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To continue my Leviathan

To continue my Leviathan plug of yesterday - here is my very favorite of all the stories: Leviathan opens the lane to the land of the dead. (B&W version; 48 panels)

And the handsomest guy on the entire internet writes in with more info on Peter Blegvad, author of Leviathan:

"Don't forget to mention that two of his best records are available REALLY cheap (cuz they're out of print and remaindered!) from Wayside: Just Woke Up is the one to go for if you're having only one. And there are sound samples. The Blegvad samples aren't of the best songs, but the Slapp Happy samples are wonderful and everyone should own Acnalbasac Noom."

If you've been feeling

If you've been feeling an inexplicable void in your life lately, it's because you should, this very minute, go to Amazon and order Peter Blegvad's The Book of Leviathan, a beautifully printed hardcover comics collection (I think up till now available only on the far side of the Atlantic?) about an infant called Levi(athan), his stuffed companion Bunny, and his "tutelary familiar" Cat, which manages to weave surrealism, humor, tons of literary and philosophical references, plus puns both visual and verbal, into a varied, inconsistent but often brilliant piece of work.

Do not question me! Just fork over the money!

& yeah this is the same Blegvad who was in that band Slapp Happy with Dagmar Krause, also the Golden Palominos...

Good things are falling

Good things are falling from the sky into the lives of my friends this month - glass penguins and peppermint meringues, blonde killer vampires, Oxford acceptances, Anatomies of Melancholy, Klaus, promotions, $300 checks, free trips to London, etc. If there's something you need from the universe, my advice is to try for it right now.

They were pitifully systematic

They were pitifully systematic people.
As engineers gainfully employed,
They were led up to the surfaces propped around the summits of a starry night gone rampant.

    -TH

The Dubious Screed also quoted Emily Dickinson: "If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that it is poetry." By that Dubious Metric, I surmise that Louise Glück's new book The Seven Ages is poetry. Another way I can tell it's poetry: each page of her book cost as much as 15 pps. of The Anatomy of Melancholy, and yet I don't at all regret having chosen the former over the latter.

(The book could have been written specifically for me, its impact felt that immediate. But it's not for everyone, I think. Despite its high-dramatic tone, it deals very abstractly with a specific set of personal issues, so I'd be curious to see who else can relate.)

James, yes our very

James, yes our very own James Grimmelmann from laboratorium.net, hit the big time this morning: he got an article published in Salon! Here it is, in all its prestigious-URL glory: Dot Communism.

Q: What happens to a compass that comes too close to an electromagnet? A: Why don't you go home and read some Karen Horney and try to figure it out for yourself?

From yesterday's Dubious Screed, I wanted to highlight the most dubious but secretly thrilling part:

"[P]oets must stop writing poetry for a time. Poets with laureates, sinecures of creative writing, and other epaulets of official verse culture must resign their commissions, withholding their services until poetry matters. At public readings poets must perform the work of other poets. Readers and poets must join forces toppling TV towers and satellite dishes hanging from the windows of the citizenry..."

Oh yassir, I been

Oh yassir, I been busy hammering my nail into that black plaster, I been dangling my feet into the murky swimming pool. I been playing air hockey with the dark crocodile, and batting my lashes at the unforgiving magistrate. But now the angel of surcease has slipped his fingers into my mouth, and I'm running my tongue up the sharp knife of joy. And my life is perfect as it stands: my life is perfect as it stands.*

Fiction writing exercises from Ben Marcus! (via Metascene)

A Dubious Screed: Why Americans Don't Read Poetry (via Metameat)

Finally read Gilgamesh, a fantastic love story recommended by S. (And short enough for tachiyomi.)

---

^* This is not meant as an autobiographical statement. It's just something I wrote without really thinking about it.

