tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47324485330700982832024-02-06T21:01:06.165-08:00grimishamgrimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.comBlogger201125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-603817948360157312019-05-16T09:57:00.000-07:002019-05-16T09:57:51.186-07:00Untitled for those crushed under the boot of the patriarch but refused to die and became beautiful, and for the dead of the Ghost Ship, an excerpt from a longer meditation<br /><br />“Reality scared the shit out of her too” - Lydia Lunch<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Unloved sidewalks of America. Lonely breezes in the suburbs. Closed up houses, stifled with anger, blood, and lingering rape. These houses don’t love and she is surprised they don’t collapse in ugly mold and nocturnal bleeding. A teenager, an idea new to the American century. Hungry, angry, and cannibalistic, most are afraid to be alone with her. The rapists and junkies choose different alleys. She builds little mountains of her bad energy tries to push them into crowds of people. Most walk out of buildings now tainted with anger. Fear is on everyone’s mind. A body lies in the park for a week. Electricity is free on the street, and the break ins are irregular. One break in the thief cut his arm and left streaks where he made his rounds of the apartment scouring for valuables. He found little. Soon he would be in the park. This city will eat you, it will eat even its own rats before it dies.<br /><br />Car crashes and asthma begin to stalk the youth. Broken glass in bloody hair. Bikes dragged for blocks. The walls moving, lungs ceasing to function. Asleep at the wheel waking to pine trees fluttering their needles in the wind and everyone dead, walk for miles screaming at cars to stop in the dark.<br /><br />She couldn’t decide if owning a gun was a good idea. She would probably kill some motherfucker for no reason. Probably should just walk up and grab one off one these cowardly junkies and rapists scattered around.<br /><br />Fires spread on the highways of California, sometimes smoldering in the distance, sometimes kissing the shoulders, taking a truck or car here and there, and other times like waves it powers over the both sides of the highways melting cars abandoned by fleeing drivers. The fire manages to sneak into the cities, to hide in the walls of houses and warehouses. Then it spreads and can kill in minutes.<br /><br />You’ve known these places for years. Cramped, cluttered, with no protections. Forgotten, filled with paint and cords. Fire doesn’t care that these places saved your life, fire doesn’t care at all. Fire just appears when allowed. Your emotions or desire to not die painfully aren’t concerns for fire. These places saved your life. They saved you from living in your hometown with curdled aspirations, drinking beer on the back porch as moths electrocute themselves, the heat barely vanished from the day. The only loudness, drugged teens in their cars traveling the night, hoping to break free from this.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br />“What are you afraid of?” - Bikini Kill<br /><br /><br />grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-10179121019681451162015-08-31T08:30:00.000-07:002015-08-31T08:30:16.390-07:00For Grass and Galeano.<div class="MsoNormal">
Two men born in the century of the wind that sought life on
paper pages. Such a fragile thing was paper in the century of the wind.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One was born in the old world. The old world he was born
into had become sickened with war, racial fear, economic disasters, political
utopianism, and paranoia. It was in the grips of the of the spirits unveiled by
the events of Paris 1919. He grew up in a city that became captured by the
cultists of a man born of the bad eggs of the wounded old world. He joined the
children's crusade, marching like a tiny soldier thrown in the ranks with the
old and the forgotten. The cultist warned that the barbarians would come, and
come they did. An army that moved on rape, plunder, and gasoline thundered
across the old world, driving tanks over refugee columns, crucifying and
hanging people, and planting red flags across the lands squandered and poisoned
by the cult. This man dreamed of a boy who refuses to grow up, pounds on a
metal drum, and screams to shatter glass. He dreams of his country and the
times it endures, as it births the new.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The other man, this hopeful believer in pen and paper as
icons against the monolith of greed and insanity at the heart of the century of
the wind, was born in the new world. He was born in a land especially filled
with promise, culture and riches. It was compared to the old world, which this
man felt a little apprehensive about as he knew there were wonders here
that could never be replicated in the frozen ways of the old world. The economy
began to suffer and his country started to get rigid and fearful. Students
claiming they had the spirit of Tupac Amaru retreated and began to buy guns,
training themselves as urban guerillas. The state formed an army to fight its
own people and the streets shook with the martial columns that moved down them.
Torture chambers grew like fungus everywhere darkness lingered. This man began
to fear his own country and clutching a couple notebooks he fled. This
confirmed his dread of patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacists, and the the
envoys, prophets, and yes man of the great machine to the north. This machine
controlled the new world by owning its loans, and soon it ruled over the old
world when it collapsed in rot. His only weapons was history, writing utensils,
and his own imagination. This connected him to the man who crawled out of the
collapsed and putrid body of the old world, pushing through its dark and
frenzied convulsions like a maggot through forlorn meat.He saw new orders born
and died, and he wrote fables to explain them to those in remote future ages.
He drew grotesques that only hinted at the madness loose in the century of the
wind.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Both these men died in the age of distraction, their
messages clearly written for those with the time and patience to read them. We
find it harder and harder in this age to find time for such things, we risk
losing the histories of the century of the wind. What lessons and horrors could
be repeated when the distractions fades, when history returns to the ever
present now?.<o:p></o:p></div>
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grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-4026055555582753542015-06-30T09:47:00.002-07:002015-06-30T09:47:31.673-07:00July 17,2014<div class="MsoNormal">
“Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan
owns death.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
― William S Burroughs<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The child was not yet two. He reached for the blueberry bush
with his stubby little arms and stubby little fingers. He knew which ones to
pick. The ripe ones. The leaves of the bush were still damp from watering. The
drips of water caught the sun as its light cascaded over the house. He moved
the blueberries he picked to his mouth. One after another<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The associated press @ap<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Malaysia airlines has lost contact with a passenger plane
over the Ukraine.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The man felt pretty confident about the piece he just written.
He knew some changes needed to be made. He liked it though. He sent a copy to a
writer friend in another city to get her opinion on it. The child sat flipping
through the pages of a book. The book told of the vacation plans of a crab and
penguin.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Three men entered the bank. They carried assault rifles.
They had spare clips taped to their bodies. They left the bank manager tied up
and fled with three hostages. They used one of the hostage’s SUVs to flee the
scene. The police were behind them. The guns started firing. Police reporting
that the gunfire was almost continuous throughout the chase.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
IDF<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
@idfspokesman<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
BREAKING NEWS: A large IDF force has just launched a ground
operation in the Gaza Strip. A new phase of Operation Protective Edge has begun.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Shadows beneath the trees were cool pockets away from the
glare of the sun. The stroller travelled between these patches. The heat of the
day had begun to build in the air. There was still some coolness lingering, in
the stray breezes and in those cool pools of the tree shade.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fuck them they shouldn’t have been flying. This is a war.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The child had developed a routine for humpty dumpty. He
stomped around until he heard the line about humpty’s great fall. Then he flung
himself to the ground.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is what the plane looks like if it disappears.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I saw objects falling from the sky, I thought they were
bombs. I thought they would explode.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These are breaking news stories so we won’t be able to cover
these stories until Friday. Wait, I’m informed we don’t have a show on Friday,
which is good because those stories are super depressing…<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
- Steven Colbert<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A hostage had been shot and then flung from the car. She is
expected to survive. The police spotted an ambush. Bullet holes were in cars
and houses for miles. Another hostage was shot and flung from the car. She is
expected to live.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
America this is quite serious.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
America this is the impression I get from looking in the
television set.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
America is this correct?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Allen Ginsburg<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The child raised his arms in the air and then moved them
back down as itsy bitsy spider was sung. The glass walled community room of the
library contained the parents and the children. Books were read, bubbles blown
and songs were sung.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You know what's truly weird about any financial crisis? We
made it up. Currency, money, finance, they're all social inventions. When the
sun comes up in the morning it's shining on the same physical landscape, all
the atoms are in place.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Bruce Sterling<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Breaking: Malayasia Airlines flight MH17 shot down over
Ukraine. 298 people on board are all believed dead.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The man received an e-mail from his writing friend. She
confirmed what he suspected about the piece. It was solid. He had felt it and
it flowed well. He bundled the child in the stroller and they made their
way through the neighborhoods. It was time for lunch.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The tank moved down the street. Faces peered out of the doors
and windows of houses and watched it pass. Dust was in the air. Men moved in
formation after the tank. They observed the street through the sights of their
guns. The ground rumbled from nearby bombs.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The smoothie was a blend of frozen berries, bananas, milk,
yogurt, kale and peanut butter. The child slurped it through the straw of the
sippy cup. The child saw the trees and the houses pass. He knew the words for
these objects. He knew the words for the cars that traveled down the streets.
He reached his foot out of the stroller and kicked it through a leafy branch
that draped over the sidewalk.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They pushed their way through the swaying sunflowers. Here
and there they pointed. The brought tarps and covered the bodies they found
among the sunflowers. A finger of smoke stained the sky from where the plane
had crashed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Events are following one another at a mad pace<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Bruno Shulz<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The white smoke was the exhaust of rockets. The black smoke
was from the burning buildings.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The woman cleared the wall. She was looking for a cab to
hail. The driver was unable to stop as he cleared the turn. After striking the
woman he pulled his car to a halt and waited for the police to come. People
gathered around the body, after a while the singing of the traditional Thai
song deuan pen (full moon) was heard across the Chiang Mai highway. The crying
friends of the woman had gotten the gathering passersby to join in for the
singing. It was a favorite of the woman, who was already gone.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Two of the robbers were dead and the last hostage. She had
left her daughter in their car to get money out for a haircut. It is unknown at
this point if the fatal bullet was from the robbers or police. Shells are
everywhere. The chase ended when the tires of the suv were blown out. Tarps are
placed over the bodies.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The day moves on. Heat is slowly slipping away in the
shadows. The man looks at the computer screen. It is the only light in the
living room. The child is asleep and so is the man’s wife. The house is still.
He is reading some online tributes to John Coltrane who died on this day in
1967. He sees a post on Facebook he doesn’t understand. A cousin of a friend he
hasn’t thought of in a couple years has posted a picture on her Facebook wall
implying that this friend was dead. The man is confused thinking the cousin is
dead, but it’s the cousin posting it. There is a series of confused comments on
the photo. Someone said this is not the way to share this news. There might be
translation issues as the cousin is Thai, the man’s friend is part Thai and had
been living in Thailand for a while. He scrolls down the friend’s Facebook
page. Her last post is of her holding an Atlas Moth, the largest moth in the
world. It fills the palm of her cupped hand. The text of the post starts “I can
die now…”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“But the past is passed; why moralize upon it? Forget it.
See, yon bright sun has forgotten it all, and the blue sea, and the blue sky;
these have turned over new leaves.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because they have no memory . . . because they are not
human.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
― Herman Melville, Benito Cereno<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The dark of the backyard. The sky was a deep blue still
slightly pregnant with the day’s light. Trees shook in the distance as the
breeze moved through them. The man stood in the silence of his backyard. The
Facebook post had disappeared and he could find nothing online. He hoped it had
been imagined. He saw the distant lights of plane blinking against the immense
bowl of heaven. He watched as it approached its elevation and then went steady
towards its destination westward. The trees continued to pulse, and the sky
lost all trace of the day. The man went inside. He would not know his friend
was dead until the next day. A day that rolled out like all the others. Just
like July 17th in the year 2014.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"It was so interesting, when [John Coltrane] created A
Love Supreme. He had meditated that week. I almost didn’t see him downstairs.
