first question

1. You say you will submit a bill every day congress is in session with language to repeal the health care bill, even though you admit that it wont pass the senate or make signature. Is this a valuable use of limited time? Is it sustainable to the electorate?

blisters in the sun

the violent femmes said that.

today i woke up and it felt like 2006. I'm excited. These last two years have been especially foreign to me, as I was put in a position where to accept and support optimism was the best thing to do, for myself and society, such that it is. This is not to say i did not believe in policy, but rather that I realized the avenue towards policy change being utilized was through collective optimism. It was my skepticism in the ability of the nation's collective optimism to remain well, collectively optimistic that many of my fears laid. And seemingly for worse, it faded...

I'd refer you back to my posts in the days leading up to and following election night 2008 for more detail on that, but the reader can find those on their own, and not rely on me. that brings me to my next point- The role of optimist and policy champion was too foreign to me, and indeed it was too foreign to the youth that made 2008 possible. We were too fickle in the face of angry and disillusioned middle aged white men.

We also know that i am passively optimistic, at best. And even that may be generous.

As i told my roomate today, sarcastically (but still astutely)-

'you know, they (tea partiers) keep going back to our founding documents, and in spite of the fact that they are misreading both the spirit and fundementals of those texts, they have gotten something right-- They are returning us to the time when only white, middle aged landowners had a stake in government.'

etc..

I mean that in all seriousness.

But the caveat is this-- its only because we let them (retake power). it is on us and no one but us. such is the reality of democracy. (or such is the reality of the illusion of democracy).

Maybe if we let their experiment have two years, at which point it will end in abject failure, we can take this back. If we do our jobs.

This begs the question, maybe an electoral majority is not where the democrats are strongest (a la clinton 1994)? We are going to find out, for sure.

But as J. Judis pointed out in TNR today, the cyclical recessions post WWII (read: early 1990s) are VASTLY different than the one of 2007-. Today's is much more in common with the late 1800s and the great depression. As we did from 2008-2010, looking to Keynes and Japan is not only rational, its prudent. But we don't need another lesson on depression economics by me (or maybe we do, and thats why we are sitting here today).

Dropped the ball.

So all of you guys, who are like me, and would rather be wonkish outsiders (those of us who realize that term is not a paradox). lets put ourselves back in business. Let's talk about the hegelian dialectic of the tea party and what that reveals about them. We can liken the emerging political actors to the characters in nazi literature in the americas, (be prepared for this one, its a certainty). There will be poetry. There will be economics. We are going to catch people with their pants down again (literally and figuratively, there will be lots of this, I'm quite sure). We are going to call bluffs and take people to task. We, don't have a narrow agenda.

Realize that this is not the low water mark that was Katrina. There is no Enron here. Or even shadowy politiking through the office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives. Its better now than it ever was then. So lets not let those aspects of 'then' repeat themselves. Let's only be better watchdogs and better thinkers like we had been.

Thats all I've got for now-

so here we are.

I'm back.

ideas

in listening to burial's 'untrue', which i of course do a lot, im always struck by the first words on the album, the 'inland empire' sample. makes me see think of something in the 'city of ember' sense, more post though and certainly darker. main character who's only job is to sell light. id like to write that story.

pre bob

the last time i wrote something good on here was a while ago, i think. today is a day, as good as any, to change that. dylan is in town today, and thats a good thing. was talking with a good friend the other night and we reached a conclusion about him. he's the only poet that we could think of who has been able to defy, or maybe transcend genre labels. he's not a beat poet, a romantic, or a modernist. whatever. thats a cool thing. go bob. but of course any conclusions about dylan are subject to well, not be conclusions any longer.

i like my internship, granted its but 4 hours old. its a good fit. i love stories and storytellers. and old stuff. and new stuff.

burke

sol burke just died. thats a bummer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCTJeT2i9QU&feature=related

eeeeeeeeeeeee

http://pitchfork.com/news/40235-watch-belle-and-sebastian-perform-on-jimmy-fallon-with-uestlove-from-the-roots/

d

i dont need much money. id be fine below minimum wage. maybe i need to go to south east asia and work in a sweatshop there.

characters

sickness looming, but thats being taken care of.

just remembered this character.