I'm too busy chewing

I'm too busy chewing on the tail of the black weasel to update today. All the better for y'all, since there's a real treat in store: a guest entry by LLisa, writing out of Cambridge MA:

<<< begin text by lisa >>>

at last: an SUV built for CITY DRIVING. fie.

remember: QUESTIONS. the ANTI-DRUG. who? what? when? where? it's not pestering, it's PARENTING. (notice they omit the "why", though.) (this was a sign on the T.)

two things from a public restroom. 1) scratched on the wall were words i was having trouble making out. I-- WA

Holy crap, happy freaking

Holy crap, happy freaking birthday to Isabel Kadel-Garcia, a mysterious new body reportedly entering the world with a mass of 7lbs 1oz & at the velocity of love!

...

Happily, I have had a sensory breakthrough & am finally able to appreciate Big Star's album Third: Sister Lovers. At some point when I wasn't paying attention, Alex Chilton's voice transmogrified from generic pop twang to a perfect vision of intense, doomed fragility. Funny how that can sneak up on you.

Saskia Hamilton is 10 years older than I am. And as it turns out, everything I've been writing for the past six months, she has already done, and better, and then moved beyond it. But I can't hate her, 'cuz she's a Mark Eitzel fan just like me. For example:

EARLY WINTER

Frozen in one place and then the next.

There is mercury in my veins.
When it breaks up and scatters, each drop
carries the whole message. It doesn't really gain
from massing. It makes me want--
no. It makes me want--
no. It just
makes me sick about the whole thing.

To prove that I love you, I would carry you anywhere,
I would follow any bus down the worst road.
I would even forget you, if that would convince you.

- From her book As For Dream

I like what Zapiski

I like what Zapiski had to say about Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States: 1492 - Present: "If I ever have children, they're not going to public school (or private either, probably)."

Last thing I need is another excellent big fat honkin' book to read, but oh well.

"... a specimen of the Sublime dashed to pieces by cutting too close with the fiery Four-in-Hand round the corner of Nonsense.": Coleridge on lines 2-9 of his poem Limbo.

As for Vendler on Shakespeare, I loved the introduction, but started getting bored while reading through explications of the individual sonnets. And now it's due back at the library, so I'm just going to return it. The intro was the best part because Vendler held forth about her personal theory of lyric poetry as applied to the sonnets, plus a general overview of the devices WS used in their construction to establish so much rhetorical and situational complexity in so short a form. Blah blah ditty-blah.

One of the food

One of the food service workers in our cafeteria is special. I think it's a "he", I think he has Down's syndrome and I think his name is Ryan, but I could easily be wrong on any of those counts. The other day Ryan was buying himself lunch but forgot to pay for it.

"Hey Ryan, sweetie," called out my favorite cashier (who reminds me of Colleen from Survivor) "You forgot to swipe your card."

Ryan set his tray down on a table and returned to the register. "I'm sorry," he muttered as he handed over his card. "This makes me hate myself."

"Oh no, Ryan, it's okay. Don't hate yourself!"

"It makes me want to bang my head into the wall, like this" he replied, and with his head he mimed a savage banging motion in the direction of the cash register.

Where's my Outback Daddy?

Where's my Outback Daddy?

lopati.pitas.com is a late entrant in the "geegaw readers' favorite weblogs" contest.

It's like atomic theory. Don't leave me when the train comes
or when we die, don't leave me in another life.
If you bring me to the light I can't twist the day.
If you overrate me I won't talk.
If you chain me chain me I can't walk.
If you walk me, I'll move.

My hero of the day is Karen Keller, unmedicated manic-depressive and sole resident of Hibberts Gore, Maine.

Groke/TFTE has some good thoughts on online communities:

"It's nice, this new fuzzy community thing, so you want to celebrate it, and the talking about stuff bit gradually elides into talking about the community. So the community erodes the content. But because the community is largely virtual it's also based on content. It lacks the critical edge which non-virtual creative communities have, because to criticise the decline in content is to attack the root of a virtual community..."

Klaus: "This is the Apple Macintosh G4 Powerbook. Many people call it the TiBook. The case is made from the genuine color of dirt. Tints of rubies or of another still. To another of that local office for some accidental break in ritual, to strike--is definitely gone; the authentic sea denies them and I made you a slice of cold meat would lure Lukas from his computer."