And it was so quiet! There was no sound, no practice! He was up there
meditating, and when he came down he said, “I have a whole new music!” He said,
“There is a new recording that I will do, I have it all, everything.” And it
was so beautiful! He was like Moses coming down from the mountain. And when he
recorded it, he knew everything, everything. He said this was the first time that
he had all the music in his head at once to record."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Alice Coltrane<o:p></o:p></div>
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grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-67336038584096742042015-06-09T08:35:00.000-07:002017-09-11T07:09:49.960-07:00Second death of Chinua Achebe<div class="MsoNormal">
From the crumbling infrastructure of the news industry comes
a transmission to make you doubt. Casts shadows on friendships and things you
held dear. How were you wrong all these years? How did you not know?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I could buy groceries today but a plane went down. I saw a
tiny plane alone in the sky when I went out in the backyard. Was this the day
that the cherry blossoms were drifting down like floral snow? Or was I getting
ahead of myself. I read about the plane and imagined that last minute for each
person on board. The vastness of the sky letting them go, returning them to
earth in the cruelest way possible.Was that plane I saw a ghost? A signal from
beyond. But why would I be worthy of this symbol? I was unconnected to this
plane except for the pain I felt at this remote witnessing. It should pain me
no more than the collapse of Yemen. But,Yemen gave no ghost. Or no ghost I
recognized. Maybe all the tragedies of the world give out ghosts for us to see.
It is up to us to properly witness. To recognize the ghosts offered us. But the
onslaught of distant news in many ways already is a ghost. Like those stars
whose light peppers the dome of the night, we are seeing light from something
already dead.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Like the second death of Chinau Achebe. An outpouring on the
internet for a man most probably hadn’t even read. Not that I have really read
him, read many authors influenced by him. Read one of his essays once and
didn’t really care for his conclusions. Things fall apart the title of his most
famous work is a great title, a good thought as we think of our society as an
eternal monolith, an unending reality with no conclusions, no cracks in it. Of
course we see some cracks in it. California has less than a year of water left.
The entire dream of California could end in abandoned cities. We can’t really
picture an end that isn’t disaster or understand any other way of living, for
we for are in a total system, one that respects no other reality, or this
reality even. Death rumours start in the ecosystem of this echo chamber,
sharing without reading, without researching. A minute visit to wikipedia would
confirm when the author died. I was suspicious when I saw it appear in my feed.
Saddened at his death but with a nagging feeling that I had experienced this
before, felt this moment, felt this sadness. Obviously there is too much
information to process on any level, we feel this urge to react. We need to be
seen as the carrier of this dead famous person’s legacy. it’s the selling of
our personal brand, to be seen as someone who works to preserve these brief
moments of intelligence in the world. Not the worst thing to be a private
unpaid entrepreneur for. Advertising has leaked in and consumed everything.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How many times can you die before you fade away? When does
your archived information work through the system and stop appearing. A friend
of mine who died almost a year ago still has a profile up. People keep tagging
themselves in her photos and she reappears. Or her name appears when I’m
tagging someone else in a post. We know her, we know she is gone, we know the
date. She isn’t a celebrity that vast amount of people respect but barely know,
her death won’t be widely reported again. She isn’t one of the idols or icons
unknown and removed from context, ripe for appropriation. I had watched a
comedy special where the comedian showed Ghandi being used to sell Apple and
Che Guevara to sell Mercedes. Icons removed from any reality and the hope
being we get that aura of their power without thinking too deeply. Just click,
forward, put a thought down and move on, never looking back. Never turning to a
pillar of salt.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All month I’ve taken photos of clouds. Masses of water
vapour crafted into magnificent and odd shapes bunched up and pulled taffy like
across the sky, caught in the shimmering light. That is why I caught that plane
crossing in front of an immense darkened cloud, a cloud too dense with water to
be permeated by light. I took the shot and felt it represented the fragility of
humanity’s technology and vanity in front of the awesome face of nature.Later
that morning, the news of Germanwings tragedy started appearing.150 lives wiped
out by the collision between technology, vanity, and nature. As usual my mind
jumps to connection, relying on pattern recognition, that age old human trait
that pulled us through the dark ages on our way to birthing this vast networked
society. I see the plane I photographed, I hear of the plane hitting the
mountain. I connect the two. I see a ghost, a warning of the event. Like the
legendary black dog that foretells a death in the family.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then, a week later it appears again in the feed. A sad day
in music someone proclaims, Captain Beefheart is dead. I know instantly that
Beefheart has been dead for almost five years. He fits into a category like
Achebe, of an artist who is respected and admired for his work and vast
influence on other musicians but seldom listened to. People want to be seen as
an admirer of his work without listening to him or even doing the minimal
research to find out if he is alive or not. I stumbled upon his masterpiece
“Trout Mask Replica” back in high school, that mystic period where our
personalities and idea of the world are being formed through the flawed
receptors for stimuli that we are gifted with, battered by the winds of
hormones, pressure of peers, and our ignorance as we stumble in that dark
searching for purpose and meaning. I hated this record as many did at first (or
remained hating), couldn’t find its bizarre rhythms and harsh sound as even
music. Slowly and obsessively I learned its language, deciding long ago that
it’s a marvelous piece of twentieth century art.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Many find that century’s legacy in danger in this age, The
age of distraction. The age of ghosts. The age of multiple deaths and
appearances.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In an hour I saw them appear. Multiple new sources reporting
that Joni Mitchell was unresponsive in a coma. I forward a link to it myself.
Checking her official website showed that this was false. The stories gradually
disappeared. By the next morning the last of the crossposts had stopped, been
corrected or deleted. These events are like weather clogging our dreams. The
ghost continue, the dead walking with the living who are living hazy
recollection of what life should be.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The weather had been warm and brightly sunny, a late spring
early summer feel. Barbeque was in the air, and lawnmowers running. Sickly
clouds of insects hovering over the grass. The weather brought a calm, but also
a greedy expectation of movement, to be out and mixing with the world. The
weather had a dark undercurrent, were was the rain? The snowpack was already
dangerously low in Oregon and with looming water disaster in California these
thoughts kept popping up. A week after the plane was the morning of the cherry
petals. A wet dashing rain, wind blown with lost little drops. The petals
falling down scattered in their ends on the patio. The air was cooler, like
actual spring. a possibility of a clean rebirth.<o:p></o:p></div>
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grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-13858972078416167372014-11-25T09:17:00.001-08:002014-11-25T09:17:47.491-08:00A brief history of aerial bombing in the United States of America <div class="MsoNormal">
We fought gladly and to the last drop of blood for America<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-WEB Dubois<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The history of aerial bombing in the United States of
America is a history of racial tension and class struggle, like many of our
histories. It is also filled with rumor and myth, another trait of American
history.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first incident occurred just months before the second in
the year 1921. Aerial bombing had been invented just years before, in the rush
of invention to create new technologies for slaughtering people, in what was
then referred to as the Great War or the war to end all wars. Left over
armaments from that conflict played a role in both the first two
incidents. The first incident is what is called the Tulsa race riot. This
incident at the end of May of that year resembled the “race riots” of two
summers before, the “red summer” where murderous racial violence exploded
across the country. The Chicago riot of “red summer” occurred the same week a
dirigible exploded over the city, raining fire and bodies on office buildings
below, but this similarity is accidental. But like many of the race riots
before, a simple incident between a black male and white woman got out of
hand and fueled local racial tensions leading to a larger gathering of armed
white men who assaulted the Greenwood district in Tulsa, then the richest black
neighborhood in America sometimes called the “Black Wall Street”. Both
the besieged and the attackers were well armed, but the blacks were at the
disadvantage as their businesses and homes were set on fire, devastating the
district. Six biplanes left over from the world war were dispatched to fly over
the conflict. White officials claimed these were merely spotter planes there to
prevent a wider uprising. Eyewitnesses reported the planes were employed to
drop firebombs on the district and to snipe at the besieged.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The catastrophe of the First World War and the extraordinary
spiritual malaise that came afterwards were needed to arouse a doubt as to
whether all was well with the white man’s mind.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Carl Jung<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The second incident was mere months later in West Virginia.
This almost mythic event called the battle of Blair Mountain has been regarded
as one of the largest armed civil conflicts in the United States since the
Civil War. The United Mine Workers fought a pitched battle with local lawmen
and Baldwin Felts strikebreakers for five days. This episode was one of many
incidents in the bloody “Coal wars” of the previous decades. The strikebreakers
hired private planes to drop bombs left over from the world war on the
strikers, sometimes indiscriminately releasing them on villages. When the
army arrived to conclude the hostilities in the favor of the mine owners they
also employed bombers as surveillance planes and some said intimidation. The
miners captured one of the unexploded bombs the strikebreakers had engaged and
later displayed it at a trial.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I do not know if all cops are poets, but I know all cops
carry guns with triggers<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Ralph Ellison<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The third major known incident of aerial bombing in the
United States of America took place some six decades later. This third and
final event under discussion involves the conflict between the city of
Philadelphia and the organization known as MOVE. MOVE, a black liberation
organization with back to the land overtones started by John Africa (all
members of the group employed the surname Africa) had a previous violent
conflict with the city in 1978 where the unsanitary nature of their compound
and incidents with police led to a raid. A policeman died in the firefight
under unclear circumstances and several of the members of the group were
charged with his death. The even more embattled organization (as the founder
John Africa insisted they be considered. Many argued convincingly that MOVE was
a cult, some called them a terrorist organization) moved to a working class
black neighborhood which they came in conflict with, setting up two bunkers on
the roof of their house, occasionally gesturing with weapons, and blaring
profane political speeches through loudspeakers at all hours of the day. This
mixed with compost, feces, gathered wood that filled the compound, alongside
concern for the treatment of the numerous children that MOVE had, all lead
inevitably to another conflict with the city in 1985. The police moved in (many
of who had been involved in the previous confrontation) and surrounded the
house and then evacuated the area. They issued a communique to MOVE that had
curious language.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Attention MOVE, this is America.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Soon tear gas and two high powered water jets were turned on
the compound. At some point heavy gunfire started. There is been much debate
which side did most of the firing, though the police at one point ran out of
ammo. The police commissioner citing the tactical advantage MOVE had with the
two bunkers on the roof decided to employ a drastic measure. He had a police
helicopter drop a satchel bomb on the roof of the house. It failed to destroy
the bunkers but started a fire. A decision was made to let the fire burn.
