Recently I got an email from the University of Washington which is studying the feasibility of public transportation, and wanted to know about my experiences. They want everybody to use public transportation because it's greener, and well, it's more economical and doesn't use as much space. If you can pack sixty people on a bus and transport them across town it frees up the highway that would otherwise have sixty cars on it, and then it leaves parking spots free at the destination, and the gasoline used is far less.
That makes sense to me.
For a long time I lived on Capital Hill in Seattle or later in Leschi (on Lake Washington) and commuted to the University of Washington, first to work as a temporary secretary for about eight years. That commute was only about four miles to six miles (depending on where I lived) but you got stuck at rush hour because of the Montlake cut -- a canal that was crossed by two bridges. Sometimes a bus would sit still for ten full minutes or longer, or even a half an hour. The Montlake bridge would meanwhile open for yachts and commercial shipping, while the bus just waited.
After the first year I stopped using the bus. One day a young man started waving a revolver around. Prior to that, the hairsprays were the deadliest problem, or someone getting on the bus with BO, or the fact that the bus just wasn't moving. I hated having people I didn't know sitting next to me. I felt forced to make conversation. I never made a real friend in that way. It was mostly defensive talking, talking that was meant to defer any kind of friendship into some sort of see you next summer kind of deal. I preferred walking to work or taking a bicycle. It was healthier, and often quicker.
The truth is that I hate public transportation. I don't like being around people I don't know crammed into a vehicle and they all either smell awful, or way too good (hairspray and cologne in the morning made me sneeze myself into paroxysms). I could fly on a bicycle twice as fast as the bus, and breathe clean air.
One of the reasons I like living in a small town is that if my car breaks down I can still walk to work, to the grocery store, or anywhere.
I do get on public transportation a few times a year when I go to New York City. I love the rats down in the train tracks. I love the people pretending to be blind with their cups out. I love the buskers with their guitars and flutes. Public transportation is a hilarious thing to visit, but I wouldn't want to make it part of my daily life. Public transportation is a favorite attack point for terrorists. They hit three commercial airlines on 9/11. The Spanish attack was on a train. Many scary movies are made on public transport: Speed, and Pelham 1,2, 3 come to mind.
Public transport is for the birds. I'd prefer to walk, or to ride a bicycle, or to take my own car, thank you very much. But I admit you are sometimes stuffed in with weird people that you'd have never looked at without the vehicle of the bus or the subway. Here's my first entry. Contest closes Memorial Day, May 30th, at midnight.
Limit: 25 lines, no limit on number of entries. Judging is done democratically on May 31st, all entrants get one vote but must vote for someone beside themselves.
PUBLIC Vs. PRIVATE TRANSPORT
The bicyclist falls in the path of a train.
The train derails and falls on a tourist boat.
The tourist boat explodes & singes a hang-glider.
The hang-glider survives but lands on a bus.
He kills the bus driver
When he flies through the windshield
and the dead driver drives the bus into a train.
The train derails and hits another tourist boat.
The tourist boat explodes and a particle of fire
Touches a zeppelin that explodes.
An airplane is touched by the flame
And falls like a shooting star into a milk glass full of tricycles.
80 comments:
I'm with you, Kirby, on this one.
I was forced to take public transportation to my job in San Francisco for years, and I got very sick of it. First the busses, and the municipal trains on Market Street. Then the BART train, which went in a tube under the Bay. Aside from the usual indignities--which you document accurately in your post--there was the unpredictability of the times, and the unplanned interruptions (delays). When I rode the "T" in Boston, I thought that a much better designed system, but you still have the social interaction, which I've always found a little irritating. Public conveyances really only work (in cities) for those who live within a reasonable distance from their destination--i.e., city dwellers. Suburban America was based on the automobile, and that still is how it functions best. In recent decades, designers and planners have been trying to figure out ways to force people out of their cars, but the middle class customers--who support the economic life of the cities--don't live close enough to make that feasible, so the battle lines are drawn, and it's a stand-off. Trying to drive into the city has become a complete headache, and it's not getting any easier. Then we have the nutty bicyclers, who believe they're morally superior.
The modern paradigm of the crumbling inner city, decaying suburbs, and do-gooders trying to remake the entire landscape into a PC "green" system, is a mess.
I firmly believe that our root problem is overpopulation. Reduce crowding, and we can have the paradise which early social theorists envisioned. We have the technology, all we need is to stop this unbridled growth, and live within our means.
Here's my poem.
It really isn't about transportation, but it's based on a scene from the bio-pic Frida (Frida Kahlo)--the great Mexican artist and feminist.
She was badly injured in a trolley car accident, and spent the rest of her life in a state of almost contant pain, with multiple surgeries etc. The poem imagines her psychological malaise--painting and urban chaos and madly screaming wail of misery...imagine it read non-stop at high voice.
Frida Kahlo
green red yellow orange blue pink black
passionate ate it regurgitated
bled laughed out loud screamed
who what how why where when
purple turquoise lemon grey chartreuse
extracted it cracked milky glass
lit up flew down the street cocked an eye
jammed its barrel cobbled throngs
ass whinnied red fire brands
horn smoldering under adobe
white sand colorless blind sun
sank pouted stinking revenge
bastards bitches polluted history
flunked patience died mad at peace
--from Metro [2005] copyright Curtis Faville
Kirby,
The Montlake bridge would meanwhile open for yachts and commercial shipping, while the bus just waited.
I wonder if it's still that way.
Chicago has a big river that runs right through the most crowded part of downtown. Wikipedia lists 20 drawbridges downtown. Until about a decade ago, a rich guy with nothing better to do at 5:00 on a Friday afternoon could sail his yacht down the river, and force every bridge to open, snarling rush-hour traffic, and inconveniencing tens if not hundreds of thousands. This was not an uncommon occurrence.
Then, about a decade ago, the city put its foot down. There was litigation, all that, but in the end, the city was successful in imposing a lift schedule -- basically Wednesdays and Saturdays after the morning rush.
In the meantime, I ride public transportation (the Metra Electric Line) from Homewood to Hyde Park, about 15 miles each way. It saves my sanity. Well managed public transportation makes city life much more livable.
Stu, I think the laws in Seattle mandate that the seaborne traffic has priority, and I know that the decision has been revisited several times, but I think the original law still stands that seaborne traffic has priority and that the bridges must go up for approaching boats. This could be pleasure craft or commercial shipping. Quite annoying. I'll try to google. There is a fairly good train from northern New Jersey into Manhattan that lets you off at Penn Station. I prefer that system as the train is clean and there aren't too many scary people getting on, and there is a man in each car observing and they are big and in uniform.
The parking is only two dollars a day compared to 24 dollars a half hour in some places in Manhattan (you can still find free parking in Manhattan, but you have to be tricky and you never know if your tires will be slashed or something).