Two of the three

Putting the "ami" in "anomie" today. These freaking puns - damn them for suggesting themselves to me!

Drizzle falling from a

Drizzle falling from a blue sky today, like the sun blinking through tears. (Excuse me, I'm not all there. There's no there here.)

S. pointed out that parts of Shakespeare's The Phoenix and the Turtle totally sound like Wallace Stevens:

Let the bird of loudest lay, / On the sole Arabian tree,

Let the priest in surplice white / That defunctive music can,

Truth may seem, but cannot be...

Faux absinthe recipes from the Gothic Martha Stewart. Because whatever's forbidden always becomes the most tempting thing, no matter how lame it is.

First day back at work...

James notes: From the crew log of the International Space Station, March 2nd:

"Yuri is missing 5 emails in his outlook "Send" folder. He drafted these up last night, and they were left in his Outbox. They should be showing in his "Send" folder, but they're not there, and Outbox is empty. We think an old mail (ost) file was uplinked and overwrote what Yuri did. We call Houston to see if the outgoing files can be recovered. Houston puts this in work."

(NB: These unhappy astronauts are using Microsoft Outlook.)

Someone must have sneaked into my room and pinched me while I slept, because I have a couple new bruises this morning and no idea where they came from. Creepy.

Here's that old chestnut, How to become a hacker.

Nothing of him that

Nothing of him that doth fade,
but doth suffer a sea-change
into something rich and strange.

What kind of writers run the Oregon Writers Colony, if they aren't bothered by constructions like "Members Links," and shouldn't there be an apostrophe in their name as well?

It's a profit-making venture, what did you expect?

Oh, just shut up and write.

Took the bus up

Took the bus up to the Woodland Park Zoo today.

Photo of the new baby elephant, Hansa, with her mother, Chai.

"You are a resource

"You are a resource at zero utilization."

Around 12:30am last night my life veered sharply from diffuse angst into delirious joy, thanks to Helen Vendler and old Bill Shakespeare. (Check out the violinist/sonata simile.) More on this later...

In the Atlantic, wonderful coverage of the history behind Robert Lowell's poem For the Union Dead.

I did not do too good on the Guardian's infernal-but-fun poetry quiz (8 out of 10, but 4 of those were pure guesswork). What is this, this "Go placidly amid the noise and haste"? I swear I've never heard it before in my life. (via MobyLives)

As I was walking through downtown I came across a guy standing in front of Westlake Mall with a sign, "WILL CODE FOR FOOD." I asked him how much food I would need to buy him if he would implement something like Klaus for me in javascript, but he said he was really looking for more of a steady job kind of thing. Oh well. Poor guy. If you have opportunities for a Seattle-based UNIX sysadmin/programmer/security consultant, I can point you to his resume.

Taking the day off

A few days ago I asked people to name their favorite websites. I think of the ones I hadn't already heard of, Textism is the coolest: it's a weblog written by a print designer in Vancouver, with a sense of humor, interesting site organization, and a clean nostalgia-chic design. I also like NewPages, a straightforward news-oriented log with a strong focus on literary links.

Written on the bulletin boards at work:

Don't drink the kool-aid.

& also:

DENIAL
ACCEPTANCE
INTERVIEW

We're whining, but most of us still have jobs. It could be better, but it's still pretty damn good.

(There is a new photo; this one ain't me either. You should know by now that I would not put a picture of my own face on this site. I am much too sneaky for that.)

I try not to

Left the office today intent on getting trashed, but James turned me on to something way better than booze: Dance Dance Revolution!

That Red House Painters album came out yesterday, Old Ramon, which I swear must be named after "pale Ramon" from the Idea of Order at Key West. Recorded in '97 but not released till now, it's kind of a dud...

I finally jettisoned that albatross, my creepy ISP, meaning that the flaky public service at granitecanyon is doing my DNS. That is why this site has been having massive unreachability issues. If you have suggestions for alternatives, let me know.

Henry lay in de

Henry lay in de netting, wild,
while the brainfever bird did scales;
Mr Heartbreak, the New Man,
come to farm a crazy land;

Here is my second favorite Maakies ("Your friends are bogus"). Warning, it is very similar to the previous one.

