December 31, 2008 - Broadway Cafe - Kansas City, MO

December 31, 2008 – Kansas City, Missouri - The Broadway Cafe in Westport

Kiss kiss – God you’re still here. I have been sending you text messages all morning.

The line is getting long again but unlike everywhere else the Broadway takes care of those who only want quick service (a filter coffee or tea). And that is so disturbing to those who want their fancy drinks (cappuccino or macchiato) because half the value of what you receive is the inconvenience you cause to others and the other half of the value is in the inconvenience you make for yourself. If the value proposition was in creature comfort everyone would be in the short line and then where would the rest of us be.

So politely stand in the longer line with your hands clasped in front as if you were taking an elevator ride to the top of the Mark. Don’t talk – look straight ahead. A great coffee shop is one with an eclectic clientele. The Broadway is a great coffee shop and oh yes there is the quality of its roast and the expertise of its barristas but they are only secondary. Fresh roasted coffee by the cup or by the pound.

If it were not for people watching you might as well get up and go. If it were not for the people watching what sense would there be to it at all. The short bus does not stop at Starbucks.

What are doing tonight? Going home and going to bed. All the armatures have had their reservations for six months – all you can drink for two fifty a couple (party favors and a bottle of champagne on ice in the middle of the table). Another value proposition to which I do not subscribe. How can you say that – such a stick in the mud. I can easily say that for I do that every night, just not this night. Tonight I celebrate by doing what you do every other night – remaining me of how the other 99% live.

Tall girls in wooden underwear
Young lads in electric spats
Old coots on bicycles two by two
That’s me in the lead

I wish to establish a journal in which the men of genius may fight their battles; upon some terms of equality, with those dunces, the men of talent – Edgar Allan Poe

It is in his nature
To have this power
Of hectoring

And knowing that he
Will get only groveling
In return

And he shall dispise them
For not fighting back
Yet he is intrigued

By their purchases
Of just one more day
At such an horendus cost

He is smug in his own
Self-assuance that he
Would never betry honor

But there comes a time
When we also put on
A suit and tie

December 30, 2008


Kansas City, Missouri - Coffee Break --- School is out (I am sitting here across the street from Rockhurst University and near then campus of the University of Missouri at Kansas City and everyone is gone home for the holidays) and Mark is coming up with ideas for new lines of business - a plasma center (I was thinking of large screen TVs and he was thinking of blood). He had earlier said that there wouldn't be enough business to pay the heating bills and just before Christmas the pipes froze and he only reopened yesterday. Already the economy has taken out my other coffee shop (The Oak Street Cafe) which closed its doors Saturday.
--



If I only knew, Mark had said. We would have stayed open just for you, he had said. How's that?, I asked. Said he had seen me at all the bars. Will several people had come up and said they saw me on TV - stuck out like a sore thumb. I had tried to avoid the camera at Hooper's but had evidently failed. Local news was doing an interview with Kelly the owner regarding the lack of a sponsor for the New Year's Eve free taxi services (just another of those post economic panic happenstances - coming faster and faster at you on the wrong side of the street).
--



And where else did you see me? I asked. At Kelly's (that would be in Westport). Haven't been there in ages, I said. Will, I saw you crossing the street in front of it. Oh, said I, I was headed to the cinema (MILK - that would have been Friday at about 12:30 - too early even for me to be in a bar). Yeah! he says. And I left it at that. I don't usually go to the movies but during the holidays there is nothing else to do for a single person but get drunk and with these seasonal blues (read SAD) I'm not about to do that and normally I only go over the line maybe once a year just to remind myself what's its like but I do that someplace safe.
--


Well two down and One to go and you that are single by lifestyle choice know what that is about.
--

With the windows all steamed-up
And streams of rain water running
Down the middle of the street
There’s no imperative to sit in front
Of the big expansive panes of plate glass
It is miserable where ever I sit
And spring is a long long way away


And with the temperature hovering in the sixties
It is only a reminder of far off possibilities
But I did enjoy the all night long winter thunderstorm
And the creeks rising to their springtime limits
But it makes it all that harder to accept the three hard months
Remaining until the green returns again
---
---
If I must suffer from one or the other, I would rather it should be from the paw of a lion than from the hoof of an ass – Joseph Addison

The Trial of Chicken Little

Junk bonds will soon be do, lots of landmines await
These defensive lines that keep getting overrun
It takes time to entrench and build defense in depth
Needed, a little financial fire prevention and some education
We expect bilateral ties to strengthen
Knock! Knock! It just an eight-hundred pound gorilla
Pounding its chest

Talks of a "new world order" are emerging
Fallout of the current economic meltdown
Financial firms face a "new world order"
Economic catastrophic conspiracy is rampant
Allied to the solutions of predator globalism.
While the mainstream outlets continue
To parade out the same old economic experts
But thier images have been tarnished
A twelve step program for financial disaster
With major geopolitical implications

Who is there to believe other than your instinct
Turn off the sound and watch their faces its
A better method for thin-slicing
Look for their vested interests
It will say more than they do

The pace of dimunition of the US position
Shall accelerate
The generic question is, is the world falling apart?
And now that they see it melting down, they're nervous
What would JP Morgan do?
Even locked doors may not help
Triggering market collapse can be a very profitable undertaking
Regulators serving the interests of speculators

Who are the architects of economic collapse
America is the most indebted nation on earth
We are dealing with an absurd spherical relationship
The orb of self-confidence, the mirror of fate
Who is the fairest of them all

Under tighter control, debtors are not choosers but beggers
Neo-liberal economic discourse is often cynical and contemptuous
Neo-conservative dialog is in disgrace
Neo-socialist agendas are in ascendancy
Neo-postmodernism is hanging out its shingle