My car has been safe in the norther NJ lot, which has an attendant 24/7, and is in a good neighborhood.
the only times the bridge doesn't have to open for sailboats is right after basketball and football games at Husky stadium (U. of W. mascot is the Husky). I don't consider myself a Husky because I don't support college sports at that level. I do think intramural sports are fine, but at the level of the UW I was pissed that we had terrible students who got in on athletic prowess. They WRECKED my classes at the UW, and it bugged me. They would get secret compensations like cars and dinners, and it was almost like pro sports.
At any rate, here's a bit more on the codes. For some reason sailboats ALWAYS have priority, and this creates mile-long backups in traffic. At that point you're better off walking. I think some wealthy sailboat owners ENJOY disrupting the traffic.
http://www.epa.gov/fedrgstr/EPA-IMPACT/2001/November/Day-29/i29644.htm
Montlake Bridge also has its own Wikipedia page. This page is just about the opening and closing of the bridge.
Why do the Huskies get preferential treatment when working stiffs have to deal with that blasted bridge going up at rush hour? I suspect it's because there are influential people who like to see Husky games, and don't care about the rush hour problems which largely affect those without much influence.
This should be an electoral issue in Seattle. I gave up when I became a student and decided to live on the same side of the bridge as the university just to avoid that darned bridge.
Something weird happened with blogger that first wiped out this post, and then the comments. Please submit them again.
Kirby, I also lived on Capitol Hill-Seattle in an apartment building that had the grand name without the grand thing. During that time (1992-98) I couldn't afford to keep a car, so I mostly walked or bicycled to the UW. Sometimes I took the bus, though there occasionally were some unpleasant people on the bus who caused some unpleasant incidents. I remember one time some half-drunk or stoned hobo in a ragged poncho sitting two seats in front of me turning to a middle-aged lady and saying "Guess what I'm doing right now . . ." She got up and left straightaway to the back.
Al Fisher, William Dunlop and I used to take the bus from the UW over to my neighborhood haunts on CH in part to watch the "main drag" freak show, but I generally frequented the less frenetic 15th St milieu and nearby Volunteer Park, where on clear days I would often go to read German literature. It was at a cafe on 15th St I believe, where Emmy and I met your artist-bohemian friend Charlie before we moved for a while to Slovenia.
Thanks for posting your funny "chain-reaction" poem on public transportation. It's not always (in several senses) the best way to go. . . .
Curtis, I would like to see your Frida Kahlo poem again. I don't know what happened here. This entire post disappeared for several days. Blogger was down, and was perhaps the subject of a cyberattack. I have no idea what took place.
James, I loved Volunteer Park (named after the volunteers in the Spanish-American war), and lived on 1th and Pine for many years. I too preferred 15th Avenue as it was far quieter. I used to go down 18th street on my bicycle for years and years (throughout the eighties) and then went down through the large forested park with the Jewish school in the middle either on foot or on bicycle to then cut through Montlake to get to the UW. In 1989 I moved to Greenlake when I began to attend graduate school.
There was a good cafe at Red and Black Books, and many others along 18th, including the Canterbury Inn. I used to go into the Canterbury with Steven Shaviro and many other lefty academics to discuss lots of things. Even then I was a classical liberal (Locke rather than Keynes) but tried to keep my mouth shut and just listen as I always thought: maybe there's something I'm missing.
I did go down to tenth or the main thoroughfare of Capital Hill but I basically hated the 7 bus almost as much as the 43. The 48 was sometimes actually dangerous (it was on the 48 that I watched as a young man waved a revolver at passengers).
Foot and/or bicycle was my deal. Even in January it's possible to bicycle in Seattle, so that was my preferred mode of transport.
After I moved to Greenlake I sometimes took the giant Ford over there that a French professor had sold to me for a dollar (Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen).
Perhaps the funniest bit of public transportation in the city of Seattle was the monorail. It went from nowhere (the Space Needle) to the silly square in front of Nordstroms, neither of which I ever had a need to get to in twenty years of living in Seattle. I did the trip once or thrice just for kicks on a summer day.
It had no real origin point and no real termination point. I wonder who decided this.
I'm glad you liked my poem.
I lived at 17th and Pine. The 7 in 17th disappeared as I typed. Itwas quiet enough and yet you could get easy access.
There was some big hospital in back of my apartment. The only real problem is they had noisy airblowers to dust the parking lot every week, which made it impossible to sleep in.
Kirby, nice to hear of your reminiscences off zee Capitol Hill milieux we once moved in.
On the main drag one had to run a gauntlet of sometimes nasty-mouthed beggars, including one old crone who'd grit out curses if you didn't glance at her--or conversely, if you did. One guy used to operate between the main drag and 18th Ave holding a gas can to fill as if he'd just run out, and when refused he'd expostulate: "But Um tellin' y' th' truth!"--two years later he was still working the same empty-can scam. Just off the main drag there was even a bronze monument, not to Spanish-American War vets, but to beggary itself, consisting of a hobo sleeping on a bench covered by a bronze newspaper. Definitely not LS country.
I didn't think much of the Space Needle that looked like a huge sinister implant of silicon-based alien conquerors waiting inside for the right moment to strike and enslave the city's people and harvest their windows and wine glasses. It menacingly greeted me every morning I exited the Viceroy Apts just back of the main CH drag's QFC grocery. I thought it should be blown up before it was too late.
By the way, I noticed the Ann Althouse blog site was off for a day; it's another "Blogger" problem that it's said may have come about due to some leftie group practise of submitting a number of spam flags on a site. AA was mightily piqued by the rude comments of a certain "Blogger" rep (tile?) "nitekruzr" when she complained. Coincidence with your experience? At any rate, some of the story is here:
http://patterico.com/2011/05/13/back-from-the-memory-hole-the-full-record-of-googles-shabby-treatment-of-ann-althouse/
Well, perhaps there was some kind of coordinated attack. I was too busy to notice. Yesterday we had the annual literary magazine reception, and the president and vice president and many other campus dignitaries attended. The cookies were great (made by my dean's wife!), and there were many other good things: a dozen students agreed to read (one in Japanese!), and I had a lot of fun.
My kid's soccer team has also been playing back to back games day after day (today he scored a hat trick in a 6-0 win over Gilboa), plus I am reading late essays and stories in the Great Writers and Creative writing classes, and giving ad hoc criticism to all and sundry, plus signed up to help escort middle school kids to the Bronx zoo, and lots of other stuff.
This has nothing to do with the problematic buziness of a sudden return from OBL's compound, no matter what many say -- my expertise does NOT extend to commando raids in the subcontinent. Really, I wouldn't lie.
We lost some conversation with Curtis (who also lost a thread, or part of a converasation, and he's very far to the left, on everything except gay marriage and immigration).
So I don't take any of this personally. nitcruzr seems overwhelmed in the link you sent. He's probably proudo f the job he's doing (everyone should be proud of the job they're doing -- we're Americans, and work ethic is practically our identity!).
JADL,
By the way, I noticed the Ann Althouse blog site was off for a day; it's another "Blogger" problem that it's said may have come about due to some leftie group practise of submitting a number of spam flags on a site.