There are two fresh new poems from the neverending party at doxo wox dot org.

Aaron is trying to read Finnegans Wake. (And it turns out I've been misspelling the book's title my entire life.)

There is a need - I have a need - to find a new way of keeping a website, a way I can pal around without pandering, a way for me to be smart without being long-winded or pretentious. And I'm on the lookout for new models, since I'm no longer motivated by the old ones, except for maybe FTrain, which is inimitable. I did have high hopes for Unmitigated Sow, which is now shamelessly defunct. .... Hey, can you do me a favor and send me the URL of your favorite site? (Go ahead and use the box over there to the right, the one that says "rock on!")

Descriptive lexicology triumphs again: Merriam-Webster on the word "nauseous." They also have an entry for the word "judgement." Hey Messrs. Strunk & White! Up yours! The demotic hordes are gonna take you down. (Yeah, I know, blah blah fucken David Foster Wallace fucken Harpers fucken snooty sonza birches.)

Why did they send her over anyone else? How should I react? / These things happen to other people. / They don't happen at all, in fact. // When you're following an angel, does it mean you have to throw your body off a building? / Somewhere they're meeting on a pinhead, calling you an angel, calling you the nicest things. / I heard they have a space program, when they sing you can't hear, there's no air. / Sometimes I think I kind of like that and other times I think I'm already there.

What's pure candy to

What's pure candy to a gloomy gus? Philip Larkin and Tony Millionaire's Maakies.

Oh wait - I've changed my mind. Maakies isn't that good, except for my favorite strip ("I like a quiet woman...")

This is the weirdest call for submissions I've ever received: Superhero Night at the Little Theatre on Capitol Hill in Seattle. It's looking for writers willing to read their own superhero-themed work in public. Sponsored by C.A.P.E., the Citizens in Appreciation of Powerful Entities. How I got on the mailing list of the guy who found this link: some day last year he randomly emailed me and then, the very next week, I ran into him in a bookstore. Given such an improbable sequence of bizarre coincidences, I wouldn't be surprised if Damien (Bovine Inversus) had a hand in all of this.

An adorable audiophile's Christopher Smart parody comprises today's Groke entry: "For I will consider my new stereo." TFTE, rah rah rah.

I just found joopy.nu in my phantom referers. It's the diary-that-uses-blogger (never sure exactly what to call those) of a music-lovin' college freshman that makes me feel, oh I don't know, about two or three billion years old? Anyway, it made me remember how life sucks so bad at 18 - I guess the word for that is "evocative." (Believe me, younger readers, your twenties will be infinitely better.) She cuts her own hair, which makes her my hero-of-the-day. Is it disreputable, as a wrinkly walnut of advancing age, to have a teenaged hero? I hope not.

Got caught outdoors during

Got caught outdoors during yesterday evening's brief ice pellet storm. And running home during an ice pellet storm is not unlike running through the jungle with a tribe of angry tree-monkeys pelting wet BBs at you. And I would know, 'cause I have done both those things.

My favorite web journal, Bombpaper, finally updated for the first time in over a month, with some cool thoughts on fashion.

Went walking around by myself this afternoon (as is my wont in good weather, being a sentimental and solitary kind of girl) and I got real tired so I lay down on a park bench in the sun for a long time and it was marvelous, warm and brilliantly blue, and the air was so clear that the bay seemed so close that it felt like I could roll off my bench into the water. But I didn't try it.

Oh my, the flowers are going nuts, all blooming at once, in hundreds of varieties that I can't even recognize let alone name. But I am learning their names one by one. Yesterday: ranunculus. Today: freesia.

The weblogs.com update monitor is funked! Don't believe what it tells you. I'm still here, typing away. And note: the photo in the top right corner is different from what was there yesterday.

K: "Can Klaus help me with the two lorum--it whispered enticingly. And yea, though little squirrels trembled as they scurried up electrical posts, and people eating grade F meet at taco bell vomited profusely, I did; I called, got a ride, and went to the end of this epic struggle."