Our gluttonous appetite for spending
Has kept the greenback flying high
Financial meltdown escalates a global crisis
Hoard whiskey and cigarettes
Gold will just make you conspicuous
And besides weight you down
The first to go are the cows
Watch for the number of goats and chicken
To escalate - backyard feedlots poliferate

In the bunker the the sides collapsed
And the top blew away.
That there is the luckiest man on Wall Street
Swartzkoff said as he pointed at the stockborker driving away
The conspirators are trying to uunravel
The complexities of the New World Order
And authority has no veracity
Conspiracy theories are rampant
Old habits hard to break – the pointing of a finger

There simply isn't enough firepower
The generals are fighting yesterday’s war
It necessary to be nimble in assessing changing conditions
There is no playbook for responding to turmoil
There are no reserves to throw into the battle
No weapons to target financial markets
No WMDs or even remotely targeted munitions
The Swiss Army Knife is our only metaphor

It was a hard-fought battle during the early part of the day
The bulls are in fighting form
The picadors have done their job well
And the man with the cape is a butcher
A beachhead has been established
The bulls are launching their second assault.

We must once again repel any afternoon counterattacks
Are the bears in retreat, analysts sound downright cocky
Look around at the waddling ducks they’ve paraded out
Bouncing higher after the recent carnage
But you need a floor to bounce off of from,
Everybody's trying to get under the same table
At the same time and there's not enough room.
Very rarely will an analyst abandon metaphors entirely.
When they do, it's a sure sign of desperation
.
Running back for cover in the war on banks
Black operations, secret plans
Members fortify defenses against temporary capital account outflows
Attempts to fortify credit markets fail
And in the bunker he shall
Try the cyanide pills on the dog first
And reserve a jerry can of gasoline
Pass the metaphors and keep shouting

QUOTE: A race which could do nothing small is as defective as a race that can do nothing great – Henry James

Government Cheese

Don’t use the word “recession.” Instead, stick with “shrinkage"
The economic statistics are becoming decidedly less positive,
As they adjust for an over statement
How many more land mines exist out there
No one knows or ventures to guess
Will there be a Nobel Award this time

Inflation caused by fiscal policy is another problem
That few seem to be mentioning
We will be seeing much more inflation caused by fiscal policy
Created in many countries around the globe
New inflationary problems will arise before employment begins to rise
The long term rally will begin long before economic growth returns
That is our best guess

This may be an occasion for governments to rein in
Out-of-control capitalism
There are opportunities for the left to explain
How the economic system works
An excuse for pursuing a neo-socialist agenda.
This will be my number one prioity
With the administration scrapping the original centerpiece
Of it’s rescue plan
And they are still calling it a weak economy
A recession is a contraction phase of the business cycle

Inflationary economic contraction - tightening in financial conditions
Data is deciedly on the soft side
Tighter credit, declines in stock prices is creating some headwinds
To boost the economy while also containing inflation.
This is something almost impossible

Having blown fiscal policy on tax cuts ill afforded
And a war that can’t be paid for
And historically war has helped the economy
Fiscal policy is now.a ‘no-go’
And with using monetary policy alone, it is impossible
Inflation and unemplyment were not supposed
To occur at the same time
GDP = P x Q. Therefore ΔGDP = ΔP x ΔQ

Evidence of a broad global recession continues to accumulate
The economies of the entire group
Are contracting and will shrink
Projections point to a protracted downturn
Weekly jobless claims are a volatile statistic
The safest course is probably to assume
That this reflects a genuine acceleration

There were other signs of global slowing
Forecasting for reduced global oil demand
The largest economies in recession
And the strengthening dollar will likely
Hurt overseas business
Chaos, everyone for the lifeboats
The captain has been seen wearing a dress

Weaker than expected demand in all geographies and market segments
Precipitated by fall-offs in tourism and bananas
Panic when it was rumored that the price of rice
Had doubled at Wal-Mart
The Euro dives amidst evidence of Q3 economic contraction
This may not have the typical ‘V’ shape and last longer
This is a shape indicative of glaciations
The game has changed
Global warming during a new ice age
Ugh!

Lots of buyout debt is coming due
Many private equity firms face a refinancing wave
At a very uncertain time
Nearly 30 percent of big leveraged buyouts defaulted
We are most assuredly in some kind of
Worldwide production plateau at the very least
But we can look at the peak in oil production
As a harbinger of things to come
Exacerbating this scenario may be the need
To increasingly adapt to climate change
Just as the amount of available energy
Per unit of time diminishes

We will reverse our historical trend
To grow in pseudo-measures
Or learn to tweak for more positive indications
Then how shall we perceive this contraction?
What will life be like in a permanent decline
The magic of technology is losing it luster
And they promised it wouldn’t happen again
We have learned our lessons they said
Can it be endemic?
Is this long awaited avian flu?

Is the underlying value of money, energy
Isn’t that what technology means
Thus it will take more units of money
To buy the same unit of work
Individuals will not be able to afford stuff
That they previously bought

But unlike previous business cycle downturns,
This one is caused by reduction in energy for doing work.
There is no recovery phase people will have less
Because there is less to have.
What’s next?

Are we in the grip of a profound
Geopolitical contradiction
The current economic crisis will surely accelerate
And continue the erosion
Biggest monthly drop ever in futures trading

Aspirational qualities
Are not simply about convenience
Over populated neighborhood outlets
Consumers are feeling the credit crunch
Americans dove 15 billion fewer miles
No growth in oil demand in ‘09
Planning to cut 1.5 million barrels of production

Economic contraction is here
Which comes first
Value-added attributes
The pocketbook
Or Government cheese
Will we be seeing a huge paradigm shift?