The water jets were turned off. The fire destroyed the compound; only two
people left it and survived an adult and a child, five other children and six
other adults died including John Africa. There were rumors that the police
fired on anyone trying to leave the fire. One adult was seen by witnesses
leaving and then running back in for an unknown reason. The ensuing blaze also
destroyed three blocks of the neighborhood.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This for the moment is what we know of aerial bombing in
America by Americans.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If this is Peace, it is peace with gothic undertones, as if
the ghosts of the past might be appeased for a moment but never exorcised in
their entirety<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Max Roach<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-8312373654192220982014-10-21T09:01:00.000-07:002014-11-10T09:52:04.233-08:00Listening to the Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime while driving down I-5<div class="MsoNormal">
Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Jean Baudrillard<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first sound is that of a car starting. If you have the
actual album the cover shows Mike Watt driving a car down the highway looking
in the rear view mirror. The title was a joke on Sammy Haggar’s “Can’t drive
fifty five”, deciding that it wasn’t much of a rebellion to drive fast so they
would drive the exact speed limit, or as better said in the words of Mike Watt,
"the big rebellion thing was writing your own fuckin' songs and trying to come
up with your own story, your own picture, your own book, whatever. So he can't
drive 55, because that was the national speed limit? Okay, we'll drive 55, but
we'll make crazy music." ( pg. 10.Fournier, Michael T. Double Nickels on
the Dime 33⅓. Continuum, 2007.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Speeding is ubiquitous in the life of our country. It is an
agreed upon and excepted rebellion. One that you are punished for only if truly
excessive. Originality is a much less excepted sin.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After the sound of the car starting inside the hollow vessel
of your own vehicle the songs follow, over an hour of them, each usually around
a minute or two long. Spindly post punk, hardcore, funk, jazz, poetry, Captain
Beefheart, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Pink Floyd, Blue Oyster Cult, the
noisy and politically fiery post-punk group The Pop Group, and other influences
and sounds are chopped up and regurgitated in the stop start dynamics of the
trio. Nervous energy of hardcore and post punk channeled into the art rock or
classic rock concept of a double album. The band’s name was a three part joke
like most things related to them (they loved in jokes), for the brevity of
their songs and in irony for the right wing anti-immigrant militia groups and
the silent white missiles that lay sleeping across the prairies of the United
State, whose baleful existence continuing the standoff of the Cold War, that
still continued in the 1984 of the album’s release. Saber rattling with Soviets
had been renewed by the rubber faced actor in the president’s office as Central
America, Iran and Iraq, and Afghanistan burned. The record is filled with
references to the situation in Central America where the Guatemalan army burned
village after village in an ongoing genocide (a word that appears in the lyric
sheet), death squads patrolled El Salvador leaving bodies with crosses carved
in their faces on the roadside every day, and cocaine dealing rebels fought the
government of Nicaragua. It seems needless to say American money and arms
fueled each of these conflicts.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Untitled song for Latin America<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The western hemisphere and all inside<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We know who's murdering the innocent<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They are children playing with guns<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They are children playing with countries<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mining harbors, creating contras<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The games they play, the lives they take<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They bank their money in this country<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They steal from the innocent<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A colonial trait that's much too old<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The banks, the lives, the profits, the lies<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The banks, the profits, the lives & the lies<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I would call it genocide<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Any other word would be a lie.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-D.Boon<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I-5 is a strip of highway from the border of Canada to the
border of Mexico. It travels through the belly of Washington, Oregon, and
California State. It bears the car you are in. It can bring you to all the
major population centers of the west coast. You hope the wheels of your car
will hold together at a speed far exceeding fifty five. This is an everyday act
of faith. The cities, the food, the trucks bearing goods, are connected and
sustained by this highway, this artery. You heard once that not one of its
bridges would survive an earthquake. The Juan de Fuca plate sits in the deep
waters off the coast overdue to provide one. Silently like the hand of a god
waiting to stir from its slumber.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You remember when you first heard these songs. You remember
those roads. You remember abandoned factories. Cracked highways sweltering in
the heat. Suburbs with parking lots fissured with rivers of grass and filled
with hungry children waiting, and staring. You remember the basement shows
solid with heat and sweaty comradery, blaring punk rock, and cheap
beer and wine. An almost vegetable stink of humanity. You remember the record
and those times.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
D. Boon, Mike Watt, and George Hurley make up the band. Watt
and Boon provide most of the material. They have differences in style. Boon
loves Creedance Clearwater Revival and he loves slogans for the working man and
left wing politics, but he loves Beefheart so his songs twitch and zigzag, but
they shout out for us. Watt always has a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses by his
side, he spits out poetic obscurities over the twisting and rumbling racket of
the band. The poetic and political, The Minutemen value both. They famously say
“our band could be your life” They offered an alternative.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Jam econo” was their aesthetic. Book all your own shows,
practice all the time, and stay on people’s floors in the small town and cities
of the country. Get in the van and drive. The country is crossed with a
spiderweb of highways each of us individually or with our small family units
hurtling down them. These spiderwebs leak a pall of invisible stink filling the
atmosphere. Every road has claimed a life. We risk everything every time we
enter the freeways. The aesthetic of “jam econo” was one passed on for
years up until your generation. You throw together a band with little hope of
making a dime and you entered the roads. In a van with your equipment, homemade
merch and a couple changes of clothes you traveled the highway. You had that
spirit, your tour only took you down I-5, and you never left the west coast.
You played music that was more discordant and unforgiving then the Minutemen.
You remember how fun it was for a couple people to dance to it in a dingy
galleries or punk clubs. You met kids who wanted to start their own bands, they
wanted to get in vans and roll from town bearing the gift and curse of this
tradition. You promised help when they came to your town. You remember when
someone told you about I-5 catching fire once and they couldn’t drive from Los
Angeles to San Francisco. You remember seeing fire on the side of I-5 as you
drove north. Would the road soon be impassible? You wondered what we would do
without our highways; our train tracks were too rusty to bear that weight. You
remember your train pulling into Chicago once in winter and they had set all
the switches on fire to keep them from freezing. You remember a house on fire
while driving through Detroit. No one was around. There were no fire trucks.
You remember a truck on fire alongside the Chicago highway. Memories of fire.
Outpourings of light.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
D boon died on the road. A van accident. The van they
toured in. His girlfriend fell asleep at the wheel. Boon was asleep in the
back. He died in the California desert on highway I-10 far from the guiding
light of his beloved hometown of San Pedro. The exit sign for San Pedro is
visible on the album cover. One presumes the car pictured is about to take that
exit.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The roads offered freedom for a while. But what are they
now, a trap? They connect everything we know, they are everything we know. They
let this great system we built hold together. Do they hold us to it also?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Highways leading to nowhere. Highways leading to somewhere.
Highways the Occupation used to speed upon in their automobiles, killing dogs
pigs and cattle belonging to the poor people. What is the American fetish about
highways?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They want to get somewhere, LaBas offers.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because something is after them, Black Herman adds.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But what is after them?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They are after themselves. They call it destiny. Progress.
We call it Haints. Haints of their victims rising from the soil of Africa,
South America, Asia.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Ishmael Reed<o:p></o:p></div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-14083087311695915852014-06-24T09:01:00.000-07:002014-11-25T08:46:01.432-08:00Transmission from submarine #14 eighth transmission<div class="MsoNormal">
<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-5a287fb3-2644-78b8-5803-d4e915d4951f" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
One day everything will be as it should be –Albert Ayler<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Justin Beiber baptized in NYC bathtub<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hi is Lester there?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No, I think maybe you have a wrong number, but I will take a
message.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is Louise. I want to return the computer I bought from
you.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wait…I will take a message.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hi is Lester there?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Is this a recording?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This doesn’t have a writing program, and I’m a poet you
know.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Okay, I’m hanging up.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hi is Lester there?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What it means to say a dolphin committed suicide<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The government is investigating why your Netflix is so slow.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She caught herself in the mirror for the first time in days.
She just guessed that they were days. She had no measure of time in her
apartment. The apartment was bathed in pearl light, the air slowly pulsing with
piano music. In the mirror she saw a woman with hair pulled up into a bouffant
held together with a jeweled tiara and pins. Was her face caked in white powder
or was it the eternal pearl light?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The table contained fruit. Pears and apples in one silver
bowl. Grapes in another next to it. She ate the fruit. She never remembered
eating anything else. Jugs of wine and scented water. The pearl light on
everything.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A man moved towards her down the hall sometimes. She would
see him always walking, towards her. She never remembered him arriving. She
never remembered him leaving.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The dog sniffed her fingers and licked her hand when she lay
back on the bed. She remembered the dog then. But she didn’t remember the dog
any other time. It was a poodle with a silver collar.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Through the windows the city was in red light. It was always
that color. It was always those birds moving over those spires and domes and
always encased in red.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We can’t believe how different the cast of Orange is the New
Black look in real life<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bravest guy in the whole world wears mentos suit, drops into
tank of diet coke.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I see myself as the big fat spider in the corner of the
room. Sometimes, I speak when I’m asleep. You should both listen. Occasionally,
when we meet, I might tell you to go to Charing Cross road and kick a blind man
standing on the corner. That blind man may tell you something, lead you
somewhere.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Harold Wilson<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The pressure increases. A man savagely kicked by a crowd
while waiting for the subway. Protests blocking tour groups. Facts we love to
share with outsiders about the wonders of this or that landmark, or what they
can experience or buy at this location, is overpowered by cries of unfairness.
The pressure grows the violence grows. Every food choice becomes political. A
bunch of ingrates, nostalgia for other times. Don’t they know there are bomb
strapped young men poised everywhere to shatter their precious genitals. Cries
of we don’t torture. But why do they bomb? Seal the windows. Put down your
sign.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The simplest surrealist act consist of going out in the
street revolver in hand and firing at random into the crowd as often as
possible<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Andre Breton<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We love the need to protest, we love this right, our
presence is merely to assure everyone can safely, and in an organized way and
in the proper place have their right to raise their voice a little and declare
their dissent. The tanks and helicopters are just to assure the safety of
everyone and for the continuation of business. Raise your voice. Provided will
be a map of approved locations.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The camera finds her. There are tears falling down her face.
She walks with ponderous steps through the yelling, the gas clouds, the sign
waving, the batons raising and falling. Her face is covered in tears. She walks
with a different movement as if she has no right to be in this location.
Removed, but a solid presence, almost superimposed. She is cross edited with
the political bleeding out on the sidewalk.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A man seated at the piano plays music. People spread around,
signs down. Snacks and drinks were being shared. The selections were
sentimental fare. No one critiqued. Strands of tear gas wisped past. Gas masks
were nearby. He played Goldberg variations. The sound truck drowned out
the changes.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“No”, said the priest, “you don’t need to accept everything
as true; you only have to accept it as necessary.” Depressing view,” said
K. “The lie made into the rule of the world.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Franz Kafka, The Trial<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Leaves cast through a century’s ending light. Pine branches
littered on the ground like seaweed. Leaves poured through the window, coating
the floor in their rotting bodies.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The tide turns and the computers fizzle away. She lay on the
couch feeling her blood buzz. The leaves encased the phone. The aquarium was a
dark mess. She used her fingers to slide leaves of the pages of the book. She
continued to read Joyce.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The surrealists were not good with women. That is why,
although I thought they were wonderful, I had to give them up in the end. They
were, with a few patronized exceptions, all men and they told me that I was the
source of all mystery, beauty, and otherness, because I was a woman- and I knew
that was not true. I knew I wanted my fair share of imagination, too. Not an
excessive amount, mind; I wasn’t greedy. Just an equal share in the right to
vision.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I realized that surrealist art did not recognize I had
my own rights to liberty and love and vision as an autonomous being, not as a
projected image, I got bored and wandered away.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Angela Carter<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am painting. Painting women. I develop ideal situations
for them to lounge in, to exist. I avoid the cheap and tawdry. There is nothing
exploitive about my women in my mind except for maybe the fact, that I a man, am
painting women. I make them attractive in ways I find ideal, doing tasks that
seem to hint at the independence of these women, their need to express
themselves in the world. Like me painting the women, they are performing
similar tasks, such as smoking in artsy cafés perched over a typewriter, about
to apply a brush to canvas, operating a camera capturing the world I imagine
for them in a similar way to the way I capture them. The odd thing that occurs
is that every time I finish the face, the face that looks back at me from each
canvas is that of a face I know. It is my own face.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“They don’t call us anything. They forgot we fucking lived
here!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Artificial vaginas are on the way<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The dark side of extreme anal porn<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the name of Family and Fatherland, you urge the sale of
souls, the unrestricted grinding of bodies<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Antonin Artuad<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Different forms of life spread through the city. Alternative
rabbit holes to disappear in.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The transient: A series of strung together vehicles,
they must have been shopping carts, baby or dog carriers, and bicycles, but
draped in the accoutrements of this new life they had taken on distorted and
radical forms. How this operation moves throughout the town is unknown it
arrives in various locations as if through advanced science or mystical art.
Objects are removed and spread to mark out the location of arrival. The wagons
are circled as old movie westerns depicted wagon trains. Radio is brought out.