Nice to know the rightie paranoia is still clocking in at 12 on an 8 point scale. It's pretty clear that Google tried to make an "improvement" that left the blogger databased hosed, so they had to roll back, and then replay the transaction file. This takes time, especially if they were marginally provisioned for transactional capability. What is "said" doesn't make a damn bit of difference, if its said by paranoid nitwits who don't have the foggiest clue as to what's going on, and who believe that the whole damn universe revolves around what they think.
Honestly, I doubt Google, or anyone on the Blogger team, gives a damn about Althouse, or Kirby, or you, or me. At least the three of us seem to have some sense of proportion.
Actually, stu, I was going to post a question to you about a most likely explanation for the Blogger outage at law prof AA's site and the loss of her posting entries (about 24K) and blog comments (about 250K). But I certainly didn't take the conspiracy suggestions at face value without more proof than mere speculation.
Actually again, AA herself wondered if "there might be some behind-the-scenes campaign to report my blogs as abusive [to Google]." Is she then one of those you call "paranoid nitwits"?
And the fever-swamp left has ever been the source of conspiracy theories, from the "Truther" bs to "BushHitler" nonsense to the errant ravings of dangerous demagogues like Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan to the latest leftie-nutter assaults in the NYT on the admirable Koch Brothers, etc.
Apologies for making a couple of points to stu about his remarks on another thread, but I just noticed his late posts there.
Here's one interview where Leon Panetta admits "waterboarding" a few detainees (among a number of other sources) helped in the hunt for OBL:
http://usactionnews.com/2011/05/panetta-admits-bushs-enhanced-interrogation-worked/
I'd say quite an admission, considering President Obama's former posturing on a whole array of intelligence and tactical anti-terrorist issues.
Couldn't help but note stu's classy "just as" juxtaposition of his like desire to try OBL and the Bush administration. Nice leftie insinuation, that--I'll note also that he's changed his term for what he once referred to as Bush administration "crimes" to "actions." I guess airbrushing out "crimes" from his accusatory rhetorical repertoire is supposed to convince us of stu's new-found commitment to the rule of law and proper legal procedure.
As for stu's "partisan rube" insult, I'll not respond--well, except to wonder whether there's some cyclic lunar influence at play here.
JADL,
Actually again, AA herself wondered if "there might be some behind-the-scenes campaign to report my blogs as abusive [to Google]." Is she then one of those you call "paranoid nitwits"?
The Blogger outage was general. The (presumably temporary) loss of posts and comments on Althouse's blog paralleled the loss of posts and comments here and elsewhere. The notion that her blog was somehow singled out for its views doesn't pass the most trivial test of due diligence in asking what was happening to other Blogger blogs at the same time, or what Blogger was reporting through error messages or it's own status page.
Actually again, AA herself wondered if "there might be some behind-the-scenes campaign to report my blogs as abusive [to Google]." Is she then one of those you call "paranoid nitwits"?
If she assumed that when the world got crapped on, she was the target, then yes, she's a paranoid nitwit. As well as a self-absorbed one.
JADL,
Apologies for making a couple of points to stu about his remarks on another thread, but I just noticed his late posts there.
No apologies necessary. The question of whether to respond in the current thread, or a very recent topical thread is a matter of personal preference, not of right or wrong.
"Late" in the neutral sense of "recent" is fair. They were timely w.r.t. McCain's remarks. I looked at your source, and listened to the Panetta interview. I don't believe that the Panetta remarks support the notion that torture was instrumental in the hunt for OBL. It seemed to me that Panetta was dissembling throughout the interview, saying agreeable sounding things that on more careful analysis commit very little.
He did not accept the propostion that "enhanced interogation" was essential. Instead, he emphasized multiplicity of sources, leaving us to guess whether torture was important among them. And he did not address at all the issue McCain raised about the reliability and actionability of information extracted by torture -- which is that the victim of torture will say anything he believes will stop the torture, whether true or not. And this means that there's a huge signal/noise ratio problem with information obtained by torture. Yes, it might include critical information, but it's embedded in a stream of lies, and resists isolation or confirmation.
In the end, I buy McCain's version. Whether or not there were admissions in the data stream that came out of torture that could have lead to bin Laden, they didn't. That's consistent with both what McCain said Panetta said, and what he said for himself in the interview.
Couldn't help but note stu's classy "just as" juxtaposition of his like desire to try OBL and the Bush administration.
Accountability matters. We are supposed to be a nation of laws, yet I'm realistic enough to accept that it can't always work that way. So I'm inclined to grant some "lean." The burden of proof in terms of trying a President (or even Presidential advisor) isn't so much the letter of the law as it the sense that they were willful, recklessly, and indeed, inefficiently criminal.
Bush's campaign in Iraq resulted in 300,000+ non-combatant deaths. Evidently, you don't believe that this is a crime if it is chargable to a Republican administration. I disagree. You've claimed that I've prejudged the actions of the Bush administration in favor of guilt. It seems to me, conversely, that you've prejudged them in favor of innocence. But I'm willing to accept the findings of an independent tribunal, and that seems to be a point in my favor that's not in yours.
I'll note also that he's changed his term for what he once referred to as Bush administration "crimes" to "actions."
I believe them to be crimes, as you well know. But I also acknowledge that you've had a point in your criticism that such usage is prejudicial, and trying for more neutral language. But I'm not willing to let neutral language become an excuse for a lack of accountability. Crimes are still crimes, whether or not we follow the linguistic niceity of not naming them as such until a competent judiciary does.
As for stu's "partisan rube" insult, I'll not respond--well, except to wonder whether there's some cyclic lunar influence at play here.
You're lending your title and status to the argument that waterboarding isn't torture, and you know that this argument is simultaneously (a) a Bush administration defense that is radically inconsistent with prior US precedent on precisely this question, and (b) a precedent that will predictably lead to the torture of US soldiers and civilians. If you're good with that, then calling you a partisan rube bends over backwards to give you the benefit of doubt, doesn't it?
stu, a couple of points:
Notwithstanding his opposition to waterboarding, I think Panetta had to admit that it (among other intelligence techniques) contributed to the successful OBL hunt, as this fair summary has it:
"Intelligence garnered from waterboarded detainees was used to track down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and kill him, CIA Chief Leon Panetta told NBC News on Tuesday.
'Enhanced interrogation techniques' were used to extract information that led to the mission’s success, Panetta said during an interview with anchor Brian Williams. Those techniques included waterboarding, he acknowledged.
Panetta, who in a 2009 CIA confirmation hearing declared 'waterboarding is torture and it’s wrong,' said Tuesday that debate about its use will continue.
'Whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always gonna be an open question,' Panetta said."
The rest of your claims about torture aren't really germane to the specific point about Panetta's admission. One in particular, though--that waterboarding will lead the terrorists to torture our captured military personnel--is absurd. Like other fanatical enemies (e.g., the North Koreans and Red Chinese in the Korean War, the North Vietnamese and VC in the Vietnam War), jihadi terrorists' tactics aren't going to be influenced one way or the other by our selective use of waterboarding. What breath-taking naivete!