QUOTE: In 1993 a study even found that people were willing to pay more for airline travel insurance covering “terrorist acts” than for death from “all possible causes”. Logically, that makes no sense, but “terrorist acts” is a vivid phrase dripping with bad feelings, while “all possible causes” is bland and empty – Daniel Gardner

Come Duck Day

Shall it be a lame duck session
Drive one’s ducks to a poor puddle
Under the watch of the lame duck president
Any chances the ducks, come what may
And is it thus immunity time
Is there no box of fluffy ducks
For unspecified crimes
Who’s the biggest duck in this puddle

This the lamest of lame-duck sessions
Pull up your blue duck trousers
And bowl for a duck
Billy Ducks is roaming about
There is a lot of battle fatigue
Members of Congress are human beings
Not just broken down politicians
Butts on you Ducks!

Its a person or thing that
Who or which can’t catch a duck asleep
Unable to roll even a couple of ducks
Especially one that was previously proficient.
But now unable to crack his duck

Change-Alley bankrupts
Waddle out lame ducks
All in a double duck fit
The bulls had a balance to pay
To the bears and only one lame duck
Waddled out of the alley
And chance the ducks
If he makes one run he has
Broken his duck's egg

Lame-duck office holders
Never as meek as little duck butts
Against the wishes of their constituents.
Hence the Lame Duck Amendment,.
A time to reflect upon duck butter
There is still ample time to duck shovel
Lame duckers doing the unspeakable
A lame duck impeachment
Damn these duck noires

Many lame duck presidents travel abroad
Duck plucker presidents can simply be
Downright nasty it is said that
The Clinton whitehouse removed
All of the ‘W’s from the computers
A lame duck’s pardons can be particullary
Scandalous – a duck shoot
Truman just got on the train
And went home
Look out for a lame duch surge

QUOTE: Perhaps this is the difference between a town and a city; a town ends. You can walk down one street or another to a place where the houses stop, duck between the second and third strand of barbed-wire fence and find yourself on the open prairie – Dale Peck

50000 Pedophiles at Any One Time

A very round number
Can be very big
A very very big thing
The roundest number is zero
And although nothing , a lot
Of them can add up to something big
50,000 – names carved in the wall
50,000 Quaoar a likely dwarf
Orbiting the sun
Over 50,000 words
Without using the letter ‘E’
50,000 predators on the Internet

A price point can be a round number
That or a lucky number. But in the West
We like a round number minus one
We are price point odd
Round numbers are very rare
But no rarer than any other
Say numbers made up of all nines
And isn’t that a type of round number too
A round number is square root smooth
50,000 flee; 50,000 displaced
Chinese slaughter 50,000 dogs
50,000 toxic Britney Spears pictures
Thanks for over 50,000 views of my stream

And rounding a number
Is not the same and rounding a curve
Eight is considered a lucky number
And also round
Stations that broadcast with 50,000 Watts
Day and night
50,000 Hezbollah men said deployed
50,000 refugees forced into prostitution
The surge could actually total 50,000
Up to 50,000 jobs are at risk
50,000 wounded in the war


Mars closest encounter to Earth in 50,000 Years
Inventing a Way to Index 50,000 Memories of the Holocaust
And in 10 years we’ll have 50,000 channels
Of TV from all over the world

All new 50,000 BTU Gas Grill.
The Universe within 50,000 Light Years
A rich tapestry of at least 50,000 galaxies
The LMC contains more than 30 million stars,
And stretches more than 50,000 light-years
From end to end
Located about 50,000 light-years from Earth.
According to US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
Each year as many as 50,000 species disappear
50,000 individuals a year are being murdered for Satanists


50,000 Internet police enforcing limits
On what can be seen and said
Millions of Americans believe that 50,000
Men died at Gettysburg
50,000 children kidnapped by strangers and 4000 murdered
At least 50,000 people are kidnapped worldwide every year
Over 50,000 innocent Whites murdered,
Over a million White women raped
There are 50,000 errors in a Bible
50,000 babies are sacrificed per year by Satanic cults

One hundred is a very round number
A major threshold few of us cross
So we usually settle for 50
A major anniversary--500 years, a very round number
People just seem to love round numbers
And 50 is a nice round number.
Coincidently it came to a very round number
So I deducted three. Accountants
Are suspicious of round number
That is a very round number, so round, in fact
A perfect number to pluck from the air
In the mind of particle physicists, three is a very round number

Round numbers don’t seem to be
Lucky numbers
The year 2000, was a very round number
Waiting and watching for the zeros
To roll over on the odometer
America lost a very round number of soldiers
As of this morning
65536, which is a very round number
In the binary arithmetic
I think we threw out a very round number
Early on

Playing with numbers
Playing the numbers
Favorite number, lucky numbers
Round numbers, the round number
Picking a number, picking the number
50,000 is a good number
For picking out of the air
A round number is a milestone

QUOTE: The riddle we can guess / We speedily despise – Emily Dickenson

Wrong End of the Stick

Copper theft is a rising problem
No commodity is more stolen
Larger, more profitable hauls of copper.
Thieves cut down the cable
From telephone poles and haul it away
Copper is an enticing metal to steal
It's easily recycled, and it's relatively plentiful and accessible,"
It's certainly not a spur-of-the moment crime.
This is a stick up. Give me all your pennies
Increasing demand in China and India
Once the powers plundered the colonies
Now it is their turn
Every time prices go up, just free market enterprise
With a revenge

All around the country, stealing scrap metal:
Telephone wires, air conditioner coils, and old radiators
Are just some of the sought-after items.
Petty criminals have also resorted to stealing
Aluminum gutters and copper downspouts
And some folks even get aluminum siding ripped away
Thieves simply pull up, drop off, get it weighed,
And pull away with the money.