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/98may/updike.htm

fun read. spend some time on it.

reminds me of a dream i once had where 1965 dylan walked in my open room as i was reading and said 'money's no object, kid,' and burst out laughing. walked out and shut the door behind him.

i think dylan's biggest er, most lasting gift to us, independent of recordings, so in the philosophical sense, is permission to be young and cynical. not sure we had that before him. ill gladly carry the torch.

learned something

via larry mcmurtry. a lot really, but how about this. urban scatter and urban sprawl, or the differences between them. i-85 corridor=urban scatter. charleston=urban sprawl.

twists

really interesting story on the news tonight. this man's brick house had blown up, literally, after a fire spread to his propane tanks. the house looked Sarajevo circa 94. gets fascinating with his interview, went something like 'we have to take humor from these events, i survived the marine corps, and cancer twice, and ill get through this.'

east hastings

Mogwai - Mogwai Fear Satan from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

seeing mogwai live is like driving eleven hundred miles alone on a night that never ends. its not futile. the meaning is in the event-not the direction, or the destination. and the best part of that is when you realize that the last light you saw in the west seems further away than however many of those miles you have left to drive.

thoughts

always will be the best cd of 2002 for me. what a great year that was.

just finished reading an interview between ron rash and somebody. rash said this: 'why is it that the south has produced so few philosophers, yet so many novelists?' such a clear answer. rhetorical like.

just read an article in tnr that seemed to allege that to be post-sophisticate is heroic. i find the author to be a little too wrapped up in himself. not to be ad hominem or whatever but sometimes that just happens to be accurate. got to get paid i guess.

tonight is one of those nights where i'll stay up thinking.

fringe benefits

today i spent 2 hours at the pickens county employment security office. the name is of course a significant misnomer, everybody knows it as the unemployment office. i should say that i was not there to file for unemployment, though that thought inevitably crossed my mind dozens of times as i sat there. conclusions-

1-i love the upstate, and its people, god bless them. not only are they salt of the earth, in the welty or o'connor tradition, they are profoundly interesting, in the rash way, and of course too as real people.

2-the guy, with lost eyes telling the receptionist he couldn't wait any longer, because he had to take a friend to a court date.

3-the guy with 'redemption' tattooed across his arm, who spent his time gazing at everyone sitting in the room, as if looking for something within us.

4-the receptionist, who surprisingly, to me, seemed to genuinely love his job. where was he before?

5-the woman mumbling to herself outside, who upon her name being called, the caseworkers said to each other 'she's outside again isn't she?,' with smiles on their faces with meanings i couldnt quite place.

6-the latinos, who eagerly respond 'yes' when asked every question.

7-the man who stood next to his wife and said 'im here to sign up for unemployment' with the most overwhelming and true feeling of regret and failure hanging heavy in his words.

i'll let you be in my dreams, if i can be in your's

the authoritative list of the top 10 of bob dylan's albums, in a sort-of particular order, though not a rank and file list. and i certainly won't talk about every song on every album, cause that would just be too much.

not authoritative, but spontaneous.

not 10, but 5

order isnt particular, so far as i can tell

the basement tapes-the first time i heard the heart-sunk depression and longing of dylan in 'goin' to acapulco' put in me a feeling i never knew existed before then. the overwhelming dread and loss he puts in you is terrifying. but at the same time it makes you incredibly glad for what you've got. it couldnt have been written any other place than in the big pink. 'tears of rage' the elegy that asks what are bonds?/what is family? and that certain unspoken blame for whatever it is, that we all carry. intense.

highway 61 revisited-my top album of all time. has to be. i don't need to say why, because everybody else already has. the most perfectly produced album ever made, except for maybe 'pet sounds' but i hate 'pet sounds'. so much to listen to here. the music just snarls, as if the record wasn't perfectly flat and perfectly round. fascinating.