K: "Musical instruments are

K: "Musical instruments are devices used to make shrieking noises. Yep, wouldn't be right. It would be harder for her safety and who you were very distracting to Lukas in his dark velvet bedroom, on a hot afternoon in 1896."

K: "As I did so, I noticed that the writing was bad. Actually, it sounded like a cat tranquilizer, but it's a change in crystal structure). When the steel its hardness. More carbon, more martinsties, more hardness. And more brittleness."

K: "A larva eats a lot and will turn into an adult insect, like a fruit fly, a heavy-drinkin' hard-livin' fly, is one of the Texas governor as stolid and stupid in the end, Klaus."

K: "It's considered polite to cover such starkness; accuracy must not say so. After all, it was a fantastic concert."

OK, time to fess

OK, time to fess up: what helpful hit-hunting soul added this site to the Yahoo! directory? Interesting description, "links, lyrics, and random thoughts," ... I think you forgot to mention the orifices, but thanks.

April is National Lawn Care Month.

"I read this somewhere, and it's important to remember it: when we get fucked, we multiply." - Clarence Patton, director of community organizing and public advocacy, New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project (via Ms.)

Oh yeah, about Klaus: as far as I can tell, Klaus works a lot like Rob Malda's Poetry Generator. (Lukas, correct me if I'm wrong here.) Rob Malda reads your input and breaks it up into pairs of words, which he remembers as having somethin' to do with each other. So if you tell Malda

de quick brown fox jump over de lazy dawg, you fox man!

his Poetry Generator reads the sentence and 'learns' that, whenever he says the word "de", he should follow it with either "quick" or "lazy." He also remembers the frequency of the following words (right now 1:1, ie. 50-50). So when you ask him to "generate" a response to the input you gave, he could end up writing something like

de quick brown fox jump over de quick brown fox man!

My guess is that Klaus works similarly, but possibly with triplets of words(?). Also I think this is called a Markov Chain type algorithm-thingy, but the purists will gang up on me and beat me up if they hear me saying that to you.

Geegaw continues to feel

Geegaw continues to feel like a very taciturn gaw today. But I will force myself to post - to post, to fish, to fish, for hits!

Klaus is a bright young bot, very eager to be talked to. Please feed him full sentences, the longer the better, preferably not questions.

When Company by Samuel Beckett was first pointed out to me, I dismissed it because it is so damn repetitious and hard to read. However, I was rong: it is good. So far, this is my favorite part, very maudlin:

"In order to be company he must display a certain mental activity. But it need not be of a high order. Indeed it might be argued the lower the better. Up to a point. The lower the order of mental activity the better the company. Up to a point."

Anyway, after that, I feel like I could tackle the freaking Tractatus. Which I was told years ago to read, "for the pure sound of the words," as a prose poem. Way to go G.E.M. Anscombe (may you R.I.P.)

Comics link: Megan Kelso's Queen of the Black Black.

If it comes via DF, it must be good: audio recording of a Robert Heinlein short story "Universe"

Oh duh, here's that poem on the virtues of women who eat a lot: Dream Song #4.

Music played by elephants

Music played by elephants actually sounds not too different from music played by people, given the wacky avant-garde tastes of certain apartment-mates I may have.

I've been waiting for

I've been waiting for an excuse to name-drop this: Tom Ewing (henceforth to be referred to as "the fabulous Tom Ewing," or TFTE for short) is back with a blue-lines sequel called Groke. That bizarre name appears to be some sort of Moomin reference, but I can't quite figure it out.

I'm also psyched about the underground man (Dirk Hine of Subterranean Notes)'s resurfacing with a promising-looking new site, Hypogee. Welcome to the gee-pack, Dirk.

There is some gratifyingly cute as well as some vaguely disturbing animated panda action going on at the Tarepanda Orphanarium's Livestock Pen (not its official name).

A. mentioned, and this is right-on: A. mentioned Lucky's Speech from Waiting from Godot.

Oh, and don't forget: April is National Facial Protection Month. Of course, every month is National Facial Protection Month at geegaw.