Thieves smash windows, break in and gut property
For the copper pipes
As the economy slows and foreclosed homes stand empty and vulnerable.
Stories are unfolding nationwide as a glut of home foreclosures
Coincides with record highs in the price of copper and other metals.
Growing numbers of banks are balking at lending
To prospective buyers of foreclosed homes
That are stripped of copper pipes and other metals,
Further depressing housing prices.

Along with copper, the air conditioners and garbage disposals
Are often torn out.
When all the copper is taken out, the house
Becomes a knock-down.
Having a depressing impact on property values.

80 percent of recycled copper is exported to China and India.
To build their infrastructures
A different sort of prospector is at large
On a quest to harvest the dark metal
Shinning up utility poles
Stealing hundreds of feet of cable at a time
Wire is wire and pipes are pipes
Just another commodity


Recycling is working
It's just that now its our turn
To be on the wrong end of the stick

Welcome, to the Third World


QUOTE: Things and events happen at certain moments, the judgement which determines the occurrence of the thing or the event can only come after them; it therefore has its date. But this at once fades away, in virtue of the principled deep-rooted in our intellect, that all truth is eternal – Henri Bergson

Today its back to the Coffee Break, its bleak (the weather not the coffee) a cold front having blown in, leaves are falling and today I am reading:

Gertrude Stein – Three Lives;
Philip F Gura – American transcendentalism: a history;
Deborah Baker – A Blue Hand: the beats in India;
V S Naipal – A Writer’s People: ways of looking and feeling;
David Gardner – The Science of Fear;
Robert Musil – The Man Without Qualities
The Collected Poems of Jean Toomer
Mark Strand - Chicken, Shadow, Moon & more

I am hunkering down for the winter, not my favorite season - the stubble of barren wheat fields and a flat horizon of boney fingers grasping for a washed out sky here in the Mid-West.

Greater Oversight Needed

Everyone is demanding it
The culprits are all expecting it
Oversight repeated over and over
There should be more oversight
Appoint an oversight board
It’s the universal buracratic
        Answer

Announce hearings
After the horse gets out
Is that oversight
What good is that
Oversight implies a failure
Resulting from an unintentional
         Omission
I'll admit that this mess
Was indeed unintentional

Greater oversight and rigorous safeguards
More comprehensive safeguards and oversight measures
A national system of oversight
Greater oversight and quality assurance
Time for greater oversight
Urge greater oversight
Greater oversight needed well before this

Oversight means dotting the ‘i’s
It’s the triumph of the grammar nazis
It’s what a proofreader does
Conformance with the style guide

Greater oversight implies greater responsibility
Growing pressure to impose greater oversight
Greater oversight likely
Industry needs greater oversight
New rules impose greater oversight and increased penalties
Pondering greater oversight
More leverage in exchange for greater oversight
Wanting greater oversight
Insisting on greater oversight and accountability

Oversight implies bureaucracy
Rules against which performance is measured
No child left behind is oversight
More oversight is always the first response
A public reassurance that eyes are on the Rhine
What you get is compliance not performance

Oversight committees had never been properly informed
Requiring greater oversight by boards
Greater oversight was warranted in certain situations
Policy makers usually call for greater oversight
Penalties for fraud and imposing greater oversight

More stringent compliance requirements demand greater oversight
Registering offenders for greater oversight
Having to exercise greater oversight than in the past.
Including greater oversight
Mandating greater oversight
Needs greater oversight to ensure goals
Albeit with perhaps greater oversight
Demanding greater oversight and sensitivity to governance
Demands for greater oversight and stricter accountability

Oversight starts at home
Negligent in its own function
Oversight in face of resistance
      Is difficult
Clean your own house first
It sounds good – a sound bite
Greater Oversight

QUOTE: We have so much trouble in distinguishing between an evolution and an unfurling, between the radically new and a rearrangement of the pre-existing, in fact between creation and simple choice – Henri Bergson

Money, Money – Who’s Got the Money Now

"I just found a 20 on the floor in the subway."
"Man that’s money chicken!"
This money shot an enjoyable little thriller
The money making shot in money ball
Provocative sensational

You pay him for his money shot
Money cock up the monkey butt
Do it or don’t get paid
Do the money shot swag
One funky ass party tune
Hump day hump for the money shot

Money talks – big bucks
What do you say
I can go to the bank on that
The left bank, the right bank
The poliltical bank
Money quote, money quotes
The money quote of the day

Help it over the hump ‘
Make that the money shot
The essence or most newsworthy part
Comes through in the clutch
The money position is in
The most accurate sharpshooters to the front
A money shell is just a butter clam

And hope that that money spider lands on you
Rainmaker, moneymaker
Shake that moneymaker
Miss Moneypenny
Money sex and power
Economics in a virtual world
The Money sports game
Trading virtual shares for real dollars

Big money sports
The money game
The moneyball game
The big money game
Big Money quick
Welcome to big money
Big money easy money

Big money ventures, make money
Big money Sundays
Making big money
Big money monkeys
Raking in big money
Big money online

Where the big money goes
Monkey knife fights
Big money from big action
Big money market funds
Attracting big money big dollars
Bowling for big dollars
Big money Bingo
The big money
The big monkey

Some big money,
A lot of big money
Big money deluxe
Big money rap
Big money talks
Big money mistakes
The big big money opportunity
Big money interests
Big money farts

The big-money givers
A big money month
Big money deals
Big money lobbyists
Big money entertainment
Campaigns get big money
Drawing big money
Big money solutions
Paid big money

Get pig money monkeyface
Egg money is chicken feed
Big money decisions
Big money is delicious
Save big money
Go for the big money
Big money flowing
Tell for big money
Tell anything for money
Money mouth. Anything for money