A book is removed from some spot. The radio blares, the book is read. Objects are
laid out in a cryptic order. A small snack of some nature appears and is
enjoyed. The king of this environment resembles an undead replicate of rock
star from the era when rock produced stars. He resembles any person who has
decided to claim a moment of leisure. Despite some moments of scavenging during
the day he must lead a fairly sedate existence.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
People move through the park like they are being fast
forwarded. Blurs of desperation and sweat. He can almost see the radio grinding
into their heads. Pushing babies, in tight exercise clothing, walking dogs
never seeing radio penetrating them. Grandma, he remembered grandma. She
always let him steal smokes. That was grandma, always busy with food and
cleaning, radio always on. He didn’t realize till later what it was doing to
him. He saw the gods on the hill, giant towers glinting with red lights. Three
of them. More on further hills. Glinting gods carrying messages from worlds
beyond. He had notes, he wrote in them every day. He kept seeing grandma
around. Smoking cigarettes and dripping with static she burned plants as she
passed them. Tapes. He kept his radio plugged with tapes. No one wanted
tapes much anymore. He found them left in curious places. He found them cheap
at stores. Did anyone manufacture tapes or did they exist preserved from the
time before. The time of tapes. Tapes did not bear radio waves. Tapes contained
trapped moments of sound, isolated and not able to infect. He had been driven
from houses and jobs. He had been hounded everywhere. Over and over she would
appear. Grandma, her veins rotted black with radio and her mournful stare. She
would peel paper off the wall, she would try to hand him that object clutched
in her hand. It looked like a dead rabbit, but it sometimes moved. He must never
receive that object. Sunny days, holding a book with his tapes on he felt
decent, he didn’t mind anything, a simple snack he bought and no worries, he
felt peace.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The vaudevillians: They are seen juggling in outfits that
sparkled like foil. High ropes cast between trees in the backyard tiptoed
across to the cheers of a dozen or so. Their red bus trundling up the street
leaking a pall of dim fumes. Sword swallowing and flame dancing practiced in
place of lawn mowing and checkbook balancing. Stilt walking down streets. Oil
paintings of clowns, shadowy figures holding torches, visions of dust bowl
vaudevillians traveling landscapes of freak shows, work gangs, public hangings,
ku klux rallies, mad preachers, and geeks biting the heads of chickens.
Suspenders, bowler hats, flowers in lapels, and roll you own cigarettes
ornamenting a lifestyle from a vanished era, the travelling circus life.
Caravans of joy bringing entertainment for towns ripped by wild storms of over
tilled lands, moving from drought to drought, barely clinging to existence in
the void, with this one bright evening of juggling, flame swallowing, and stilt
walking bringing smiles on starvation nights. Weather reports out of the plains
imply parts of this idyllic past may be pushing obtrusively into the future.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I always hope to be able to make a great number of figures
without a narrative.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Francis Bacon<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Daniel laid the roses in a circle. Red dripped off the
petals and stained the floor. The white figure sat in the middle of the ring,
its features blank. Daniel walked back to the others with red hands. Gabriel
and Michael continued to drink from the bottle. Empty stomachs rebelled against
the whisky but they couldn’t stare at the food for too long. The figure began
to stand with shaky movements. Daniel followed a gulp of whisky with a chicken
leg. The figure dripped out new eyes and began shaking his hands, almost
swimming, almost clawing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have a son.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Birds began to worm through Daniel’s cloth. Claws tearing
fabric, feathers leaking out of rented cloth. His clothes tore away and he was
naked. He ran and threw himself into the circle.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Gabriel and Michael continued drink as they watched this
unfold. They stayed in their seats and felt the urine warm their pants.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The murdered forfeit their right to love this city like the
rest of us<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Sesshu Foster<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Four bearing the two in makeshift stretchers. The two in the
stretchers would probably be dead soon and were too wounded to be any good. Six
others up and moving though mostly wounded. Xochitl took the count as her ears
rang. The artillery had blown their positions to the wind and most of her
patrol upwards as ash.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The lifter had cracked like an egg and its guts became fire.
She didn’t regret the shot. But her men had suffered. She knew blood was
flowing out of her ears. She didn’t know if she would ever hear again.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
People came out of the woods as they marched. At first they
raised their guns expecting an attack, but relaxed as they realized that it was
people fleeing the city. Someone had given them all white powder to sprinkle on
their faces. Each one already looked dead. Xochitl wanted to ask them why, but
was afraid if she opened her mouth, she would not even hear the words she
spoke.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Boy finds mummified body hanging in spooky abandoned house<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The real threat of Japan’s elderly…<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
American exchange student pulled free from giant German
vagina.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jane saw them in the field again. Heads covered in bags
knotted at the top, making their heads look like bulbs of garlic or onions.
They always carried guns. Their clothes were covered in writing. The same
writing had been sketched on the crude signs that had been left all over the
forest. They told of a war that had already commenced, they told of dangerous
times coming. They said the forest was theirs. Jane liked watching those men
patrol. They had such determination in their movements. She didn’t like the
signs appearing on her fences. She didn’t like the footprints in the yard. She
didn’t like the masks or the frantic writing. All the waters of the world will
turn to blood. Our guns are our holy tools, our divining rods. The skies bear
fire and ash; we bear holy redemption and blessed water.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
We can’t believe how different the cast of Game of Thrones
looks in real life.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The sexiest people in the world come from…<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We’re an empire now, and when we act we create our own reality<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Karl Rove<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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</div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-69581778213722241672014-06-19T09:19:00.000-07:002014-06-19T09:22:13.977-07:00We were given shelter part 11<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why would you leave the house without money? Why even
bother?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mika didn’t appreciate the scolding tone that the blonde
woman with dreadlocks and an ornate machine gun swung over her shoulders was
taking with him, but there was little he could do but nod.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Do you want to end up like them?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She was pointing to a group of people sitting in a shelter just
past the tank they had used to block the road. The tank was blurry and hard to
focus on; there was some kind of visual distortion being employed. The
checkpoint itself had seemed to emerge fully out of the drizzling rain, unseen
before he stepped into it. The people in
the shelter looked bored at worst; they were drinking hot liquid out of cups
and eating pastries. Mika kind of wanted to join them, but something in the
blonde’s tone told him no.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I tell you what. You do a little favor for us and we will
let this slide. How does that sound?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Good I guess.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mika felt okay agreeing. He felt the need to be pleasing in
this situation. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Take this and our man will grab it from you on the other
side. You will even get a little credit for it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In her hand was a neatly wrapped package. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He nodded and took it. Depending on the next checkpoint this
could mean death. But, he decided to be pleasing so he agreed to it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The next checkpoint had two helicopters propped on the side
of the road. Glaring blue lights shined from the bank of lights they had strung
up over the road. Pilots encrusted in helmets and hoses sat still in each
cockpit. Mika stood in the light and the drizzle and waited. He willed his body
to not sweat, but it refused.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A child ran out from behind the helicopters and ran a
scanner wand over him. The child paused after doing this, looked up at one of
the helicopters, and then waved him through.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A man walked out of the shadows on the other side of the
bank of lights and put his arm around Mika’s. The man’s face was blurred in
similar fashion to the tank.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Just hand me the package and I will credit your mobile.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mika complied. The man nodded his blurred head.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Okay walk away and don’t watch where I am going. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The third checkpoint cleaned out his mobile, but gifted him
with a lumpy can of food cubes and a map to the nearest camp. They laughed when
he asked if could sell the can for money but didn’t when he made a joke about
their halftrack covered in pornographic graffiti. They just waved their guns
and pointed in the direction of the camp in response to that. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-16233265537215972582014-06-17T10:58:00.000-07:002014-11-25T08:49:38.140-08:00Transmission from Submarine #14 seventh transmission<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I say don’t worry. If there is a
hell below, we are all going to go<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Curtis Mayfield<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rural Indiana Sheriff buys a tank.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Historians in the future, in my
opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our
jazz.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Kurt Vonnegut<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Peru approves genocide for
uncontacted tribes<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“We apologize for the inconveniences, but this is a
revolution.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Subcomandante Marcos, 1994<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Indian Army mistook Planets for “spy drones”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
China builds Stonehenge and Eiffel Tower in ‘Copycat towns’<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The tradition of all dead
generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Karl Marx<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Citizens strike back: Tiny, low-cost drones may one day
assassinate corrupt politicians, corporate CEOS and street criminals<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
2 dead and three injured after woman drops cell phone in a
toilet.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Politics is the art of preventing
people from taking part in affairs that properly concern them<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Paul Valery<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Xochitl observed the Lifter moving into position over the
north side of the city through her field glasses. She and her squad were
camouflaged on the hill. Should they reveal themselves to plunge a dagger into
the belly of this beast? Large swathes of the city were on fire. She saw one of
the public dirigible transports they had set up fall into the bay like a
fizzled firework. If she revealed her position they would probably be shelled
in minutes, most her troop dead minutes after. What decision to make? It was
good shot though. She gestured with her hand. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They are all we have to fight off
illness and death.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Leslie Marmon Silko<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A call came through. Probably the last call out of the city.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You were the last on my list but you answered<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yes.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The city has fallen. Bombs are landing. You are probably
hearing my voice from the land of the dead.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I will get there.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Don’t come, just
listen this last time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I will listen. But you can’t stop me from coming.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You are probably coming to the land of the dead.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dexter Filkin’s excellent book of reporting on the war of
terror (or the 9/11 Wars some have called them) The Forever War has an early
chapter describing the 9/11 attacks. He names this chapter “Third World” and I
find it a beautiful touch. The empire that America has hesitantly created in
post wars years, this Pax Americana has been built by the power of money but it
has also been created by “death from above”. Our air superiority has enforced
our position in Libya, Panama, Korea, Sudan, Iraq, Japan, Germany, and
continued on in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Somalia. This sudden bolt
from the sky that turns a mental and physical landscape to a world of rubble,
smoke, and disappeared lives. We experienced “death from above” and it
fractured our mind. The burning, bombing and destruction exited the foreign
news section and appeared on an American landscape. For some American the idea
of “third world” was already part of their lives, those of Detroit, Flint,
south side Chicago, the Bronx, Compton and Watts, Pine Ridge reservation, coal
country of West Virginia and Kentucky, Camden, Youngstown, tomato fields of
Florida, and many others had lives controlled by corrupt politicos, men with
guns, decaying social structures, poverty, and arbitrary violence. But for most,
this idea had never even been pondered. Untouchable America had been a reality
all their lives. To quote from Douglas Rushkoff’s Present Shock<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>The discontinuity
generated by the 9/11attacks should not be underestimated. While I was writing
this very chapter, I met with a recent college graduate who was developing a
nonprofit company and website to help create relationships between
“millennials” of her generation and more aged mentors of my own. She explained
that her generation was idealistic enough to want to help fix the world, but
they had been “traumatized by 9/11 and now we’re incapable of accessing the
greater human projects.” Somehow, she felt the tragedy had disconnected her
generation from a sense of history and purpose, and that they “needed to
connect with people from before that break in the story in order to get back on
track.” </i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Was it severing, a realization, the end of a narrative, the
waking from a dream, or an event that smelled convincing enough of history to
shock us, or a rebirth? What was that day? What world did it create in its
sacrifice?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ikea know way too much about your
sex and pooping habits<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Harvard says library includes book
bound in human skin<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A place without gurus monarchs
leaders cops tax collectors jails matriarchs patriarchs and all the other
galoots who in cahoots have made the earth a pile of human bones under the feet
of wolves<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Ishmael Reed<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Oued El-Had and Mezoura massacres were perpetrated by
“strange guerillas” with shaved heads and eyebrows and flags that said “angry
at god”.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“This is a revolution!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m alright when I’m awake but
sleeping I hurt my face. What do you guys do about drug itch?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Benedryl<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My dick is begging me not to itch
it again<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Benedryl <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It feels like fiberglass in my
veins<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Benedryl<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Opiyum is your screen name?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Benedryl<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On someone’s list you are already
a casualty<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-The Minutemen<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Could this boob baring councilor
be Labour’s answer to winning the election?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“This is a revolution”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Neil Young’s twitter hacked and
filled with porn.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m going to show you how to get a
slurpy with an ak-47<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mexican Kim Kardashian takes over
drug cartel hit squad. Uses personalized pink ak-47. Nicknamed Emperatriz de
los antrax. Check out these hot selfies from her twitter feed<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A secret is what no one knows<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Moondog<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We can neither confirm nor deny
this is our first tweet<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wars and panics on the stock
exchange,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Machine gun fire and arson,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bankruptcies, warloans,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Starvation, lice, cholera and
typhus:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Good growing weather for the House
of Morgan<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-John Dos Passos<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Toussaint L'ouverture said burn
the cities and retreat into the hills. Napoleon sending twenty thousand
soldiers to reclaim Haiti for French revolution and slavery.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Could pooping in a box save the
developing world?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The rocks made hollow sounds
ricocheting off the rocket’s fins. The crowd had worked itself up to this
action. Faedra wondered the source of their anger. She couldn’t place it. The
cult had been unusual filled with deranged and wild ideas and dangerous to
those in its orbit, but these were the actions of a long oppressed group of
people not the neighbors of some weirdoes. She thought of her fellows now as just
that, weirdoes. The rocket was missing its magnificent cone, and it looked sad
and forgotten as the villager’s stones began to dent its golden sides.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Couches, pianos and other items
were being pulled out of the mansion. She remembered the chants in those halls.