And the continuation by the Obama administration of various anti-terrorist measures used during the Bush administration makes the current administration subject to similar charges you'd like to see brought against the Bush administration. And in fact a case could be made for even greater culpability on the part of the Obama administration for its prosecution of a war against Libya without any Congressional approval or debate (unlike the Bush administration's constitutional deferences to Congress in the cases of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq).
And in fact our overseas intelligence operations in hostile countries in particular are designed to function outside the laws of those countries.
Truthers are not liberals -
They're closest to libertarians, 'patriots,' as they call themselves -
see: Alex Jones.
They vote for Ron Paul...
I haven't read an account of what took place at Blogger. I use blogger, but don't really know who put it together, or who maintains it, or how it works. Would it be possible for an outside individual to cause the shutdown of this last week? Did it have to be done by an inside party? Is it possible it was done to disproportionately target Ann Althouse's blog? How many blogs were affected?
has the damage now been completely repaired? By whom? How were the repairs done?
I wouldn't know how to begin to answer those questions.
About the OBL question: there was a neat documentary last night on one of the major channels called Killing Bin Laden. It developed a blow by blow account of what took place. Apparently when the SEALS shot Bin Laden's son it was on the second floor. OBL looked down over the railing of the third floor and was fired at, but the SEALS missed. They then cornered him in his room. His youngest wife came running at them, and one popped her in the leg, and then bullets hit OBL in the chest and another took off the top of his head.
He had an AK-47 and another weapon in the room but wasn't holding them. He must have known he was outgunned, but whether he tried to surrender wasn't clear. The documentary narrator said the mission was to KILL Bin Laden, and there was never any attempt to capture him. And they wanted him in the sea so no country would have to have a Mecca type of place for all the world's terrorists to congregate around.
I'd like to see the doc again. I watched it in between watching the Miami Heat take a beating from the Chicago Bulls. I predicted the Heat would not win the championship. LeBron James doesn't think well in clutch situations. It's not so much his lack of talent. It's an inability to stay cool in the clutch.
That's what the Seals had: they stayed very cool.
OBL panicked and hid in the corner of his room behind his wife, and his stash of pornography videos.
For Brett, from a U of Ohio/Scripps Howard poll (2006):
“How likely is it that people in the federal government either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action to stop the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East?” the poll asked.
A full 22.6% of Democrats said it was “very likely.” Another 28.2% called it “somewhat likely.” That is: More than half of Democrats, according to a neutral survey, said they believed Bush was complicit in the 9/11 terror attacks.
http://prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=04&year=2011&base_name=republican_birthers_and_democr
Is Ron Paul a truther?
The Illinois Central Gulf
Rails of commerce
Rails of freedom
Rails of history
Rails of hope
Trains of freight
Trains of souls
Trains of ballad
Trains of myth
I ride those rails
I feel that sway
I hear those songs
I know their pain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRdSIOdWet0&feature=related
Rape of the Lock
Without his clothes on
She probably mistook him
For a Bowery bum
Taking advantage
Of an unlocked door
For a free shower.
Kirby:
You can see the sort of "romantic revolutionary" role-model bin Laden thought of himself being.
The Che Guevara thing of living in the woods, like boy scouts, carrying around weapons, and living in a hyped-up state of paranoia about being caught or betrayed at any moment. Wearing camouflaged fatigues, eating out of cans, etc.
In the end, the Great Man was holed up in a bedroom of a safe-house, with his wives and television to keep him occupied. Dreaming of the next big score, like a kid with a computer game.
How pathetic. A man who--with his wealth--could have started clinics and aid programs for his people--but who chose to be naughty instead, plotting suicide bombings and hi-jackings.
Curtis, I think if he had started a school of stand-up comedy in the Gaza Strip, and exported their comedians to Israel and to America this would go much further than bombs and kidnappings and assassinations in terms of warming our hearts toward his ideals.
But the problem is that many cultures' ideas of actions are very narrow. Humor itself requires education not only on the part of the humorist but on the part of the listeners. It requires subtlety and vulnerability and many other things that are more or less anathema in the warrior culture in which OBL was raised and which limits and proscribes what he is able to say.
It's almost funny that they have to blow themselves up to make a statement within their own culture.
If it wasn't so tragic, that is, it would be funny.
For us, humor is a staple now, and much our culture is attuned to it. When we look at OBL in his pathetic rags watching TV, we are tempted to make it into a satire, and to see all the ironies in it. It's how we view things now.
OBL with his porno stash squeaked about American women (which he then watched!). Mohammed Atta chose to spend his last night on earth at a strip club.
These things are funny for us, but not for them. They haven't got stand-up comedy.
The Jews do: which is why we like the Jews. Our cultures are extremely similar. Our poetry is similar. Even our public transportation is more or less the same.
We have similar plumbing, and hygiene notions.
It's weird how far outside our culture OBL is. The way to get us to listen is through humor.
It's why we accept the Tibetans because the Zen concepts are humorous. We like Basho and company because they are funny.
Our culture just works that way now. If you want to be heard in the larger culture, you have to be funny. This is why Billy Collins has been one of the very few poets of the last fifty years to become popular.
LANGUAGE poets have almost no humor, so they can't get out.
Humor is essentially dialogical and democratic. Marxists don't like it, and never did, as a result.
It bothers me that Huckabee left the race because he was the funniest. I think the funniest candidate wins. It's what we most highly value as a culture.
KO forgets the jesuits and other christians--even lutherans--criticized humor/satire/theatrics.
St Augustine, that commie pinko, approved of the closing the old roman theatres, full of comedy, circus acts and porn.
While humor can certainly have the ability to momentarily disarm one’s opponent, I hope you’re just being “funny” about placing the power of humor at such an elevated level. Running the government like an episode of Hee Haw probably won’t have any lasting effect in unraveling the world’s complexities or furthering our credibility as a world power.
The formula for what makes people laugh doesn’t have anything to do with education. Even innately stupid and uneducated people can respond to base, toilet bowl humor, yucking it up with the likes of Howard Stern. I once sat through an entire performance of a popular stand-up comedienne in Las Vegas and did not once crack a smile, while all around me were howling like hyenas. The guy was practically doing arm-pit farting, which I guess is funny if you’re an eight-year-old. And I challenge any of you bloggers who have a shred of intelligence and/or decency to sit through the movie “The Aristocrats” and tell me you laughed, as did the entire audience when I attended a showing. My point is that what makes people laugh is stunningly subjective, as is just about everything.
If only humor were the simple cure-all you propose, we could lounge about howling like loons and holding our sides. But what happens when the laughter stops? People sober up and still have to tackle the mess at their feet. I guess we can either continue that effort or die laughing.
I need to amend something I wrote, as I've found on this blog that if you aren't precise in how you express yourself, it might be remarked upon or misinterpreted.
I should have said, "The formula for what makes people laugh doesn’t NECESSARILY have anything to do with education." I'd say certain types of humor, e.g., political satire and social observation, require a certain level of intelligence and awareness, which may or may not be the result of formal education.