Big money spying
Big money crime
Tracking big money
Big money earners
The best money earners
Secondary money earners
Top moneymakers
Big dollar fuckers

Moneymakers and takers
Baby boomer moneymakers
Rooftop moneymakers
Ingenious moneymakers
Extra moneymakers
Supreme moneymakers
Serious moneymakers
All time moneymakers
Little known moneymakers
Moneymakers for stay at home moms

Maverick moneymakers
Moneymakers of America
Moneymakers’ toolbox
Fast moneymakers
Moneymakers 4kids
She is a money Jane.
The Money Jane... She give me bling-bling

'Beer money' jab - not meant as a slam
Pocket change for a six-pack
'Dalí need more money'—Jab!
'Then Dalí had better start painting again
Total money jab
Passive aggressive money jab
On-the-money jab
Find yuh money, jab jab, prepare to pay, jab jab,

Putting money in the basket is our privilege
What happened to the money in the basket
I went to market with the money in my pocket,
And brought back my purchases in a basket;
Now I take the money in the basket
Put your money in the basket
There's just enough money in the basket
To take me to the next town
There’s never enough money in the basket
I believe you will have money in the basket when you die

Show Me your money tongue
Do the money tongue wiggle
English is the money-tongue
Money Tongue is lyrically sweet and throaty
A game-winning (or game-losing) shot--the money ball.
Money ball – who’s making it – and who’s earning it
Take the money and run

Money cock and alcohol
Suck steaming loads of cash from the money cock
A fat wallet is a money cock
Sold out and sucked the money cock
Sucking on the Hollywood money cock

Obscenely large sums of money – moneyhats
Moneyhat is still cool
Moneyhats run rampant
Moneyhats, moneyhats and more moneyhats
When they're cornered marketwise
My secretary just gave me a moneyjob
Something that is totally cool radical or awesome.
Man that girl's body is all money chicken.


QUOTE: We are once again in danger of drawing the wrong conclusions from the lesson of history. This time the danger comes not from communism but from market fundamentalism – George Soras

Are Victory Gradens on a Comeback

Belt tightening is in order
But not giving up oysters
Make coffee at home
Avoid taxis get exercise
Belt-tightening includes job freezes
Belt tightening time

Tighten the ship
Draw in the purse strings
Suck in the gut
Hang tight, stick fast
The belt-tightening began when the price
Of gasoline surged

What does tightening the belt really mean
I know the definition: increased thrift and frugality
Is it more than just looking for sales
Make coffee at home
Eat out less often
The common advice

When thrifty sets in
Changes begin to snowball
Net worth suddenly falling
Spending is gloomy
It’s time for stupid bureaucratic restrictions
Ten executive reduce their salaries by 2 percent
        Oh my!
Reducing reimbursement rates for travel and
Eliminating several fax machines
Even if dumb and never enough
        It’s a start
The Mayor wants suggestions
Looking for belt tightening measures

And the expert advice is
Simply tightening your belt a bit is the best bet
When times are tough.
It's when those who are smart and thrifty
Pass those who are not
Now its affecting higher-incomes, wealthier households
Look upon it as an opportunity

It was a perfect storm this summer
It was a tough summer
What will winter bring

Taking creative approaches to endure a rocky economy
Belt-tightening consumers
Reining in their discretionary spending
Clinging to the notion that more belt-tightening
         Is what's needed.
When does belt tightening turn into bulimia
Take up belt tightening measures
Tough times cause belt-tightening
Fees for lots of things that used to be free
Eliminate spending money for pleasure

Pinching pennies
Plural – belt tightenings
Monitor more closely
Mommy makeovers still in demand
Boomers still have savings
And have not given up their oysters
As the economy goes south

The utility of some advise is debatable
Switch to coal
Technologically locked out
Of many options exercised
By our grandparents
Maybe it’s time for a Victory Garden
Try to get out of a lease and downsize
Buy private label or store brand products
Belt tightening will continue
But will it be more than economic
Will it be culturally and ideologically
       Challenging
And what if it’s only beginning

QUOTE: We have succeeded in the sense of our desire for success – Marcus Garvey

Inspired by Le Clezio’s Nobel Prize

Primitive Other, depraved, and degenerate
Modern Individualism, rational and materialistic
“Explorer Of A Humanity Beyond And Below
The Reigning Civilization".
The premise involves an action adventure story

Dissimilar voices that oppose the current model
Of our reigning civilization.
Ancient ruins from a long-reigning civilization
The Ten Commandments constitute the supreme standard of ethics
Of our generation and of our reigning civilization

He moves freely, without restriction, from one continent to another,
Fusing ideas and images
From different kinds of literature and culture
The flight from commonly accepted ways of thought
Into extreme states of mind
And what we get is innocuous World Cuisines
And World Music – just more consumer commodities

Often his protagonists are loners,
Who try to find ways to cope with the modern life and technology,
Or come into conflict with urban surroundings.
The natural environment, animate and inanimate, forms
A kind of philosophical, unifying ground
Refuge from the aggressions of modern life in an asylum
Expulsion from the liquid paradise of the womb and the fall into time

A wider ranging collectivity
Traditional colonialist vision
In stereotyped terms as the impenetrable and primitive other
Elaborate personal system of transcultural encounters and intersections,
The impasse posed by evocation of the past as nostalgic lamentation alone.
The urgent need to reconcile the past with the present
In order to provide for the possibility of a future

The eighteenth-century notion of the Primitive Other
Struggle to discover their identities as they bounce
From one geographical location to another
Going primitive in Paris encountering the Primitive
Other in ethnography and art
They regularly meet grim fates