Solid black paint on every surface, Red swastikas placed throughout the
interior. She remembered the chanting and singing in the master’s language. She
remembered it all and felt very little for the person she was who had participated<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The master’s cats flitting between
legs of the looters. They had made a greater claim to the house than any of its
former inhabitants. Their kingdom was now being thrust upside down by the
greedy ravagers. Some of the cats flood out into the yard and vanish into the
bushes. Two men are trying to pull a piano through a door. Unmusical clatter comes
from its interior as it was struggled over. A drum set is being tossed over
those men’s heads.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here the master had gathered them.
In this hall they wore black clothes and bandied gold medallions. He told them
of the return. A human would return from the stars. He was sent out so many
years ago that the technology that sent him and even the civilization was lost
to epochs of dust and forgetting. We would not ignore his message of disasters
coming and the knowledge that we could use to escape it. The master had heard
radio transmission from the man, and he knew everything that could be expected.
We must gather funds to build the rocket.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The answer stands as kingdoms
fall. There is no answer. None at all. None at all.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
- Moondog<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Art imitates Life: Replica of Van
Gogh’s Ear created From Live Cells.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Gwyneth Paltrow makes people mad.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Christianity has never been
worldly nor has it ever looked with favor on good food and wine, and it is more
than doubtful whether the introduction of jazz into the cult would be a
particular asset.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Carl Jung <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bagged booze coffins straining the cart. She felt her
muscles twitch with each journey. The trash sorter was growling and complaining
to her. “Modest why so much of the same thing. Offer me something new.” Twenty
years working with this machine and now it learns to complain.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lying on the furniture at awkward angles, lurching around with
menace, rambling incoherently, and lobbing abuse at journalists streaming on
glimmering screens, and in general drunkenness and sorrow, are the men and
woman who govern. The booze has become their meaning, their real purpose has
been misplaced a couple cocktails ago. Paralysis and drunken sorrow curdling to
rage. Something out in the world hurtled away at a frightening speed leaving
these ghosts drunk at the wheel.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She was alone and ignored as usual in these corridor of
power. In the shadows was the bear. All the staff had rumors of it and
encounters spoken in hushed tones. She had never seen it, and never heard it.
But, at the end of the corridor hauling another cart overflowing with empties
she glimpsed its shadow. The bear was the shadows and she worried what it meant
to be one who has witnessed it. Modest felt that sweet strain of muscles as she
pushed the cart into the elevator.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I do not know if all cops are
poets, but I know all cops carry guns with triggers<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Ralph Ellison<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Grisly discovery inside Giant
Alligator<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
An estimated ten thousand never
returned to claim their shoes at the entrance to Darbar Sahib.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I see ten thousand chariots and
they coming with no horses. The riders they cover their face<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Bob Marley<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A man stretched out on torn sheets. His form a river through
degraded fabric.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Adobe town filled with
flower sellers. Rumors of decapitation. Four rotting corpses trapped in a continually
circling car. Windows covered with flies. Red grips the windshield in the
morning.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He was sick of seeing
his brother walking through the flower stalls, peeking through the window in
the door. Touching his hand as he walked to the car, he can’t see why his
brother won’t stay dead. His sister’s voice on the intercom. The failing wires
cutting into her words. Fragments pour out. He couldn’t leave the bed. Feedback
squealing. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the common symptoms of
depression is the inability to make day to day decisions. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“It’s like all the love is gone.
So you see why comics have demons. You’re trying to fill that void until the
next stage time you get where you’ll find your love.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Thea Vidale<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This slideshow shows 20 cities
running out of water.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He felt pressure
relieve as the song slowly was pulled into his web. Web of constant data. Data
that represented music, music so rare it barely been heard beyond the people
who recorded it. He felt he should own this music, let people know of its
golden aura. But, then he would have to listen to it, he realized even though
he was young the possibility of ever hearing every moment of music he captured
would be impossible. It was data not music, it had no emotional resonance.
Every song discovered, every artist read about, was a moment ripped away from
him, a moment he couldn’t fill with another activity. Time was the enemy and
space on his hard drive. Fat around the middle, seated, chewing junk food,
bongs unloaded, rare soul funk track that hints at the future of hip hop found
and squirrelled away. Some kind of sore forming on his elbow, black spot on his
toe, elastic failing in his underwear. Job was becoming an illusion, a series
of dream images of people telling to wake up, what did they keep wanting? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Spittle rolled down
his chin as he shouted give me evenings and weekends, get me out of this
contract, I know no one of us have clean hands anymore, I have woken up to that
years ago.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I ain’t got no one I can depend on<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ain’t got no one tengo a nadie<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Santana<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Tim waked to the claw caressed across his cheek. The pram was
moving through branches dripped in fog like ugly snakes. The clockwork hand
moved away. <em><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Papier-mâché</span></em><em><b><span style="background: white; color: #444444; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-style: normal;"> </span></b></em>owls hooted in the tree branches. The
moon’s light bulb faded in the moist air.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They bumped a tree and it folded over. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Don’t worry little one we made the night for you. We can
bring you anything in it. Penguins and icebergs are over the hill and a little
blizzard. Then a nice desert oasis.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There were other figures walking with them. They ticked
liked broken clocks as they walked. One
of the figure’s head fell off but it never slowed down. They continued to walk
in the forest. Flurries of snow began to flutter by.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a child he remembered peeking
through curtains and from under covers. The blue of the TV light was lingering
there in the hall. It moved around the house at its own accord. That blue light
flickering through bushes in the yards as he walked to his friend’s house. He
could see it there out of the corner of his eyes as they played board games.
Cookies and milk were brought by the mother. He thought of those offerings as
the flakes of the fake blizzard floated by the pram.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Oh the sea we forgot about the
sea.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They walked down a stretch of
white sand. One of the figure’s legs fell off. It made the motion to walk
forward and then fell face forward into the beach sand. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We should introduce you to your
new family.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This pram must be specially built
to fit a twelve year old, thought Tim.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You are Tim’s new family. What
became of the old one?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Tim is a name we won’t be using
any more so you should forget that name.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is Luna of the birds.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They had circled around the pram.
Five of them. A possibly feminine figure moved forward with a pale bird mask
covering her features.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Panda Bough<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Panda mask outfit of leaves<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Film.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Faces in cinema light moved in
constant motion across the form that moved forward.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cephalopod.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Drenched in rotten tentacles.
Dripping water.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Behemoth<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
White face mask stained with black
tears, red smears around the mouth.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am Carrion.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Vulture mask covered in rotten
feathers.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We will not name those we lost on
the journey. They are abandoned like your name will be.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Carrion came forward with white
paint covering his glove. He streaked a smear of the paint on each of Tim’s
cheeks. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You are reborn with these marks.
Rejoice in it, soon you will learn your new name.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The blue tiger will smash the world<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another land, without evil, without death, will be borne
from the destruction of this one. This land wants it. It asks to die, asks to
be born, this old and offended land. It is weary and blind from so much weeping
behind closed eyelids. On the point of death it strides the days, garbage heap
of time, and at night it inspires pity from the stars. Soon the First Father
will hear the world’s supplications, land wanting to be another, and then the
blue tiger who sleeps beneath the hammock will jump.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Eduardo Galeano<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ariadne the threadbearer awoke alone in her house. She is
American. America had become geology not reality. She thought of America and
dreams as her oatmeal grew cold. America had beached itself on the chaos of the
wild dreams it birthed. It was proposed
long ago that market forces produced happier lives then state centered
societies. That American life let everyone freely traffic in dreams. Everyone’s
dreams got shared and advertised and became museum pieces, got squirrelled away
by rich collectors, disappeared in dust, watered down and sold in mass, or were
met with a hail of bullets. The voodoo dances of Congo Square dreamed up jazz,
electrocuted elephants helped dream endless loops of men and women frozen in
immortal youth and love staring at the light, people dreaming on rafts crossing
shark drunk seas warm as wine, churches dreamed up apocalypses of storms of
light and souls plucked into the sky,
people crossing deserts singing and dreaming not fearing rape, pre-dug
graves, and secret prison to slice tomatoes, take out garbage and stick
together plastic junk for the dreamers, some dreamed of dignity and freedom
from rat infested apartments, open air drug markets, feudal systems that said
you could not drink water from this faucet, others dream of communities were
they never saw a face different from their own, the sidewalks never cracked and
the storefronts were always full, men with guns dreamed of false flags, black
helicopters and fertilizer bombs, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, and Jews dreamed of their own gods in this nation
under god as others dreamed up religions and gods new to this world, some
dreamed only of money, art, or that they could capture it all in a book, reach
the stars, or of men with tights that could perform miracles, or of cities
placed on floodplains, rifts in the tectonics, or in a desert, of computers
reordering nature, some dreamed that we had lost Eden right here on these
shores, dreamed that America would give back the land it stole and removed the
strip malls from the mass graves, but all these dreams meant nothing to the
dominant dream. The dominant dream was one that sold, one that moved units. All
the nations of the earth began to dream this dream. This dream created a
library of wonders where each of us could create their own dream. With so many
dreams about, no bothered much with the dreams of others anymore. The earth
moved, melted, warped and groaned under the weight of the dream. Nations and
memories faded, technology followed its own logic, the weather got weird, the
seas angry, so now Ariadne the threadbearer thought, now here we are, forever
in these moments. Moments were you awake to house stuffed with clothing and
furniture of someone else, where the box you get your cereal from is not even
yours. Moments where the cereal curdles in your gut and it is impossible to
breathe.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The only sin is the sin of being born<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Samuel Beckett<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-28550309235732217462014-06-13T08:38:00.000-07:002014-06-13T09:00:45.737-07:00We were Given Shelter part 10<div class="MsoNormal">
Melancholy scene in the park today. The singed hull of a
boat hit by rocket in the night was bumping against the river wall. It emitted burnt
smells and scraping noises in equally odious concert. A runner had begun to
make a circuit of the park. The runner himself had succumbed to a stroke or
heart attack while running, but the frame kept ambulating the body back and
forth. The corpse was already decaying. Ones in the past had become skeletons
before the frames broke down or were removed. This and a light drizzle. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There had been two checkpoints on the way from the office,
only one had taken credit from him. Mika wasn’t sure if it was the local
security force, drug gangs, or the army that had ran the check point, the
equipment and uniforms were the same. He could check his mobile to see which of
the three decided to scam him but he felt bored by the idea before he did it. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the local dogs had moved into the central area of the
park and sat still, the army had set a security perimeter around it, so no one
approached the dog. Its presence was a mysterious feature and constant buzz on
the area’s newsfeeds.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mika looked for Excena. Or maybe it was Excena’s clone. Or
one of many clones. His head hurt a little thinking about it. Hopefully she was
in a spot with a little shelter. He spotted her under a tree. He looked at the
river past the burnt boat; a massive fallen bridge dominated the landscape, low
flung clouds scudding through its girders.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Excena was dressed in a somber suit. There didn’t appear to
be any cooler or basket for the picnic. Mika’s stomach growled, he only had a
packet of awful crackers that he taken from work. Her face looked serious when
she saw him approach. This was going to be a fun picnic he thought. He felt
guilty having talked to the other Excena. Did this version somehow know?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hi Mika. We usually do this by mobile, but you have been a
steady client…<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Where is the picnic? I can’t really afford to eat lunch.