I was thinking too that I had to amend my thesis somewhat since back in the day Pat Paulsen (who was a somewhat serious comedian on Laugh-In) was also a perennial candidate for president, but never gleaned more than about 1% of the vote (I think it wasn't even close to 1%).
So I wanted to say something like: among two serous candidates who are otherwise closely matched: the one who has a better sense of humor seems to win.
A really good sense of humor will not lapse in terms of a moral and political vision into farting or arm-pit jokes, but might bring up alligators in a moat along the Mexican border, for instance, or undercut Hillary by saying that she is "all right," a wonderful use of understatement which put BO into the authoritative role, and virtually crippled Hillary's chances of gaining the office after that.
It's tiny little touches like that: esp. ones that have an undertow to them which seem to cave in on opponents.
Huckabee had that ability.
Republicans have to always be on their toes because every journalist is a raging Democrat out to kill the Republicans. The only break they ever get is Fox News.
It always comes down to one or two sound bites toward the end. Of course you have to get that far, first.
Palin's collapse on the Couric set when she was asked if she reads anything, and if so, what it was, was astonishing. Palin couldn't believe what she was being asked, but Couric's intense rudeness had been such a slap in Palin's face, so unsisterly, so unfeminist, that Palin blanched and sat there seething.
That, and her interview with Gibson destroyed her candidacy.
McCain is not terribly telegenic due to all the beatings he got in Hanoi.
A quick witticism here or there would have changed that, but he didn't have that kind of mind. He's too serious.
Huckabee could suddenly wing a perfect hit and tip the scales.
I don't think any of the other Republicans are capable of this.
Bachman gets way too outraged.
Pence also seems way too angry.
If the Repubs are going to win, they need someone who comes across well in a collision w/ the left media.
What should Palin have said to Couric when asked what she read? What kind of response would have worked?
"I read Playboy, but only for the articles."
Said with enough seriousness to disguise the irony, it might have actually revived her in the polls.
"I read Karl Marx. I am especially fond of his letters to Engels."
This would not have worked so well.
But what if she had put it in a questioning form:
"What would work for your audience, Katie? Karl Marx and his correspondence with Engels?"
Too bitter, I should think, and it would alienate the audience, and we all know what Marx thought of alienation.
"I read Gun magazine, and Alaska fishing and hunting stories. I'm basically a huntress! Sometimes I read Foreign Affairs, but only for laughs!"
It's hard to figure out exactly how to play the media. You have to be wily, and on your toes, and use jiu-jitsu.
Huckabee had gotten quite good at that.
I still don't understand why Huckabee chose to exonerate Keith Richards for the speeding ticket of the 60s. It seemed quite an abuse of power in order to garner a chance to play music aside the rock giant.
Bush 2 was really good at playing with the image the left had constructed for him.
"Well, Katie, what makes you think I CAN read?"
And then looking straight faced into the camera, doing his best impression of Alfred E. Neuman.
America would have lined up to vote for the man, as they did.
Kirby Olson, if you will run for President, you have my vote, and I've never voted Republican. It would be an amusing four years, even if we appeared as buffoons to the rest of the world. How puffed up could Al-Qaeda, Kadafi or Al-Assad get if you lobbed them with a daily dose of humor instead of artillery?
Huckabee's pardoning of Keith Richards' speeding ticket is hysterically funny. I'd vote for him, too, based on that alone.
Huckabee pardoned a criminal in Arkansas who moved to Washington and shot and killed four Tacoma police officers in a doughnut shop about a year ago. I suspect the Keith Richards thing may be an oblique way of referencing that incident.
I did run in 2004 and got 3 votes. In 2008 I got no votes (I decided at the last moment that even I couldn't bring myself to vote for myself or my crazy ideas). Perhaps in 2012 I should run again. It will depend on the quality of the eventual R candidate. If it's close I'll have to put my shoulder to the wheel. I think Huckabee did pardon Richards. It was completely disgusting. A complete abuse of the law based solely on the guitarist's immense talent. That's almost French to pardon a crime just because of artistic talent. Absolutely hinkmeisters. You'd think someone from Arkansas would dot the i's, cross the t's, even if they don't have any in their names.
Apparently the only condition on the criminal's pardon was that he leave Arkansas and never come back. If there had been a trial it might have been interesting to at least hear the criminal's side of the story.
The Tacoma police hunted the guy down and filled him full of holes before he had a chance to explain his version of what happened at the doughnut shop or why he'd been pardoned by Governor Huckabee.
Weird, isn't it, how having killed Osama lightens up the dialogue?
I mention his passing with some seriousness and it occasions a discussion on humor in high places.
After 9/11 even the liberals were talking about pay-back. That lasted for about two months.
Clearly, Republicans' only meaningful response to Obama's victory in killing OBL is humor. "Ha ha ha, we got that lurchy devil! Imagine that!"
Kirbyolson, were you being oblique about the Huckabee pardoning? I didn't get that. But then I haven't followed Huckabee, and I certainly wouldn't make light of his pardoning a criminal who then moved on to murder, but I need to check the facts.
The Richards' pardon was for a speeding ticket -- an offense committed many years prior to the pardon and before Richards became the best-selling author, faithful husband, doting father, and law-abiding citizen he is today. Now he just needs to stop being a role model for that poseur Johnny Depp and he'll be ready for rock-n-roll sainthood.
I believe in redemption. We all need it at some juncture in our messy lives.
Curtis often attributes our discussions to his remarks. I find this funny. So perhaps that's the occasion for humor.
Frankie, I was talking directly about the speeding ticket, but was being somewhat facetious. At the same time, serious.
The pardon of the cop killer (who shot several police officers in Tacoma, WA) was part of a general amnesty accorded prisoners in Arkansas by the then-governor Huckabee. The murder that the man (I forget his name) had committed was a crime done in his teens and he had been in prison for twenty years and so Huckabee pardoned him.
He then went on to create havoc in the NW about two summers back. I was teasingly referring to that via the Richards' speeding ticket, but was at least facetiously discussing the horror of the ticket on its own terms.
Huckabee has spoken on his television program (Saturday and Sunday nights at about 11) about wishing to pardon Richards. Huckabee plays bass guitar and wants to play a gig with Richards.
But I don't think Richards should be pardoned. I really don't. I know a speeding ticket is a peccadillo and all that, but he's pardoning him for the wrong reasons. He's using his power as governor to release a man from a speeding ticket in order to get a gig with him which he will in turn parlay into a push for his nomination or recording career. This is unprincipled, and as tiny a misdemeanor as it seems, it's just plainly not right to do it this way. So I'm being facetious, but I really am serious, too.
Public transportation is one thing, but there are rules regarding private transportation. One of them is that you shouldn't speed. What kind of message are we sending if we say it's ok to speed if you can play a mean rhythm guitar?