The West fantasizes the Primitive Other as being
Closer to an original oneness denied to the modern Self
Simply renouncing Western culture and returning to their homelands
Characters wander numbly through modern metropolises,
Suffering from fevers
Extrasensory perception enables them to become acutely aware
Desperate for a sense of identity,
But despite their best efforts,
They remain on the fringes of society
Racial anxieties and desiring the Primitive Other

Knut Hamsun also won the Nobel
'The whisper of the blood and the pleading
Of the bone marrow'
His depreciation of modern, urban civilization
And the reigning civilization
Is slipping below the horizon
While we watch dining at
The Restaurant at the Edge of the Universe

Quote - Language, unlike paint, does not simply become ‘beautiful’ once a style’s widely accepted – Jonathan Levin

The Embaracuda Wins the Language Wars - Oh Sarah, Sarah -Your're so Fine

Pseudo hick talk and using affective
Demonstratives as place holers for race
Inventing outsider langugage to be used by insiders
“And I've joined this team
That is a team of mavericks”
Someone is winning the linguistic race
And it's not the poets nor is it  the intellectuals
In spite of the fact that its only the common people
Who really speak in grammatical correct sentances

Traditionally ‘that one’ is used dispargingly
Of women – Clinton’s ‘that woman’ for example
The most memorable line of the night
Belonged to John McCain
"That one," McCain said, pointing at his opponent
With his thumb.

But when it comes to language
It’s not McCain’s (dis)affective demonstrative
But all the Palinisques that give us
Or dear Sarah
Her love of deictic terms
Demonstrative pointing
This, that, these and those
Racking up an impressive 15-to1 advantage
“Taken advantage of again by those managing
Our money and loaning us these dollars”
“Trying to forge that peace, and that needs to be done
And that will be top of an agenda item”
“Americans are craving that straight talk”

It’s McCaine who is learning from Palin
And not the other way around
"Well, it is bull-pucky,
But the splatter pattern is interesting..."

Gov. Palin used 'also' about 5 to 10 times
More often than expected
13 out of her 48 examples
Were sentence-final
And that's what John McCain and I would engage in
             also.
I'm sure that we're going to see more success there,
             also.
Iraq need to be implemented in Afghanistan,
             also.
Her favorite vamping word

Americans have a tradition
E. E. Cummings lamented,
When President Harding died:
“The only man, woman or child who wrote
A simple declarative sentence
With seven grammatical errors is dead.”

Alistair Cooke observed: “Americans seem
To be more comfortable with Republican presidents
Because they share the common frailty
Of muddled syntax and because,
When they attempt eloquence, they do tend to spout
A kind of Frontier Baroque.”

Maureen Dowd: “Darn right. And that, doggone it,
Brings us to a shout-out for the latest virtuoso
Of Frontier Baroque, bless her heart,
The governor of the Last Frontier”

Running against highfalutin
         Eloquence
“Government, you know,
You’re not always a solution.
In fact, too often you’re the problem."

“It is from Alaska that we send those out
To make sure that an eye is being kept
On this very powerful nation, Russia,
Because they are right there.”

She dangles gerunds,
Mangles prepositions,
And randomly exiles nouns
“This is an original voice that doesn’t sound like Washington,
Doesn’t sound like an insider, doesn’t sound at all like
What we have.“I think it sounds outsider.”
Obama is the insider
And McCain holds on for his life

On paper, her sentences would have been
          Difficult to diagram.
“The highest percentage of well-formed sentences
Are found in casual speech
And working-class speakers use more
Well-formed sentences than middle-class speakers.
The widespread myth that most speech
Is ungrammatical is no doubt based upon tapes
Made at learned conferences" - William Labov

Certainly, Ms. Palin, Steven Pinker claimed,
Cranked the folksiness dial to 11
But it would be unfair to question the authenticity
Of her accent or to use it as a measure
Of her intellect or sophistication
And twiddle it she did.
She was one with “everyday American people,
Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation.”

And that’s the trouble with the Liberals
They don’t sound like pseudo hicks,
Like archetypical people of the sticks
And the Conservatives are the mavericks
Outsiders eternally running against
The establishment they themselves control
And who was it afterall who burnt down
          The Reichstag?
And against a media which slanders them so
And we believe it instinctively, subconsciously
For it’s, you see, in our memes, mythologically
And to say differently is indicative
Of a sore looser

God help us, this is so Orwellian

QUOTE: There are no truths that can be fixed in language. It is by the beak up of the language that the truth can be seen to exist and that it becomes operative again – William Carlos Williams

Both Sides of the Fence – Hearts & Minds

Military doctrine or propaganda
Force alone is an insufficient objective
To win the hearts and minds of the populace.
We want to be loved and admired

There is a confusion here of meaning
Wining Hearts and Minds
Counterinsurgency strategy or social change
The H&M mantra is used indiscriminately
Rhetoric without understanding

“The ultimate victory will depend
On the hearts and minds of the people
Who actually live out there". Lyndon Johnson

“The answer lies not in pouring more troops
into the jungle, but in the hearts and minds
of the Malayan People" – General Templer (1952)

And the other tradition
Brown vs Board of Education -
“That may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.”
The irrevocability perhaps of past wrong
And a need to do better

A campaign for change, persuasion
Hearts and  Minds Network – Visit our website
Hearts and Minds, more than a bookstore - Unabashedly Christian
Hearts and Minds – Information for Change
The United States has great hopes
"Hearts and Minds" is a complete original graphic novella
And an Oscar wining documentary

What is essential here is making the population choose
"Enable” (persuade, coerce, co-opt) the population
To make an irrevocable choice
It is primarily through hearts that minds are won
Because they are given no choice

