JENNIFER STEPS INTO THE SHOWER - STEAM OBSCURES THE ROOM AND FOGS THE MIRRORS

I relit the fire this morning. Not that it was that cold. Yesterday had actually been hot. I’ll probably stay here another night. They have flush toilets and hot showers here (count your luxuries where you can). Sitting here in the woods watching the fire burn, avoiding all the chores that need to get done. The least that I can do is start a pot of coffee. I’ve been in the woods a week now without having turned on a radio – media, the self-medicating disease. Fire is calming. I’m shedding my anxieties. It’s the damn media that I blame, especially TV. Anxiety sells products, which buys time. I burn logs which also buys time. Consume for success – a healthy lifestyle. I sit and watch the fire. I’ll eventully get around to making breakfast – bacon and eggs and hash brown potatoes. The coffee is ready. Pour this morning’s first cup.

Incoherence is preferable to a distorting order –  Andre Gide

Property values is all that keeps them out of the streets

The politicians know that and weep

Bad news causes markets to plummet

We shall only have good news

             They have decreed

Or perhaps get them adicted

            To reality TV

And load them down

            With student loan

            Obligations

A lifetime’s worth and a subprime

            Mortgage to go

The best thing learned by these struggles is, how to prepare for another – Wendell Phillips, 1855

A third of high-school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives, and neither do 42% of college graduates

Anecdotal thinking comes naturally, science requires training – Michael Shermer – The Believing Brain, 2011 p63

According to Walter

He has, he claims,

Invented a new form of poetry.

It happened at four o’clock

            This morning

He had to find something

Other than watching Infomercials

            To keep himself occupied

So he recited to us:

            There was a young man from Nantucket

            Who kept show and tell in a bucket

Things that he found just lying around

Nice, I said

But is it not a Limerick

Just without the innuendo?

I had, said he, said,

That it was based on an older form.

According to Walter

A lemon half squeezed is no better that a lime.

And I said to Walter:

A lime a day will make you a sailor boy.

And why didn’t you just go to bed?

Veering toward/ the work of the world, / the days come / pearl handled / (and cold) / as a well oiled pistol – Theodore Enslin – Then and Now –1999 p161

Corporations get 40% of all federal discretionary spending

Three big noses Mrs Mother has, / they grow and grow in the night. / Sniff sniff sniff here naughty naughty dear! / And she also can smell with her ears – James Broughton – Special Deliveries, 1989 p6

Now it is time to play

Now it is time to work

Kick the ball, swing that hammer

Go to school and study hard

Work hard but play hard too

Ding-dong school is out, the wicked witch is dead

Blue collar, white collar, ring around the posy

Red neck, white lie, blue tie

Apply yourself, impress the boss

From the factory floor to the office door

The silver spoon and a golden paraschute

Pink slips, green cards, poker faces

Get good grades, earn big bucks

You too can be Mr. President

A poet crawling out from under the historical steamroller is better prepared to assume the tasks assigned to him than his colleagues in happier countries – Charles Simic – New York Review of Books, 12/22/11 p28

A debauched elite is faced with its own death. It’s choice is only in regard to the manifestation of it’s own demise. But instead it choses to fight on – try to keep the gravy train on its tracks. The bridge ahead is on fire. Insurgents are everywhere.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creatures, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions – Karl Mark – Contriutions to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 1843

It’s only half past twelve,

But I don’t care. I don’t care.

If we don’t have a hurricane, I’ll go insane.

A record high predicted today

Mountain strawberries and huckleberries,

Blueberries in the meadows cranberries in the bogs

Fields of corn, thrashing time coming soon

Jimmy Buffet down in New Orleans,

Margaritas and martinis

Grain fed hogs on steamboats coming from up north.

Magnolias, dogwood, the fragrance of roses

Feedlots sheep-dip

Goat ropers chuck wagons

Bacon, hamburger and hot dogs

            (pink slime – mechanically

            separated)

Miller, Bud light or PBR

This one’s for you bud

            Icy cold

The red, white and the blues,

Jazz, rag and the hucklebuck

Sousaphone, saxophone and vibraphone

And don’t forget Ken Nordine

Basketball football baseball

Season tickets, SRO, bleachers

            Box seats for the big shots

Play by the rules – respect private

            Property

‘Private life’ changes according to the Doxa one addresses: if it is a Doxa of the right… it is the sexual private life which exposes most. But if it is a Doxa of the left, the sexual exposition transgresses nothing: here ‘private life’ is trivial actions… less exposed in declaring a perversion than in uttering a taste – Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, 1977 p82