Richards' car was also full of drugs, and he was drunk while driving. The ticket had already been reduced to a parking ticket, but Richards more or less suckered the governor into the pardon, and then Richards disses Huckabee in his autobiography for not really having done anything for him, and Richards couldn't bother to listen to Huckabee play guitar.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theticket/20101115/pl_yblog_theticket/keith-richards-disses-mike-huckabees-guitar-skills
I think this dismal run-in helps us to see Huckabee's clemency in a strange new light. He can be too clement.
We need a draconian president who can close the borders, pound on speeders, and execute all laws to their fullest extent. The last thing we need is mercy for drug addled seniors who remain unrepentant about their wild youths.
Kirby:
If I'm irrelevant, then maybe I should stop visiting.
You don't want a spade in the sensorium.
There's some gray area between all-determining and irrelevant. You're neither one. I was just giving you what world heavyweight wrestling federation titan John Sena (spelling?) calls, "An Attitude Adjustment."
Relax, and enjoy it!
The Attitude Adjustment starts at 1:05:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOfXYEp5A6g
Why is there a problem with seesawing between seriousness and humor? A little levity, please. Has no one here ever laughed at a funeral or seen the old Mary Tyler Moore episode of the funeral of Chuckles the Clown?
The argument could be made that attributing the humor expressed on this blog to being indicative of how all Republicans responded to OBL's killing is the same mentality Kirbyolson employs when accusing all liberals of being commie/pinko/Marxists. It's that darned word "All" that sticks in the craw.
But maybe that was the point. I'm doing my best trying to ferret out the true intent of all these comments, struggling with my nature of being too literal. I wonder if I should have accepted the homeopathic remedy once offered me by a Wiccan acquaintance to cure this personality glitch.
Lots of smoke and mirrors.
Oh -- and before I dismount from my high horse, but not to condone any of these offenses -- am I the only one here who managed to navigate my youth without getting arrested for speeding (horrors!), being under the influence and/or in possession of an illegal substance, and doing a whole lot of other really stupid things?
Let he who has not sinned . . .
the name of the killer that Huckabee pardoned popped into my head while reading your comments, Frankie. His name I think was Maurice Clemmons.
Clemmons got clemency.
There's a ring to it.
Christ did allow the woman caught in adultery to go without being stoned. And yet, in the 60s, there was a song that went, "Everybody must get stoned."
I was also never arrested for speeding, or drugs. I've never been arrested. I did get a speeding ticket once as an adult. I wasn't paying attention to the speed about six years ago. I appealed it and it was knocked down to a parking ticket, but not because I can play the guitar.
I can play it, but not well enough to be in a band that anybody would pay to see. Most would pay not to see or hear my guitar playing, including me.
I wonder if the main reason Huckabee dropped out is that he knew the Clemmons' clemency would become the albatross that BO hung around his head.
I'd guess a poll of Americans would show that 98% of Americans were against him for that, while 99.9% would probably be for the clemency shown to Richards.
But for the wrong reason.
Here at LS, we stand by reasonable principles at all costs and even in the face of crunchy rhythms played by British rockers.
But I don't think the Rocker should be Stoned. He not only already was, but he is, still, a Stone.
A certain rolling ambiguity characterizes the comments of most of our commenters, a tone set perhaps by me. We all try to be specific, but occasionally get lost among our own verbiage, and cannot find the way out. It's just the norm. Literalness will help some, but Wiccan spells, or spellings, or misspellings for that matter, are likely to add further strains of confusion to your reading ability in these here notes. Not sure what would help.
Just sticking around and getting the hang of it, and us. Notice whenever we go for the "all" we hit the stone wall and crash and burn.
That's I think a big problem today. We want absolutes, and we want the absolutes to rock, but we want clemency for ourselves at least in terms of a certain leeway for ambiguity if caught being too literal. As you point out, Christ himself could be clement when dealing with who's throwing the first stone, or storing thrones, and standing on rocks instead of sand.
Have I made myself clear?
poetry
where's the poetry
reminiscense oblique
no one remembers the red river cart
who knows who opened up the northwest
and who were these strange mixed mongrels who drove the carts
from pembina
from ft garry from st joseph
to st paul along the st. peter
long before lewis and clark
they trapped the
montana river valleys
transport to heaven in a chariot
is the fate of odd prophets
be they hung or burned or otherwise
the state the law will do you in
for justice' sake
the train came along
the tracks were laid
the buffalo hunters stared
in disbelief
although as they say
they saw it coming
down the tracks
now who is virtually transported
not me
i remain a passenger on the path to nowhere
i am lost in an exitential fog trailing the steam engines
these are the parameters of my dreams
i hear the red river cart from 10 miles away
never a more green machine was made
alouette jauntee' allouette
listen to the red river jig
john hanson
All is perfectly clear, Herr Bloggermeister, in an ambiguously, literal sort of way.
Now, back to working feverishly on my public transportion poem.
Bob Dylan got arrested for wandering around a nice neighborhood looking like a bum.
He didn't protest, and accepted the apology of the police officer as though no apology were needed.
Rainy Day Women was a Mexican protest song about Women's rights.
It had very little to do with drugs, and everything to do with oppression and judgement -
Mostly, it's about oppression from within the counter-culture, but people didn't really get that.
Perhaps they were too stoned
Hanson's poem knocked me for a loop. What a beautiful thing!
Someone should write a poem about the trains to Auschwitz.
i know the dynamic here nobody wants to encourage kirby what do we all cower in fear that his lunacy will get out of control and he'll end up running for president and actually winning the true american dark horse wins again it's the stuff of enchantment literature well i guess it could happen to a young kid born in a hut in kenya to a warrior chieftain well hung businessman and a frippy hippy mother who seemed to like hanging out near beaches for soem reason or actually bathing in the sea what's up with that i guess if it can happen to a kid like that it could happen to kirby although if they look at the colleges he went to o come now that will never fly student of alan ginsburg running for president
(i guess if he continues to adamantly forswear against everything ginsburg represents and does it with simplicity and elegance he could use it to his conservative advantage)
and his political philosophy is based on the poems of gregory corso
consider that
but i'm talking about the poem kirby wrote
doesn't anyone see the genius in that
JADL J STU (good poem) BRETT and the newbeez come on CURTIS look at that poem it represents a successful incorporation of traditional style and post post post modernist lunacy....i mean come on people where are the literati cognizenti intellientsia popparazzi when you need them
probably lost in some arcane text by rumi sitting in a turkish cafe getting ready to huff on a hookah
anyway
i want to comment on the paint on the wall can i interest anyone in a discussion
it seems as if this is something we can take time for
as dryden may well have said
kirby has had a tough year
i sense he needs a little honest back stroking encouragement
more completely stupid poems
for the masses
i think it is the thing that is missing in the whole political discussion
nobody talks about stupid poems or any poems for that matter i'd like newt gingrinch and obama to sit down and recite poetry and comment on emerson perhaps or sandburg
( i know what some of you are thinking - hanson maybe is sounding really lutheran surrealist...shit i may need counseling....anyone)
it rains in the midwest
and does not stop
this alas may be the last you hear of me
there's a rapture in the clouds it's acomin'
:)
jh
i just read the curtis poem
i like it but i think curtis may be grandstanding here a bit
i mean
it isn't a poem about transportation i know i know it isn't a poem about anything but i think the idea here is that kirby gets to tell us what we're to write poems about and that makes all the difference on this blog don't you think
ah well whwhat's the use
nobody ever listens to me anywaay
pooh pooh
Who let the Monks out? Who? Who?
jh,
I do like the idea that poetry threads ought to be about poetry.