“If you grab the enemy by the balls,
His hearts and minds will follow” – General Westmoreland
Campaigning for Hearts and Minds will be indispensable
Hearts and minds working together
“Speak softly and carry a big stick” - Teddy Rossevelt

This heart-and-minds myth
Sorry, but winning means killing.
Wishful thinking about multilayered conflicts
Claiming a desire to win hearts and minds
Is either a numbing platitude
Or a euphemism for killing

That hearts and minds means
Being loved is bullshit
It’s a phase loved by headline editors
To attract our attention, it’s a slogan
"Buy War Bonds" or "Just Do It"

Bush uses it in the Brown vs Board sense
He only pretends to be militant
At heart he is no soldier
“We will strive to change hearts and minds
with compassion and decency”
“Their spirit lives on in the hearts and minds
of a new generation”
“We will work with decency and respect
To change hearts and minds, one person at a time”

Dick Cheney knows its military meaning well
He’s the one who has made it the metaphor
Of US imperialism our mantra: “we are in a struggle
For the ‘hearts and minds’ of people
In a troubled region of the world
The extremists ...are not really trying to win the hearts and minds,
But to paralyze them, to seize power by force,
To keep power by intimidation, and to build an empire by fear.”

But Dick, that is precisely what your  mantra
Means and you know it
You're talking out of both sides of his mouth again
The old them or us – the evil other
Do unto them befroe they do unto you
You old Cold Warrior

The dispassionate mind it seems
That makes decisions by weighing the evidence
And reasoning to the most valid conclusions –
bears no relation to how the mind and brain actually work
          Or is allowed to work


QUOTE: A thousand trivialities push themselves to the front, our lying habits of everyday speech and thought are foremost telling us that ‘that’ is what ‘they’ want to hear – William Carlos Williams

My Fellow Americans – A Presidential Parade

 My fellow Americans, Keep America competitive
So I urge my fellow Americans to continue
And I urge my fellow Americans to do so.
And so, I ask my fellow Americans to be patient
My fellow Americans, this day has brought terrible news and great sadness
It's important for my fellow Americans to understand that.


My Fellow Americans bring to life
Two centuries of American history,
As you read and hear the presidential
Speeches that defined our
Nation's most dramatic moments


My Fellow Americans – A comedy
About life, liberty and the pursuit of two ex-presidents.
Along the way they meet a homeless couple,
Thwart kidnapers in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant,
And find themselves marching in a gay pride parade


And so, my fellow Americans
Ask not what your country can do for you –
Ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not
What America will do for you, But what together we can do for the freedom of man


Health problems kept Walter Matthau from appearing
Kramer might have been President after Bush,
Winning the Republican nomination from him in 1992
And losing in 1996 to Douglas.
In turn Douglas won the 1996 election
And lost the 2000 election to Haney.
Haney resigned in 2003 and Matthews served from 2003-2004.


It's my honor to welcome to the White House my fellow Americans,
Arab Americans, Americans who are Muslim by faith
I join my fellow Americans
And I want to thank my fellow Americans
My fellow Americans.... we remain at war
Well, thank you for that warm welcome. (Applause.)
My fellow Americans -- (applause) –
I'm on my way


My Fellow Americans: The Most Important Speeches
Of America's Presidents, from George Washington
To George W. Bush


Good evening, my fellow Americans:
Tonight I want to talk to you on a subject of deep concern
To all Americans and to many
People in all parts of the world


My fellow Americans, I am sure you can recognize from what I have said
The great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support.
My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over


But, yes, my fellow Americans, there is a choice, a very, very important choice
So, my fellow Americans
My fellow Americans,
We're known around the world as a confident and a happy people.
The question is not whether we want peace...The question is: Will we meet a growing danger
The stakes are so very high
We are entering a season of hope
We're poised for an historic reversal
I'd like to talk to you today about the deep desire we share
Join with my fellow Americans who work and pray
We live in perilous times, my fellow Americans, but also times of great hope and opportunity
Think about it, my fellow Americans


My fellow Americans – I would like to talk today about opportunity in America
And my fellow Americans, we passed that test
My fellow Americans, I firmly believe in my heart of hearts
That times will soon be on the side of peace because the world is overwhelmingly on the side of God.



An Indian Autumn is not over until the first frost, that has not yet occured, but the time is approaching. Another gorgous day. Today I am at the Oak Street Cafe in the Brookside neighborhood of Kansas City. It is quite a contrast for here liberal church groups meet to discuss social action as opposed those trying to save your soul. Liberalism trives in upscale neighborhoods as a reaction to the rampant materialism that is dominate theme in these same neighborhoods. Opposites attract, a balance is struck which is unsatisfactory to all parties - but that is nature.



Quote: The demand for men necessarily governs the production of men, as of every other commodity – Adam Smith

Congress Must Act - George W Bush - October 1, 2008

We're at a critical moment

For the financial security of many Americans
Congress must act.
Members of the House have a choice to make
We must act now
Congress Must Act Now To Ensure That We.... Keep America Safe
Prompt congressional action [is needed]
Our government has no greater responsibility than getting this work done

I urge congressional leaders to let the will the American people prevail,
Congress has still not taken the necessary action to keep our nation safe
Congress must act now
Congress must act now to keep our nation safe
We look forward to working with Congress
Congress must act now
Seven years have passed since I first stood before [you]
We have faced hard decisions
W’ve answered the call.
We have shown the world
 But yet we still have unfinished business before us,
And the American people expect us to get this done.