Wait what are you talking about?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We are reporting a negative balance in your account, so this
contract will have to be cancelled until you can make further arrangements.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mika paused, confused, and the again caught sight of the
park’s dog, stock still and unmoving in its mystery. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m confused. First there is no picnic. Next we are treating
this like a business arrangement, which in the back of my head I realize it is,
and now you are saying that I have no credit even though I was just paid.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
See I knew you were a reasonable man that would get all of
this, thank you for your understanding.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wait, I’m not being understanding at all, this is all
nonsense.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I assure you this is correct. We at the House of Dreams
cloning service would welcome you back when you are not at a negative balance.
We provided your last request as per your order, but cannot proceed with the usual
contract until you can make the proper arrangements.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Okay that has to be wrong. What request? Okay checking my
mobile.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I paid you guys how
much and for what?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A son, you bought yourself a son Mika.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I did what? I don’t even have money for food or to get back
through the checkpoints. This day is not working as I imagined it. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Good luck Mika. Your son awaits you at home. Any complaints
contact us as usual. Hopefully we will see each other again. If not, maybe some
other model. Goodbye.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mika sat down under the tree and tried to finished his
crackers. They were stale and hard to swallow. He watched Excena walk away
without another word. As he ate he listened to the boat thump against the shore
and watched the low gusty clouds continue to filter through the bridge’s broken
girders. He had a son and no money for food or maybe to even get back to work.
The crackers tasted so awful and were so unsatisfying that Mika pushed them
back into his pocket, breathed in , and then stood up to make the walk back
from the park.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-61897519726674970132014-06-11T11:33:00.001-07:002014-06-11T11:33:39.782-07:00The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail<a href="http://www.powells.com/partner/35761/biblio/9781781681329?p_cv" rel="powells-9781781681329"><img src="http://www.powells.com/bookcovers/9781781681329.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #4C290D;" title="More info about this book at powells.com (new window)" /></a><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
I dedicate this
review to 70,000 missing migrants, to the 100,000 dead from the Mexican drug
war and the 8 out 10 migrant women who are raped as they travel el norte. It is
a small witnessing, but I do it for you.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As the lights flicker a little bit in the American empire,
we see the cracks in facade, but we must remember that we still cast a very
large shadow, and we must remember those in the shadows. There isn’t a more
forgotten or scorned people on this continent than the central American
migrant, and Oscar Martinez gives us a tour of their world. This tour is the
tour of hell. The horrible fates along
this trail rival Dante and the violence seems pulled from the pages of Cormac
McCarthy novel, but this is reporting, and Martinez reports it with compassion
and humanity. This hell is ruled by the indifferent and at times hostile gods
of the U.S. and Mexican governments and populated by more active demons like
MS13 and Los Zetas, and “The beast”( a vicious almost legendary train that
migrants need to hop). We start south in the violence wracked and collapsing
countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. We learn the stories of
those who travel north, many not just seeking a better wage, but actually
fleeing for their lives. Then we travel through the desolate regions of Chiapas
where the migrants are prey to bandits. Then to the ‘the beast”, descriptions
of travels on the train are unreal. Bandits jumping on or being attacked with
convoys of trucks, people trying to jump on and not get mutilated or killed,
and once there on having to cling to the train for dear life while fighting off
sleep. Then to the ghost towns and
desolate regions of the border or “wall”, the deadly Rio Grande and deserts,
and the hell of Ciudad Juarez. There the migrants are caught between the border
patrol, the narcos, and their own coyotes. Martinez is in the Ciudad Juarez
during the height of the drug war and his reporting is frightening, a city of pure
fear and violence, a near civil war. He rides with the border patrol, the
migrants, and those who few who try to help them without financial motivation,
and those who prey on the migrants. He lets all of these voices speak. He is
reporter and provides no real solutions to the disasters he witnesses, but we
owe these who are among the most forgotten people in the Americas at least to
hear their stories. Martinez tells it so well if you can stomach the subject matter
it is a joy to read, and you will not forget it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> <a books="" href="http://www.powells.com/partner/35761/biblio/9781781681329?p_bt" rel="powells-9781781681329" s="" title="Buy from Powell"><img border="0" height="41" src="http://www.powells.com/images/partners/buy_from_powells.jpg" width="126" /></a></o:p></div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-1307508640598599672014-06-10T09:19:00.000-07:002015-12-29T09:38:05.534-08:00Transmission from Submarine #14 sixth transmission.<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;">Richard Pryor
before the fire<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If this is Peace, it is peace with gothic undertones, as if
the ghosts of the past might be appeased for a moment but never exorcised in
their entirety<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Max Roach<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Tupac’s last words were “fuck you”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“If the night catches me I won’t
pump gas in the city.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This isn’t the first time a cruise
ship has hit a whale and dragged its carcass.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The advice is to stay indoors.
Something is causing shriveling across town. Clowns parachuted into town. They
claim they are rocks stars and a labor dispute had halted their private
dirigible in the air over town. We did hear something buzzing in the clouds,
but Chuck imprisoned them in the café just in case. They mostly demanded liquor
though one collapsed with shakes and chills and had to be brought to the
hospital. Their pet chimp destroyed the coffee maker and they started sending
flairs into the air, their loudhailer won’t stop. Judy wonders why we gave it back to them.
Judy wondered why Grandpa Miller’s head looked like that. We all wondered but
the radio never told us answers.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He is lost in the wilderness<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-James Brown<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Killer tied to youtube video<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Murder trial halted due to couple
having sex<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
People looking for a plot in this
book should go read Huck Finn<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Sesshu Foster<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Veda kicked a piece of decorative
armor aside with her sandaled foot. The Aztec militia that was still around had
returned to the bland green that soldiers had worn for countless conflicts.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A line of the Aztec’s ironclads
were grinding past her, away from the city, they were moving their resources
into the hills and towns to the south. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The ATMs had gone haywire. They
ate cards and delivered profane messages to anyone who attempted to use them.
They announced the approach of the Orange Brigade. They announced that the city
would soon be shelled. Veda chewed the bagel that a woman standing outside a
restaurant had handed her. It was her first food in maybe a day. She wanted
some coffee to dip it in. The woman apologized that they had no more. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
People had just been wandering the
streets since their money had stopped working. No had rioted yet, it was just a
calm sedate wandering. Some restaurants had begun to give out plates of food.
Veda looked desperately for coffee. Maybe the militia had taken most of it with
them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The screens of ATMs, phones, and
computers kept flashing the warnings about the coming shelling and bombing of
the city. The militia had abandoned all their fortifications around the city
but still the warnings came. The flashes of light in the sky had been
identified to Veda as a spotter plane. The Orange Brigade’s lifters hovered
over the bay casting shadows over the dark green of the water. The dirigible
transport the Aztecs set up that were still running made long looped transits
around the gloomy hovering shapes.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A woman with a canteen of mint tea
was Veda’s savior. She dipped the bagel in the liquid long enough for it to be
chewable. A streetcorner preacherbot had
begun to emit messages from the Orange brigade instead of its usual
exhortations against sins and promises of routes to salvation. It told them
that they soon would be bombed. Veda sat
on the bench and finished the bagel. She was still hungry though.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Neo-hoodoo is the 8 basic dances
of 19<sup>th</sup> century New Orleans’ Place Congo- the Calinda the Bamboula
the Chacta the Babouille the Conjaille the Juba the Congo and the VooDoo-
modernized into the Philly Dog, the Hully Gully, the Funky Chicken, the
Popcorn, the Boogaloo and the dance of the great American choreographer Buddy
Bradley<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Ishmael Reed<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The woman moved her hands left to
right. Her feet did a dance and then the image looped and she did the dance
again. Smoke curled out of her mouth and then receded. Her pupils were pulled
back in her head and her eyes were pure white.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The claws of the patrol dogs
clicked on the grated floor. Their skulls were hollow and their eyes cameras.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He held the child’s hand in his as
they walked in the light of the screen. The child whispered to him as the dogs
left the chamber. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You can’t bring back the sun.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Please don’t talk of these things
Mara. Not here.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He looked at Mara’s eyes as they
reflected the movements of the looped woman on the giant screen.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not here Mara.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The hands move to the left. The
hands move to the right.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There will always be mass murder,
always<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Bill O’reilly<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Church group removes Alabama
billboard quoting Hitler<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Scientist erase rats’ memories<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The study of thinking machines
teaches us more about the brain than we can learn by introspective methods.
Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-William S Burroughs<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How much longer do we tolerate
mass murder?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Pop Group<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
First night I realized something was wrong was the night we
first fully moved in. You know when there are no cardboard boxes in sight, and
everything is in a strange new location that you have to figure out. Father was
late at the plant and mom had fallen asleep in front of the television. I had
stubbed out the cigarette for her. I was in the darkened living half paying
attention to the flickering television set in the other, trying to figure what
I thought I saw out the window. Then it came. It was like tiny pink snowflakes
drifting down out of the night. Then it popped in the window and bumped the
glass. It looked like a teenage boy except a pink bulbous growth had grown out
or over his forehead covering his eyes. I moved away from the window, choking,
unable to speak and staring. A van rolled up with no lights on. Men with gas
masks and suits like silver garbage bags ran across the yard and tackled the
boy thing and dragged it to van. It sped away vanishing in the dark. I didn’t
start moving until I saw father’s headlights.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We are on the verge of the sixth
extinction<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Teen arrested in botched science
experiment haunted by felony record<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Freedom is freedom from the need to be free. Free
your mind and your ass will follow! The kingdom of heaven is within<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Funkadelic<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The pop produced a manufactured gay. Drawing fires, rage,
broken glass, lynchings and negative video montages in the middle country.
Dance parties spread on the coast. The glow and heat caused nosebleeds. Clubs
overflowed with forgotten wigs. Dancing conquered all other needs.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Court will decide if Guru is dead
or meditating<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Talk rot came down. Julia’s mouth
crumbled away while trying to argue with the teenager who was improperly (in
her mind) bagging her groceries. Jon, the teenager, of course never responded
and only heard what his headphones allowed. Going a whole afternoon without
speaking saved him from the talk rot that had descended and then just as
quickly ascended. Julia had to keep her tongue and jaw nestled in with the
frozen stuff.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fuck this anchor. Go suck ur
president’s dick. You are with the terrorists<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They moved the figure to the center of the road. The figure
had stark face with light emitting from its eyes. The neighborhood was wrecked,
lacked compassion. People began to leave their houses. Tickling sensations
filled their days. Sleep was barely attempted. Dead animals covered the ground.