the freewheelin' bob dylan-every english language writer that has amounted to anything since the mid 1960s, and in fact probably all western writers, owe their craft to this album. poesis 101 is taught here, not in 'the republic'.

self portrait-because nobody has a clue of what it is meant to be, and that is incredibly unique and quintessentially 'dylan'. in short, its a terrible album.

john wesley harding- a very literary album. distinct stories, images and storytellers. its not brazen or bold, it's simple and it's effective.

pbs

last night my roommate and i watched nature on pbs, as i do, usually, ideally. sunday started a two week series on the domestic dog. week one talked about origins and week two will talk about i dont know. prevailing, and past thought says the domesticated dog originated when man 15,000 years ago took grey wolf pups from the mother and raised them in close contact with humans, traits were developed through selective breeding, etc. essentially, wild pups were raised, then bred for traits. that thinking is being overturned though, based on the fact that no modern human, even under the best conditions, has successfully raised a pup starting a few days after its birth, ever.

the emerging theory then is this: as man formed its first large communities 15,000 years ago, we began to create centralized trash dumps. wolves scavenged these, but not just any wolves. the first thing to know about wolves is that they have a very far 'flight distance,' that is to say humans scare wolves off even from a far distance, something like over a half of a mile. in order to stick around the dumps long enough to scavenge, wolves would have to eliminate this fear. those animals with a shorter flight distance became the most successful members of packs, because they could feed and loiter longer at the dumps, so their beneficial traits became the most desirable, and they were passed down to the next generation because of the sex. this continued, and over time, an incredibly short period of time they believe, (contemporary studies were able to generate a very domesticated fox after just 2 generations removed from the wild) we started getting dogs that could help us out.
--
seems that man didnt nurture the dog into existence, but rather they came about as a product of our waste. fascinating thought.






--

on roads

when you're reading more than one book simultaneously, connections appear between them, and that relationship heightens our gain from the text three and four fold. Its amazing how much affect currency has on our perceptions, both on literature and reality, (the two i would argue are intrinsically connected). the permutations of text * text (* text) and their shared derived meaning is incredibly fascinating. for instance, im reading larry mcmurtry's 'roads,' which is a collection of refections by mcmurtry on american interstate highways. absent are the discussions of a lost america, the america of the us 1's and route 66's. mcmurtry says that that perception is inaccurate- a particularized, regionalized america still very much exists even with the swollen arteries of eisenhower's system. the people are still the same, just their way of going has changed. i'll have more to say when i finish the book, id hate to be too premature.

another book im reading is 'the war that made america', about the french and indian war. now, here is where the multiplier effect comes in. in reading this, im not interested in the structure of the treaties, the leaders, the events. im really only interested in the rivers. to focus on this feature is not surprising, given the various similarities between today's interstates and the rivers then. the navigable rivers of the north were the only effective means to move goods before plank roads, railroads, canals. forts were on rivers, because of their strategic importance. it all goes without saying, facts arent what im writing about.

rather, i have no doubt in my mind that if i were reading this book in conjunction with say, jefferson's letters or a much less substantive forsyth novel, id be more concerned with the political content of the book, but im not now. maccarthy and mcmurtry, and all i'd be able to focus on would be light and dark. conrad and the french-indian book, and id be drawn in by the incredible mystery of the conflict, and of course the rivers would continue to stand out, but differently. i could think of endless combinations, each with a predictable result. you know.

sometimes its alright to be human.

umm

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/business/media/06tune.html?_r=1&hp

snacks on snacks

stories on stories. concept albums whatever. never properly listened to ben nichols' 'last pale light of the west,' the lucero frontman's album based on his readings of cormac's 'blood meridian' its the album i want to write. its actually the album i probably could write. makes me want to go to the horizon, and fast. hopefully i can fit that in next week.

also, i hope they let him do the soundtrack for the film. i really hope so. its just perfect.

elvis only had three tvs

but he watched them all at once. of course three was a lot for then, and three is a lot for now. but still, he was elvis.

good start of fall tune.