Our economy is undergoing a period of uncertainty
At kitchen tables across our country, there is a concern about our economic future
We can all see that that growth is slowing
Unless Congress acts, most of [what] ...we've delivered over the past seven years will be taken away
This body has failed

We are engaged in the defining ideological struggle of the 21st century.
Protecting our nation from the dangers of a new century
[The] Senate mst act quickly
Congress once again left town
The Senate needs to act ... soon
I urge the Congress to join me in acting

Congress also must act
[The] House has acted, the Senate must act.
Congress can act
I ask Congress to work with me
Strengthening the economy and protecting the homeland and fighting the war on terror
       Are critical issues that demand prompt attention.
I urge the Congress to act
My administration has worked with Congress

Unfortunately, Democrats on Capitol Hill have rejected virtually every proposal
The problem is that Congress has restricted access
Congressional restrictions ...have become outdated and counterproductive
I call on the House and the Senate to pass good legislation
As soon as possible

Unfortunately, Democrats in Congress are standing in the way of further development
Congress should do so immediately
There is no excuse for delay
Unless Congress acts,
The Congress has a responsibility
In a vibrant economy, markets rise and decline. We cannot change that fundamental dynamic

Next week, Congress returns
Coming back to a lot of unfinished business. And the clock will be ticking
Congress must address...
Congress must take action now
Congress has important work to do

This is not what Congressional leaders promised
Congressional leaders need to keep their word
When it comes to getting its business done, Congress is only getting started
I urge them to do their job

As Congress approaches [this] , it must take decisive steps
There is no good reason for the legislative process to take this long
It's time to act decisively
Congress must control its enormous appetite
We must act quickly and aggressively
I ask the Congress to join me in this urgent task



QUOTE: Late at night in England meant after the shutting of the pubs. Here there where no pubs to shut, so it was not yet late – Anthony Burgess




God rested on the seventh day to look at the rushes – J G Ballard

Like two semi-metallic beings
Out of the distant future
Making love in a chromium bower

A dank odor rises from their bodies,
An amalgam of rectal mucus
And engine coolant

All this time, however,
My real attention was fixed
Upon the rental-company
Vehicle in the car park.
Everything else –
His irritation with me,
The cramped perspectives of the office,
The noisiness of the staff
It all formed a vague penumbra,
Unsatisfactory footage that I would later edit out

Along the elegant motion sculpture
Of the concrete highway
The colossal carapaces
Of the thousands of cars moved
Like the welcoming centaurs
Of some Arcadian land

Already I had lost
Lost interest in the whimpering
Young woman pulling herself into her cloths.
My scared hands explored
The worn fabric of the seat,
Marking in my semen a cryptic diagram;
Some astrological sign or road intersection

Already the concept of leisure
Was dying in the business park,
Replaced by a grudging Puritanism.
Freedom was the right to paid work,
While leisure was the mark
Of the shiftless and untalented

An airliner rose
From the runway four hundred yards
To the left,
Wired by its nervous engines
To the dark air

An ancient regime
Faced with the revolution
It most feared,
A rebellion of its indentured professionals

At some point in life,
At our medical school
Or during our psychiatric training,
Some one had failed to take us seriously

Besides, everything
Is invented and then pondered upon.
God rested on the seventh day to look at the rushes


Quote: They – lovers, spurned and scornful, hurt and bewildered, proud and defiant – do not really make such strange bedfellows with politicians – after all, few things make us self-justifying as our principles and our partners – Thomas Mellon



Is it any longer sufficient (or even acceptable) to just save Capitalisms' ass? Is there any real hope for progressivism?


This morning I am at the Hard Bean Cafe in Grandview, Missouri. This is small town, God fearing America. It's not really small town; its suburban Kansas City but they precieve of themselves as small town and they act small town, they talk and they walk small town, so it must be small town. One of the contradictions of American life is that those who are struggling to preserve their lifestyle and losing tend to ally themselves politically with the forces trying to destroy it - small business allies with big bussines - the names are simiular (small business vs big business) but there the simularity ends. Nietzsche called this the "transvalutation of values" - the new co-opts the language of the old.

Spread Butter Everywhere - September 30, 2008

While reading Albert Goldsmith’s The Kitchen Sink,  I wrote this poem (from volume 57 page 60 of the jorunals – Date Sept 19, 2008).

BUTTER SPREAD EVERYWHERE


“Butter spread everywhere” – a favorite
Sentence according to the poet Goldbarth
But just how common a phrase is it in fact


Spinach recipes, albeit
I prefer butter spread
Everywhere with my finger
It hit the web
Like butter – spread everywhere
Then word came a couple days

Later that he was not dead


Copious amounts of peanut
Butter spread everywhere
Dumb nasty skunk
Looking for the dog
With the peanut butter


Dumb nasty skunk
Looking for the dog
With the peanut butter
Spread everywhere thing


You haven’t died yet
Form some fifteen hooker
Gang bank with peanut-butter
Spread everywhere!


I was curious I Googled it
"Butter Spread Everywhere"
Now it a favorite of mine

This one is part of a trope that I lablel "The Art of Plagiarism" - a sort of re-mix of quotes (in this case from a Google search for "butter spread everywhere"). The idea  is that a phrase, a statement becomes the target for an Internet search  in which  the languange contained in the hits returned become the poem.
So President Bush has been demanding that “Congress Must Act”  This phrase will be the search term wich will generate the language of the next entry's poemsy.

What I am reading today:

Albert Goldbarth - The Kitchen Shink: New and Selected Poems - 1972-2007
Joe Bageant - Deer Huninging with Jesus - Dispatches from America's Class War
Lee Siegel - Against the Machine - Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob
Philip F Gura - American Transcendentalism - A history

I am sitting at the Coffee Break at 54th and Troost in Kansas City across from Rockhurst University. It was cool last night with dew on the grass this morning, but we have had a beautiful Septemeber. And now this Indian Summer is over.