Kirby's poem starts with an encounter between a train and a bicyclist that the train loses. That's surreal. Mere reality is railroad guys using the euphemism "making hamburger" to describe what happens when a 5000 ton train collides with a 170 lb human. But Kirby's poetry is no more beholden to the real world than are his politics: they're more like a mix between a Rube Goldberg machine and a script summary for "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World." -- "He just sailed right out there!"
But it does seem like an odd poem for a Lutheran. If there is a theme or a moral, to it, it seems to be that of helplessness in the hands of malevolent fate, as a small accident cascades inexorably into a catastrophe, which in the end signifies nothing... vanity... Ecclesiasties as recited by the Joker.
Is it just me, or is Kirby just replaying himself as a seven-year old in 1963, eating macaroni and velveta in his pajamas, groving on Gomez crashing his model trains, and not even noticing how hot Morticia is?
Stu, I was expressing an exaggerated concern about public transportation which isn't always the safest mode of transport since you're putting yourself into the hands of the government which says, "Leave the driving to us!" Lutherans believe that the individual should never surrender themselves or their free wheel to a larger agency, or that to do so, risks everything. At any rate, that's how I see it from within Lutheran terms.
Also, I don't think there was ever a time in which I would not have recognized the hotness of Morticia Addams!
Kirby,
I was expressing an exaggerated concern about public transportation which isn't always the safest mode of transport since you're putting yourself into the hands of the government
This is an ideological approach to the question of personal safety. I prefer a fact based one. I found a curious web page at the Bureau for Transportation Statistics(!), which specifies the risk associated with various kinds of travel, e.g., in fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles. This is a somewhat odd measure, because deaths per passenger mile seems more relevant.
Still, let's take these as starting points, and go from there.
Commuter rail is listed as having 12.0 observed deaths per 100 million vehicle miles. The train that I take into work, which I'll take as being relatively representative of the breed, carries something like 300 passengers. So that's 0.04 deaths per 100 million passenger miles.
For buses, the reported rate is 3.3 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles. Let's assume that a bus typically carries about 20 passengers. That would work out to 0.16 deaths per 100 million passenger miles, i.e., 4x the risk of riding trains.
For cars, the mortality rate is 1.3 passengers per 100 million vehicle miles. Let's err on the generous side, and assume that each car has three occupants. That's 0.4 deaths per 100 million passenger miles, i.e., riding passenger cars is about 10x more likely to get you killed than riding the same distance via commuter rail, and 2.5x more likely to get you killed than riding a bus.
Lutherans believe that the individual should never surrender themselves or their free wheel to a larger agency, or that to do so, risks everything. At any rate, that's how I see it from within Lutheran terms.
Hmm. My perspective is that Lutherans expect that the individual ought to use their rational facilities. Moreover, what you see as a sacrifice of freedom, I see as a reduction of risk and as a gain of time. I can read on the train, and do, without imperilling myself or my fellow travelers. That doesn't work when I'm driving, and not even when I'm walking!
I don't think there was ever a time in which I would not have recognized the hotness of Morticia Addams!
:-)
But Stu the problem with that perspective is that it takes into account ALL drivers. With government trains and busses you are getting at the very least a vetted professional driver. They are likely to be better than the usual amateur who drives only for their own pleasure or their own comfort.
However, there are good drivers and better drivers.
I, for instance, have never had an accident. I clock plenty of miles. I do about 20,000 miles a year in the van, with kids yelling and throwing things, like fits.
But I'm supersafe, even though I go the speed limit plus five and often visit NYC, Philly, and Boston, and do my best to edge out taxis, busses and other mere professionals.
At any rate, I think there is a variable in there that you failed to account for: the safe driver. I've been driving since I was fourteen, and have never even had the smallest scrape.
It's true that I don't read, play pingpong, indulge in sexual foreplay, bob and weave for no good reason, chat on a cellphone, eat Sushi with wasabi, or do any of the other things that many do behind the wheel. I occasionally glance at a map that I drape over the wheel and glance at during stop lights if I'm in particularly difficult terrain.
I'd rather be in my car, too, because the public transport packs in people who use really bizarre colognes and perfumes and deodorants which kick off immense coughing and sneezing jags. One of the many many things I love about my wife is that she doesn't do any of this stuff. She goes out without all these stinking essences, and keeps the makeup to a minimum, too, and plus she lets me drive.
Did I mention that I love driving?
I love it almost as much as arguing.
That, by the way, is what JH doesn't do when he posts. He is Mr. Peace, and doesn't openly argue. So no one fires back at him. We look at his oddly peaceful missile that he fires across the bow, and admire its trajectory, but since it doesn't seem personally meant to alter our course or our hairstyle in any permanent sense, most of what just admire it as it goes by, and then return to one another's more contentious postings.
At any rate, given that I have a PERFECT driving record, doesn't that put me statistically above all other vehicles that the state would have me transported within?
I do get on the subways in NYC but mostly just to jawdrop as I look at their absolutely rancid condition: rats all over the place, bums, graffiti, and sometimes they just never show up. My favorite stuff: gum spots on the subway landing from generations of gum chewers.
I tend to keep my car spotless by comparison.
i think this morticia addams thing may lead somewhere special
She died in 1983 from colon cancer and is buried beside her mother in Anaheim.
Her name was Carolyn something. Carolyn Jones, perhaps.
She wrote a novel about a famous Gothic actress and her many love affairs.
This could lead to the library! That's where everything around here seems to lead, JH.
I dare you to find and read her novel. It's mentioned on the Wikipedia page.
hollywood horrifies me
i want nothing to do with any of it
i think it is the ultimate in distortion
we no longer know or care what it means to be human
we don't have to
narcolepsy reigns
i am not capable of reading the novel
but thanks for the dare
i doubt it's in our library
i could look
but i find it hard to care
but morticia
what is this about morticia
i could see her lingering like an acolyte in a lutheran surrealist liturgy
i'm reading a book now that covers 2000 years of christian practice in worship
and i need to get in shape
long walks
manual labor
hell
summer
twang!!
jh
Kirby,
I'll grant that drivers vary considerably in ability, and therefore in the risk they present to themselves and to others. But with most car accidents (not all), it takes two to tango. You can greatly reduce the risk you bring to driving, but there are only so many things you can do about the risk that other people bring. So I figure that you can halve your risk, but not much more. Trains are still 5x safer than that.