Green eyes glowed in the figure’s face. Sally was found frigid in the pool. No
rain. Ceilings began to leak sludgy drips. Every house had a rotation of
buckets. Bert and Nan’s house fell in like a crumpled bag. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We fought gladly and to the last
drop of blood for America<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-WEB Dubois<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The history of aerial bombing in the United States of
America is a history of racial tension and class struggle, like many of our
histories. It is also filled with rumor and myth, another trait of American
history.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first incident occurred just
months before the second in the year 1921. Aerial bombing had been invented
just years before, in the rush of invention to create new technologies for
slaughtering people, in what was then
referred to as the Great War or the war to end all wars. Left over
armaments from that conflict played a role in both the first two
incidents. The first incident is what is
called the Tulsa race riot. This incident at the end of May of that year
resembled the “race riots” of two summers before, the “red summer” where
murderous racial violence exploded across the country. The Chicago riot
occurred the same week a dirigible exploded over the city, raining fire and
bodies on office buildings below, but this similarity is accidental. But like
many of the race riots before, a simple incident between a black male and white
woman got totally out of hand and fueled
local racial tensions leading to a larger gathering of armed white men who
assaulted the Greenwood district in Tulsa, then the richest black neighborhood
in America sometimes called the “Black Wall Street”. Both the besieged and the attackers were well
armed, but the blacks were at the disadvantage as their businesses and homes
were set on fire, devastating the district. Six biplanes left over from the
world war were dispatched to fly over the conflict. White officials claimed
these were merely spotter planes there to prevent a wider uprising.
Eyewitnesses reported the planes were employed to drop firebombs on the
district and to snipe at the besieged. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The second incident was mere
months later in West Virginia. This almost mythic event called the battle of
Blair Mountain has been regarded as one of the largest armed civil conflicts in
the United States since the Civil War. The United Mine Workers fought a pitched
battle with local lawmen and Baldwin Felts strikebreakers for five days. This
episode was one of many incidents in the bloody “Coal wars” of the previous
decades. The strikebreakers hired private planes to drop bombs left over from
the world war on the strikers, sometimes indiscriminately releasing them on
villages. When the army arrived to
conclude the hostilities in the favor of the mine owners they also employed
bombers as surveillance planes and some said intimidation. The miners captured
one of the unexploded bombs the strikebreakers had engaged and later displayed
it at a trial.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The third major known incident of
aerial bombing in the United States of America took place some six decades
later. This third and final event under discussion involves the conflict
between the city of Philadelphia and the organization known as MOVE. MOVE, a
black liberation organization with back to the land overtones started by John
Africa (all members of the group employed the surname Africa) had a previous
violent conflict with the city in 1978 where the unsanitary nature of their compound
and incidents with police led to a raid. A policeman died in the firefight
under unclear circumstances and several of the members of the group were
charged with his death. The even more embattled organization (as the founder
John Africa insisted they were. Many argued convincingly that MOVE was a cult,
some called them a terrorist organization) moved to a working class black
neighborhood which they came in conflict with, setting up two bunkers on the
roof of their house, occasionally gesturing with weapons, and blaring profane
political speeches through loudspeakers at all hours of the day. This mixed
with compost, feces, gathered wood that filled the compound, alongside concern
for the treatment of the numerous children that MOVE had, all lead inevitably
to another conflict with the city in 1985. The police moved in (many of who had
been involved in the previous confrontation) and surrounded the house and then
evacuated the area. They issued a communique to MOVE that had curious language.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Attention MOVE, this is America.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Soon tear gas and two high powered
water jets were turned on the compound. At some point heavy gunfire started.
There is been much debate which side did most of the firing, though the police
at one point ran out of ammo. The police commissioner citing the tactical
advantage MOVE had with the two bunkers on the roof decided to employ a drastic
measure. He had a police chopper drop a satchel bomb on the roof of the house.
It failed to destroy the bunkers but started a fire. A decision was made to let the fire burn. The
water jets were turned off. The fire destroyed the compound; only two people
left it and survived an adult and a child, five other children and six other
adults died including John Africa. There were rumors that the police fired on
anyone trying to leave the fire. One adult was seen by witnesses leaving and
then running back in for an unknown reason. The ensuing blaze also destroyed
three blocks of the neighborhood. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This for the moment is what we
know of aerial bombing in America by Americans.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The catastrophe of the First World
War and the extraordinary spiritual malaise that came afterwards were needed to
arouse a doubt as to whether all was well with the white man’s mind.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Carl Jung<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I see the memes. These political
memes. They say things like here is some truth for your day or have some slogan
or quote smeared across an ironic image. I see the ones I agree with, those are
the channels I choose to subscribe to. Some of my relatives subscribe to
channels on the other side and I can see them via Facebook. The messages are
different but the approach is the same. These seem like rituals or incantations
against an encroaching future or reality. These are words and images to inspire
action sold like product. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My mind wanders to the so called
“ghost dance” rebellion of the late 19<sup>th</sup> century. This apocalyptic
Christian movement spread across many of the reservations of the Native
Americans and in many ways was no different than various other apocalyptic
Christian cults that appeared in America during that century (7<sup>th</sup>
day Adventists, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witness), the practitioners had a prophet
who claimed to be Jesus Christ returned and he taught a dance. If this dance
was done correctly a great flood would come and wipe away the invading white
man and then all those who had died in the First Nations would return. The
agents of the Indian bureau for some reason took this religion very seriously
and a tragic series of events unfolded. The cavalry moved onto the Great Sioux
reservation and soon after Sitting Bull was killed by tribal police in either a
botched arrest or an assassination. Then Big Foot’s tribe moved without
permission. The cavalry surrounded them and proceeded to disarm them. One of
the tribesmen, a deaf man raised his gun in the air for an unknown reason. The
surrounding cavalry opened up with Krag rifles and Hotchkiss guns. Some 300
people died, mostly woman and children and almost all disarmed. The causalities
on the cavalry side were mostly from getting caught in their own crossfire.
Many of the bodies were left to freeze to the ground.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These memes are mostly ignored,
treated as part of the noise of the day. Being ignored is obviously not the
violence that met Big Foot’s Minneconjous and it is self-involved and a failure
to those who were treated so unfairly to compare in this way, but hope fades
regardless. People keep sending their “ghost dance’, their rituals and spells
into the ether hoping for some change from this reality, this ever present
moment. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We are all hopeful farmers, we are
all scared rabbits<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Rob Fisk<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-27004048966515585102014-06-03T11:13:00.001-07:002014-06-03T11:13:48.352-07:00Furious Cool: Richard Pryor and the World That Made Him<a href="http://www.powells.com/partner/35761/biblio/9781616200787?p_cv" rel="powells-9781616200787"><img src="http://www.powells.com/bookcovers/9781616200787.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #4C290D;" title="More info about this book at powells.com (new window)" /></a><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Henry Brothers have done the world a favor with this
beautiful book. It is a work of history, sociology, a critic of pop culture,
and a prose poem, and it is very readable with poetic moments. It is
unsentimental about its subject, the brothers are unapologetic though in their
defense of Pryor’s genius though. They are equally unapologetic about Pryor’s
dark side, his damaged psyche, abuses of woman and drugs. This book enters some
almost terrifying moments, but it never feels exploitive, just the bitter
truth. Paul Mooney as usual almost steals the show. The book in the end is a
celebration of an American genius and his brief fulfilling of his promise and
his long decline and neglect of his vibrant and important voice. He spoke a
truth and then silenced himself with money and terrible movies. This celebrates that short moment when Pryor
showed us something about our country, the people he worked with and knew (and
abused), and the world that created him. This book is must for fans of Pryor,
standup comedy, pop and social culture of the 60’s and 70’s, and historians of
those turbulent decades. It also stands as terrific literary artifact worthy of
its subject. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p><a books="" href="http://www.powells.com/partner/35761/biblio/9781616200787?p_bt" rel="powells-9781616200787" s="" title="Buy from Powell"><img border="0" height="41" src="http://www.powells.com/images/partners/buy_from_powells.jpg" width="126" /></a></o:p></div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-88342907324919765702014-05-29T08:51:00.000-07:002014-05-29T08:51:52.077-07:00Transmission from Submarine#14 fifth transmission<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Lord,
have mercy on this land<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">We all
gonna get it in due time<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">I don’t
belong here, I don’t belong here<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">I’ve
even stopped believing in prayer<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">-Nina
Simone<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"> Police shooting frenzy raises concerns<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">“Mollock,
whose buildings are judgment!”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">-Allen
Ginsburg<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">He opened the door and the first thing he saw was his
computer on fire. He felt calm about it
and a little glad. He would miss his documents, the ease of banking, the images
of ex-girlfriends in the information feed, the music library a click away, but
he felt he could walk back out the door and keep going. Up and down the street
he saw similar glow in each window. A strange fire had spread through the
internet and consumed everything. That invisible world that deranged reality
was gone. He felt his hands; he felt his legs, he looked at the pink light of
the fading day. He thought, I must be having a dream. When will I wake up? I
love the way those trees move in the wind. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">The Circus-Circus is what the
whole hep world would be doing Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war
–Hunter S Thompson<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Americans will never have the
right to be forgotten<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Ten comics that can help you
understand mental illness. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Bombings could hurt Kenyan tourism<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">There is a common thought amongst those who study these
things that Jorge Luis Borges prophesized or predicted the internet in his
library of Babel, his aleph, his book of sand, and Tlon, Uqbar, and Orbis
Tertius. It is almost as if a dream he had one day in the library or behind his
poultry inspector desk had materialized and merged with reality. You could
continue this silliness and ponder whether it was a pleasant day dream or the
product of indigestion. Consider these quotes from the short story “Book of
sand”, “…a nightmare thing thing, an obscene thing, and that it defiled and
corrupted reality”, and this quote about destroying the book of sand, “I
considered fire, but I feared that the burning of an infinite book might be
similarly infinite, and suffocate the planet in smoke.” We remain uncomfortable
with the effect of the internet on our lives but fear its destruction, fear
what would happen if it vanished. It is a place of cat videos and endless
outlet for our sexual desires and a place where you can see a grenade tossed in
crowd during a hospital attack in Yemen or beheadings in Iraq and Mexico, a market
square full of body parts in Nigeria. You can run a business or hound a
teenager to suicide with the same tool. Obvious points it is for sure. Real infrastructure crumbles while this
architecture of image and dreams grows. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">It
doesn’t matter if justice is on your side. You have to depict your position as
just.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">-Benjamin
Netanyahu<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">We are like those old gods of
thunder.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">You are such a dork Magda.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Trying to have fun<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Fun is not what we are doing.
Lights and radio will go out right before we exit the cloud. We have a couple
of miles of clear sky. We will look like nothing but a dark patch of the
heavens on our approach.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Won’t their lights be out too.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Why do you think we brought those
heat googles Kali? I am going to need you out front on the observation post.
The heat of their stoves and tanks will guide us in.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Oh there are the stars. Lights and
radio out. The mission is on at this point. We never heard a thing from the
scouts.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">We never did hear anything, Shora.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">I know we can talk freely on
missions Magda, but I prefer to be called captain. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Okay captain. Do you think there
are only woman and children in this village?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">You know I birthed two beautiful
children myself. Who knows, if you ever settle down maybe you will too. There
is nothing like them in your arms. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to defend
that, but the thought of the storm of shrapnel and fire we are about to unleash
on children gives me pause. I wish we had heard from the scouts. Ballast
dropping, radio, and lights out. Kali out front. Launch the flare when we are
on target. Not before.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Who are we going to kill captain?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Keep your finger steady on that
release trigger. Think of that picnic with Roni when you get back.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">That boy is so dumb but sweet. He
told me he could find strawberries.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">No triumph of peace is quite so
great as the supreme triumph of war<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">-Theodore Roosevelt<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">@tacocopter<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Fleeing the tiny fists of panic
comes our food to support people<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">@Jennshul<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Tired from fighting fires all
night. All the furniture is going. Bugs are pouring in.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">@manimani<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">I’ve never felt like this before.
