs. It still exists though I only recognize Max's name on the roster of contributors. I think I quit in 2007, 2008, Sasha might remember since I helped enlist her to join. She quit too. I don't remember the parameters of the mostly amicable divorce or the details of final straws. I was invited by Jerry Bowles, still proprietor of Best of the Blogs and, more importantly, proprietor of Sequenza 21, a wonderful group blog on contemporary classical music (whatever the fuck that term means, but you come up with something better). For X time - I think it more than a year, less than two - I had a blog on Indie music on Sequenza 21. I quit because I sucked at it - you may have noticed, I don't write reviews, I don't like to write reviews, I'm not good at writing reviews, and more than that, I'm an indiscriminate slut (Kinder people than me have called my taste eclectic), music has got to suck for me to hate it. Point being, I think of bleggal history on Berio's birthday because Sequenza 21 was named for Berio.







Serendipity is awesome: the second group blog I contributed too was Agitprop, now dead dead dead, though I'm still digital friends with most if not all of the contributors, including Montag - who I saw this past Friday on Sideling Hill in Washington County, Augusta, and El Serracho who I saw at a petting zoo in Ohio this past Sunday. I didn't remember today is Berio's birthday until yesterday afternoon when I scanned the birthday lists.

• Zombie's brush with serendipity.
• Va, pensiero.
• Reinventing square wheels. 
• Dear DC United, please sign Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
• Leaf of my spoken thoughts.
• Krasznohorkai, for those of you who do.
• Flann O'Brien, for those of you who do.
• Out of the past: Beckett and Proust, for those of you who do.
• Someone hacked into Richard's blog and did a remarkable imitation of a Richard post.
• Stevens, choral music, sand animation.
• Not killing music.
• Serge Gainsbourg and The Origins of Melody.
• On Genesis' Battle of Epping Forest.
• Love the below, and I hate the bassoon.

UNDER THE SIGN

Ann Lauterbach

Having dreamed of my dead sister
raging with urgent

need, she
conducting us through intolerable

passages, now forgotten, I
have burned by right hand

after sunset
small dark clouds above

the river I cannot see
while listening to

a scratched CD of a Haydn
piano sonata so that

certain passages
rapidly repeat

and having spend some moments
thinking of the vision

that accommodates
all that is unforeseen

as the world now
becomes without sequence.

He's a Clown Car with an Extra Car

United has changed it’s home game starting time from 7:30 to 7:00  except for start times dictated by TV contractual obligations, I ranted at Thursday Night Pints. Setting aside a lower case fuck you for TV contractual obligations, let me send out a FUCK YOU, UNITED! for the move to 7:00. I’ll be there, but I’ll need short something good in Saturday’s daylight I can’t reclaim at 9:10 in the dark, I’m in a parking lot in DC queueing to queue on the BW Parkway, I’ve lost three to six holes depending on difficulty of disc golf course, lost two miles of hiking, you fucks. You fucks, I added for emphasis. I bet you however many pints of stupid small glasses of nyquil you wager, the home kits will be red by time of fuck-me-jig (before the fuck-me-jig, the fuck-me-jig will never be ready), LOUD SIDE! will be in an endzone, they’re gonna cut the balls off the best part of the experience as soon as they fucking can. Does it beat not having a team of indifferent mediocre soccer-playing professionals? As always, fine fucking metaphors abound. L said, you've fallen behind on the Proust, haven't you. Yes, I said.





See, at this point I think blooger is deliberately fucking with people. Up until two days ago I couldn't change link colors in chrome, I had to go to firefox to change colors. Yesterday and today firefox wouldn't allow me to change link colors, I figured oh well, fuck blooger and all, back to bulletpoints. This morning I see an article on the Purple Line, I traditionally bright purple it, I try to in chrome, and I can now change link colors in chrome. I'd forgive blooger much if I knew they were fucking with me for giggles. Origins of neo-liberalism, part three. Daily motherfucking Obama. Are designations congruent with things? No dogs barking. His generation's greatest academic fraud. I say that admiringly still, just not with as much joy as once. Stop versus cease. Cyclorama to be destroyed. Anheuser-Busch to introduce two new crappy beers. Your 4/20 soccer match. For those relatively new to me, I've promised to do a Fuck-Me-Jig in front of my seat in a new soccer-specific stadium in the District, have a friend record it, and post the youtube, so little faith did I have (and still have) there will be a new SSS in the District when I made the offer six lifetimes ago. RIP Evan Connell. Prekop.  New Jim James song. I've long fallen out of love w/MMJ, but. Three hours of noise and syrup. Berio. Thanks, here's where today's cascade got sparked.






FOR THE MAN WITH THE ERECTION LASTING MORE THAN FOUR HOURS

John Hodgen

He's supposed to call his doctor, but for now he's the May King with his
     own Maypole.
He's hallelujah. He's glory hole. The world has more women than he can
     shake a stick
at. The world is his brickbat, no conscience to prick at, all of us Germans he can ich
lieber dich at. He's Dick and Jane. He's Citizen Kane. He's Bob Dole.
He's Peter the Great. He's a czar. He's a clown car with an extra car.
Funiculi, Funicula. He's an organ donor. He works pro boner. He's folderol.
He's fiddlesticks. He's the light left on at Motel 6. He's free-for-alls.
He's Viagra Falls. He's bangers and mash. He's balderdash. He's a wanker.
He's got his own anchor. He's whack-a-doodle. King Canoodle. He's a pirate,
     Long John
Silver, walking his own plank. He has science to thank. He's in like Flynn. He's
     Gunga Din,
holding his breath, cock of the walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
      He's Icarus,
hickory dickorous, the mouse run up the clock. He's shock and awe. He's Arkansas.
He's the package, the deal, the Good Housekeeping Seal. He's Johnson
     and Johnson.
He's a god now, the talk of the town. He's got no place to go but down.