But I don't think that the safety issue has much to do with your preference for driving -- it seems to me that this is far more based on a desire to isolate yourself from the public, and the occasional rudeness and inconsideration that comes from dealing with common men and women. My experience is that mass transit systems vary tremendously along this dimension. Some are pretty reasonable -- like the Metra line I take. I've been subject to much more rude and inconsiderate behavior as a driver than I've ever experienced on the Metra. And some are pretty bad. That's life.
we're reading a book at table now one of the odd things benedictines seem to do and it traces the line of thought from st francis assissi to the reformation thinkers to the humanist positivists to the rabid misguided atheists who are only virtually here anyway
anyway
it is a good thread
francis poohpoohed the institutions
he was a catholic hippy
charitable anarchist for jesus
there was epistemological hiway robbery after ockham
that sliced through everything
realism was cut assunder
illusion became as valid as real experience
delussion too
i don't know
i just love reading your guys's banter
think about it
having extended conversations by tapping and immediately sending treatises on absolutely nothing as a way of spending time
i think it' is great
what an exercise in banality
thomas aquinas would love this
an yous guys makes its souns so clear
i think it was descarte in front of him that put an end to thought
but such is obviously not the case
we are thinking
here's a couplet
rickshaws are the way to go
bring an end to the couch potato
blessed 5th sunday of easter
i guess we're all here
someone told me this morning that
jesus is coming in october
i'm off to see him today
in the eucharist
yahzahhhh
jh
Stu, I've always gone out of my way to avoid public transit. In Seattle I tried to live near enough to where I work so I could take a bicycle. In Delhi, I live close enough that I can walk to work, although in winter that's been fairly touchy since I also have to escort my children to dance, soccer, basketball, wrestling, church, and so if I spend a half hour walking to get a car it wrecks the timeline of the day. If I lived in suburban Chicago and had to work downtown I'm pretty sure I'd use mass transit, but I'm also pretty sure I'd hate it. I hate crowds. Even sitting once at a football game in Husky Stadium at the U. of Washington when the WAVE started, I refused to be part of it, couldn't stand THAT MANY PEOPLE and united through the wave it made me feel just plain sick. I don't know why.
I had to get outta there.
My wife loves Times Square. I can't stand it.
JH, there's a new Hollywood blockbuster out called TOO BIG TO FAIL. A friend of mine at church is friends with Bill Pullman, whoI think is in it. Pullman actually attended SUNY Delhi or taught here thirty years ago and is friends with a lot of local people still. My friend went and saw Warren Buffett, John Stossel, James Woods, George Soros, William Hurt, and about 300 other people who are bigwigs in Hollywood and other related media. They're all too big to fail!
The premiere was held at the MOMA screening room and the reception at the Four Seasons Hotel.
I don't see movies very often, esp. current run ones unless Barney or someone like that is the star.
Maybe I'll go see this one. The whole idea is that we had to have the bailout, or we would have had a catastrophic depression.
All my friends around here seem to think there is a cabal of rich people who run everything, and Democrats and Republicans are smokescreens behind which these people hide to give the lie to diversity of opinion.
Let your hearts be troubled.
Or not.
Thy father's house has many mansions, but in most of them the Hollywood elite is having a party.
see this is what happens
after the poet gets thrown under the bus
people walking on the street stand around and wonder if something should be done with the corpse this happens all day long until someone calls nine one one and an ambulance shows up which carries the faintly breathing poet to the ER...a mere semblance of a pulse emitting
william carlos williams is the attending ER doc and says
ooh boy you're in a hell of a mess
poetry has seen better days
give this guy some oxygen
clean out his orifices and wounds
and keep him on a glucose drip we might have to go in and remove his spleen
the poet stands up suddenly and says
hickory dickory dock
the mouse on my computer is stuck
then falls back into an opium laced swoon and is transported as it were by angels to a soft gentle place
jh
i know this is more of a prose poem but i think i've earned the right to do prose poetry if kirby disses this one on some vague technicality i will be
urinated upon
Monday is M Day, the 30th. Contest closes at 11:59 PM on the 30th. I will wait for 59 more seconds after the deadline. Then voting is on Tuesday, the 31st, until midnight.
I grew up in a troika. My dad and two of his associates, a psychiatrist and a clinical psychologist, were hired originally by a Democrat in 1961, but they worked under a Republican governor from 1964 to 1970. After a decade of government work they each went into private practice in towns, one of them the state capital, large enough to be a factor in statewide politics.
One of them owned a yacht for a number of years, a thirty footer called the Spindrift. My dad put up a third of the money when the boat was first purchased, but eventually sold off his share. The colleague lived next door to a timber baron who owned the swimming pool and tennis court where Roethke died. The timber baron also owned a 90 foot yacht that he moored at his personal wharf.
My dad's associate moored his thirty footer at Shilshole, across the Sound on Seattle's north end. I got invited out for a day of sailing a number of times and it was great fun to motor through the Chittenden Locks and then sail up to Lake Washington, where exposure to fresh water would kill off a year or more's worth of saltwater barnacles.
We had to go under the Fremont Bridge and through the Montlake Cut to get to Lake Washington, so we'd sound the air horn four times, twice going and twice on the return, to raise the drawbridges on the annual barnacle stripping exercise. It was a blast, two actually, one long and one short.
all these comments and so little poetry
i'm not sure who to vote for here
so little enthusiasm
you'd think poetry is about politics
after reading curtis' pome again i find i like it
and the trolley car accident helps to situate the words in a context
finally she was transported out of her trial
poor frieda
i vote for frida
jh
I liked JH's poem Red River Cart, and if someone else had written it, I might have voted for it. I'm just so used to every comment from JH being poetry that he has to do something else to startle me.
Stu's poem on the other hand seemed so unlike him, such a growth spurt, that I'm voting for it:
The Illinois Central Gulf
Rails of commerce
Rails of freedom
Rails of history
Rails of hope
Trains of freight
Trains of souls
Trains of ballad
Trains of myth
I ride those rails
I feel that sway
I hear those songs
I know their pain
I also like Curtis' piece on Frida K. But Frida K was a communist, and I can't bring myself to vote for a kkkommunist.
Hmm. I'm taking a quick break from grant writing to vote. Thanks to Kirby for his vote, but I'm afraid my vote's going to go to JH this time. I had to look up Red River Carts on Google. They look like cut Conestoga's to me, and some may have started that way. Eminently practical.
I vote for Craig's poem.
Kirby's got my vote. How do you break a mold that's already a flaming wreck? If you need me I'll be in a first class cabin on the tarmac at JFK, waiting for the mechanic to fix the landing gear.
5-way tie with JH, Stu, Craig, Curtis, and moi. Congratulations, fellow winners!
hey you're a big time believer in american capitalism
i think you should have a poetry contest
and put up a 100 dollars
or thalers as luther would say
then we wouldn't have all this dastardly equinimity to deal with
make it like prosports
maybe that would inspire some protestant work ethic poems
or some deweyian
pragmatic poems
ones that pay for themselves
i missed craigs' poem altogether
i would've voted for that one
as enigmatic transport
gotta go read ancient hebrew poems now
yadda yadda yadda
jh
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