Thursday, May 31, 2007

"The Factory is the Time and Space of Our Everyday Subsistence"

Debord opened his gold cigarette case with a slash of his fingernail.

"Where have you been, Shimmy?

"Go away."

"I looked everywhere," he said, digging into his pocket for a lighter. "Where were you?"

Under the bed, in the closet, under the ottoman, in the bathtub (waiting for the spigot), in front of the stove, beneath Tony's computer desk, on the back porch -- what was that noise? -- asleep on the bed and inside the empty newspaper box and the loveseat and on a phone-book-sized stack of "poems."

"I've been busy," I said. I wiped my brow with a licked paw.

"Shimmy, you must understand. Raoul Vaneigem says the factory is all around us. It is, he says, the morning, the train, the car, the ravaged countryside, the machine, the bosses, the chief, the house, the empty newspaper box in which we sleep, the family, the trade union, the street, one's purchases, pictures, one's pay, the television, the dental floss and shoelace one chases, one's language, one's holidays, the tabletop hockey game under the bed, school, housework, boredom, prison, the hospital, and the night."

Debord lit a Gaulois and sucked deeply into his lungs. A sash of smoke rose between his fingers and a water bug rattled in the bathtub.

"Vaneigem also says the factory is the time and space of our everyday subsistence," I reminded him. "It is the becoming accustomed to repetitive moves and suppressed emotions, emotions sampled through the proxy of intermediary images. I can make a water bug faint inside the bathtub."

"What are you afraid of, Shimmy? What made you so scared?"

Seven thousand lepers! A candy chair and some certainty, a red cape around my neck and a dead moth at the end of my wet snout.

"The new dog across the hall," I said. "Weed thong, a larch she lost."


Sunday, May 20, 2007

Sunday Morning

I am content when weakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of my misty jaws, by their sweet questionings;
And when the birds are gone, and their warm blood
Returns no more, this, then, is paradise.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Episode Fifteen: "Grooving Around in a Trench Coat With a Saturnine Trail"

MARY: The Chicago Tribune says Jerry Falwell was "an influential man with a booming voice and a penchant for provocative statements."

RHODA: So was Goebbels.

MARY: Where's Falwell now, Rhoda?

RHODA: The Fiery Trench. The Putrid Swamp. The Plain of Razor-Sharp Knives.

MARY: The Uncrossable Torrent?

RHODA: Sliding naked down a razor blade into a salt-and-vinegar pond.

MARY: Suppose you kill a mosquito between your fingernails.

RHODA: Later in hell you will be killed by being crushed between two mountains that look like fingernails.

MARY: I slept on the rug in front of the bookshelf until the thunder came. Then I slept under the bed. One of the dogs upstairs barked.

EZRA POUND: He lay there on the floor of the chapel on a great piece of patterned brocade. And the walls solid gold about him. And there was a hole in one of his socks. And a cat sat there licking himself.

RHODA: You say, "God loves you -- come and buy the good news!" Then you buy the president and swimming pools!

POUND: Splash wakes the chap on the wood-barge. A wet cat gleaming in patches.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

"God must be dead if you're alive"

"If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being." (Jerry Falwell)

"I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them. What a happy day that will be!" (Jerry Falwell)

"There is no separation of church and state. Modern US Supreme Courts have raped the Constitution and raped the Christian faith and raped the churches by misinterpreting what the Founders had in mind in the First Amendment to the Constitution." (Jerry Falwell)

"Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them." (Jerry Falwell)

"The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews." (Jerry Falwell)

"AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharoah's chariotters." (Jerry Falwell)

"Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions." (Jerry Falwell)

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Wafaa Bilal Originally Wanted to Call it "Shoot an Iraqi"

"The first shot and the first hit I got, I said, 'Why am I doing this?'"

"It's interesting as a viewer: Do you shoot it? Do you not shoot it?" said Barbara Koenen, a local artist who does administration work for the city's Department of Cultural Affairs.

Friday, May 11, 2007

List XII

1. Tabletop hockey game under the bed
2. Corner of the rectangular wicker box with their CDs trapped inside
3. Edge of the rug, Southeast Forest (in a pile of catnip)
4. Two chairs' legs in the living room
5. Bathtub spigot
6. Their shoes
7. Altar edge
8. Edge of back screen-door, propped open
9. Book pile next to Tony's desk
10. Wastebasket enemy combatant next to Shelly's desk
11. Vacuum cleaner (turned off)
12. Bedpost legs on the west side of the bedroom
13. Their backpacks (on the floor)
14. Tapering front left leg of Shelly's desk
15. Water dish
16. Bookshelves near bathroom
17. New packages on the floor

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Wastebasket Enemy Combatant

Today, I declared the wastebasket in the living room (next to Shelly's desk) an enemy combatant. I rubbed myself against it. Rubbed my face all over the corner of the wastebasket enemy combatant, rubbed against its fat knees and tickled the wastebasket under its fat chin with my tail. Yesterday, I bit Tony in the forehead. I rubbed against the wastebasket's forehead until it fell over from my fierce indefatigable rubbing -- and no one can pick me up (bad kitty!) and stick me underneath the bed. I rubbed my face along the underside of my wastebasket, my enemy combatant; I rubbed my face until it left a smear of grease. Underneath is a complete pleasure system.

Saturday, May 05, 2007

Shadow Culprit Pollinator Bottom

I fell asleep on the tabletop hockey game underneath the bed. Ezra Pound reclined atop the box where Tony and Shelly keep their sweaters. "Fat panther, lay by me," he said. "Wet cat gleaming in patches."

Friday, May 04, 2007

Remember Kent State (1970-2007)

Of the four students shot to death, the closest was Jeffrey Miller, 270 feet from the National Guard. Miller was killed as he stood in an access road leading into the Prentice Hall parking lot.

Allison Krause was killed 330 feet from the Guard. She was ducking behind a car in the Prentice Hall parking lot with her boyfriend when a bullet hit the left side of her body.

William Schroeder, an ROTC member, was 390 feet from the Guard when he was killed by a bullet that went through the left side of his back.

Sandra Scheuer was killed by a bullet that went through the left front side of her neck as she was on her way to submit a paper for her Speech class. She was about 390 feet from the Guard in the Prentice Hall parking lot.

President Nixon's Scranton Commission Report concluded: "The indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted, and inexcusable" (President's Commission on Campus Unrest, p. 87).

Thursday, May 03, 2007

"Get Set! Point! Fire!"

"Get set! Point! Fire!"

Open the back door
and let me out
right now

"Captioned story
is written
in a lighthearted vein
and concerns
a large cat who is known as 'D.C.'
(short for 'Damn Cat')"

The report
also examines
the possibility of
ESP in cats and pigeons
whose hearts
are clamped to my mouth
and taste
like calloused feet
and a broth of nightingales

Yesterday I walked
all the way
to the end
of the back porch
before I smelled
a dog
and you couldn't
stop me

The squirrel
prompted my insolence
to shout at him --
"Well, sit down then,
luminary!"

His belly
is pink and nutty

"He is manly appearing,
possessing a good physique,
and it is felt
that he could
successfully contact
persons of
all walks of life
and that he
would inspire
confidence."

The marker
concludes with a quote
from the Report
of President's Commission
on Campus Unrest
describing
the actions of May 4:
"Unnecessary,
unwarranted,
and inexcusable"