I mean never<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">@freeamsara<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Twelve months since the
disappearance #freeamsara<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">@gopop<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Is downloading music a sickness?
Does anyone listen to what you download?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">@portlandnews<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Do not summon the taco copter. What it brings are no longer
tacos. Something unknown has happened to it. No one has clearance to destroy
it. Just ignore it. Let it roost in its solitude.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">@milkshake<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Look at these plates of tiny burgers and burritos<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">@heartlandpress<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Amnesia plague spreads in prairies.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">@manimani<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">I can no longer feel my hands<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">@monkeynews<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Cyborg monkey loose in downtown office complex. Multiple
injuries reported.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">@scenetonight<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Film of the singer’s breakdown<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">@truenewsfeed<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">What are these hands? What is being shown here?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">The end of the world has already
happened and we are living in that apocalypse together<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">-Yan Jun<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">We’ve been living in a panic ever since.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">-Sjon<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Corpse paint and lipstick. SS
uniforms and saxophones. Genocide themed dance party. Robot dolphins in the
waves. Making out in the bathroom stalls corpse paint running in their eyes.
Bags of flour tossed with abandon. A policebot wandered through stunning people
and issuing arrest warrants. No recognized names on the downloaded forms. The
bot had gotten the wrong address. The party fizzled and the attendees wandered
out in a night lit by burning palm trees.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Will power plants of future use
humans for fuel?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">You won’t believe what’s under
these ordinary people’s clothes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">How to text on an Iphone like a
fucking rockstar<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Amsara was being moved again. She had barely leaned against
the wall and shut her eyes when the two guards entered, handcuffed her and
brought her to a new cell. In this cell she could see her own breathe. A plate
of food was on the floor. They had just fed her but she picked the mold off it and
ate what she could. A man was shouting the next cell. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">I didn’t tell them I didn’t tell them I didn’t tell them I
didn’t tell them<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">The light was glaring in here. The man kept shouting. She
shut her eyes. The sprinklers pulsed and woke her.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Two hours later they moved her to a cell where static and
animal noises were randomly pumped in on the overhead stereo. The heat was
intense in this room and the lights flashed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Amsara had yet to be asked a question. She had yet to be
spoken too by another human.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Oakland is giving kids
post-traumatic stress disorder<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Martial law selfies are hip in Thailand<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black; font-size: 16pt;"><span style="color: white;">Attention MOVE, this is
America<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Of all of our studies, history is the most prepared to
reward all research, the white man made the mistake of letting me read his
history books.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">-Malcolm X<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Pleasurehead danced around the
discorporated cars. Ghosts were appearing. Katy hated her husband for the last
ten years of his life and she hated that he had returned to linger around the
living room. Ghost robots appeared to perform their old tasks. They just
managed to move stuff around and cover it with slime. A ghost blimp hovered
over Grover elementary. The kids gave up on recess after some initial
enthusiasm for slipping around in the ectoplasm. The bad feelings were too
much. Ghost cocaine caused overdoses and battered hearts. Ghost heroin dripped
out of bathroom stalls. City wide car crashes and traffic jams from haunted
traffic.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">It tears through the walls. It has metal dripping from its
skull. The monkey lets a long drip of drool caress the carpet. There is
screaming as it lurches back in forth, seeming to be on the edge of falling
down. Dave wonders about poker night. He
thinks of the watch he gave Bill when Bill swept up after a sorry hand. The
watch that was his fathers. Will he be able to retrieve it, reclaim his honor?
Will this monkey quit punching him repeatedly in the chest? Will this agony
end, is he about to die? Sue Ann knows the kids disrespect her. She knows they
scorn her gifts and run to the neighbor’s house where they pretend they might
in reality belong there by birthright. This neglect shadows her every moment
her failure to receive respect for her endless hours spent here with computer
files, phone calls, pen clutched in hand for the entirety of meetings. The
monkey was ripping her desk to pieces in front of her eyes. Her computer
skidded across the floor; the letter she was writing blanked out, unsaved it
would vanish. Her cup of pens disappeared, a slice of the desk skidded across
her forehead drawing blood. The blood dripped into her mouth and she
deliberated on why. Paul was crawling on the floor watching the carpet be
decorated with his teeth. The coffee stain on his pants the olive oil stain he
found on his shirt walking to the office. The long ropy strands of jizz the
monkey is whipping across his desk. The shriek of joy or pain as this task is
exhaustively finalized.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">I am actually absolutely sure that the great god Pan slipped
through some sort of gateway into our world, on that day.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">The writer Sjon in reference to 9/11</span></span><o:p></o:p></div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-71518039521532163582014-05-22T11:06:00.002-07:002014-05-29T08:48:11.671-07:00Transmissions from Submarine #14 fourth transmission.<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-5a287fb3-2514-17ad-9503-d478f8ccf325" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br id="docs-internal-guid-5a287fb3-251c-cc0b-522b-6409d2b249f5" /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">There are very few of us left</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">-Geronimo</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Cities of the future start today in the cloud.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">And the happiest country in the world is…</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">The stereo bled black ooze. The cell phones beeped nonstop. She moved through the remixes tasting the beats and rhymes. The wall shimmered as she walked through. Only four feet tall but seemingly the only thing in the world. The staggerlee shanty youth walked up to her, their souls amphetamine scarred, computer poisons in their hearts. She would walk through this shanty land like it was a puddle; she could pull the drug squad helicopter from the air with one hand.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Cellphones shut down for miles around, their owners can’t stop the shrill chirping that erupts from them. Radio only blared her song, people danced the piss your pants in the middle of the street. Graffiti began to cover car windows . . . barricades of burning towers blocked the passageways into the shanty town.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Even though many people know what we suffer, no defends us or does anything to protect us, therefore, I am an instrument to avenge several women who appear weak, but in reality we are brave.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">-Diana la Cazadora de Choferes</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Man arrested for threating Boehner</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">bell hooks calls Beyonce a terrorist.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">“Let's face it. We're undone by each other. And if we're not, we're missing something.” </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">-Judith Butler</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Many articles were written on the winning of the Egyptian revolution with the help of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. Very few articles were written on the winning of the counter revolution with tanks and guns.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Slavery joke creates some controversy</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;"> 15 celebrities you want as your girlfriend.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">…the film made me go a little crazy and I had a breakdown” –Maria Schneider on Last Tango in Paris.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Pindle ran his fingers down the neck of the banjo. He practiced some runs, and then stopped to listen to mother.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Play the song from the tape?</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Which tape mother?</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Dance of death, not best of the Ventures.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">John Fahey? I will try again, as I always try mother.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Mother was leaned against the wall of the roofless building. The bloody bandage wrapped around her eyes. A smile grew on her lips as he worked through the song.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">What was this place mother, back in the days?</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">It was called a Panda Express. It was an eating hall.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">When will we eat again Mother?</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Soon child, I feel it.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;"> How fake celebrity porn saved a man from suicide.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Texas police shoots woman, 93</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Jordan: 'I was against all white people.'</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The translated name of practice of foot binding that existed in China until the early 20</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 9px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super;">th</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> century was “the three-inch golden lilies”. The foot and its binding clothes were covered in an embroidered shoe. The foot underneath the shoe was commonly coated in rotting flesh.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">No force will be able to contain the torrent of fatal vengeance. We will have to sing a new Marseillaise which, like the trumpets of Jericho, will bring down the dwellings of the wicked…the heavens will see with fearful joy, amid the thunder of the redemptive catastrophe, the castigation of arrogant evildoers, the supreme and terrible vengeance of drunken poverty.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">-Ruben Dario</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">He cleans the machine rifle in the ruined church. Some decayed saint observed him as he ran through the motions. A thin stick of smoke from the city. He had crawled through the sewer for days, his eyes pulling back from the sunlight leaking through the roof. The actions done, he looks through his satchel and finds it damp and empty. Food jumps the priority list.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;"> Havel remembered Raf being sucked under the sludge tide. That grinding fortress train the Aleman had brought through the town had dropped depth charges into the sewer. He guessed backed up toilets weren’t much of a concern when they had torched whole neighborhoods. Raf’s screams could still be heard ringing in his ears. Julo and the others may have made it; there was just darkness and stench from that time on.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Butterflies fluttered in their own curious patterns over the grass of the yard. The light tortured his eyes. He rested and let the grass poke through the holes in his pants. He remembered the tea in the living room with Marta and Raf. He remembered the warmth of it and the chipped china. The phone rang and rang and he knew the uprising was going to begin. He knew everything would start if he answered that phone.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">They were brothers. These men from a rough desert tribe. Ida was good at faces and she saw this in them. The desert at night was cold and barren. They had felt its presence all day in the darkness of the truck. A hungry heat grinding at them. Now they moved on their feet in the cold of the desert night. The t-shirt, sweat pants that Ida had received did nothing to stop the chill. Putting foot after foot across the land were her only thoughts except for the brother’s faces. She remembered every face on this journey, everyone that fed, clothed, administered injections to her, and had kept her moving but always captive. She remembered the faces of the woman who had sat with her in dark rooms and vehicles, and had walked through the wilds with her. She had been kept dope sick, hungry, and without documents so this cataloguing was her only remaining power. They could hear the cries of the two they had just left behind. Too sick to walk, so one of the brothers had shot them in the knees and left them. Ida remembered their faces as their voices became fainter. She and the other woman did not look back but walked. They crossed desert under fat bundles of stars towards Israel. The name of this land was all she had picked up from the brother’s language.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">If you buy a Florida tomato you are buying the product of slave labor.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;"> The Australian government has warned tourists to avoid the protest camps</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Jennifer Lawrence stares into your soul…</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Moon occults Saturn…</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">He had seen the president around. Of course it couldn’t actually be the president. But a man with that same mournful expression that had flashed across hundreds of screens, sitting in a parked car early morning in the parking lot devoid of any other traffic, or on that park bench alone with clustered pigeons. The government had moved to Glen Falls and kept trying odd outreach programs, maybe having clones of the president lingering in lonely tableaus was a plan to evoke empathy.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">The coffee filter. He got another note about the coffee filter. He changed it every time he made coffee in the break room. They had some odd stereotype of the janitor reusing old grounds; they just didn’t realize the coffee tasted that bad. It wasn’t really even coffee any more.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Whole sections of town were covered in moss and reckless sprouting trees. The plague zones that were being blamed on the Eden Initiative. It was claimed that they had first appeared here in Eugene with their plans to reset the clock on civilization. He found a tree sprouting in the middle of a classroom during his rounds. He knew red speckled flesh and vomiting would occur in a couple hours. He would do the right thing and call this in and seal himself in the building, but here he was still feeling burned up about the coffee filter note.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">As he locked the door to prepare for the quarantine, he saw out there in the street was the president searching for something he had lost in the gutter, out there in the world that the big set of keys on his belt would seal away.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Love is not a state, a feeling, a disposition, but an exchange, uneven, fraught with history, with ghosts, with longings that are more or less legible to those who try to see one another with their own faulty vision.”</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">-Judith Butler</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Woman films her own abortion</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Movie director takes in murderer</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Ursi had been traveling in space a long time. She felt its rattle in every one of her bones. Back on earth her suit felt heavy, the gases venting from it made the air around her feel rubbery. She flipped through the photos of her children from the age she remembered them. They were later pictures but she never knew those people, she never who Rani and Rulio were when they chose suicide. Her entire family had vanished while she was in space. Her abuela was all that remain. Ursi had seen her moving around corners just ahead of her all over the complex.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">She heard the guns of the gangs firing from the barricades in front of the complex as she let the wheezing suit sit her in the kitchen. There was only crumbled bread available to eat. It turned to dust and then got gummy with the nut paste. She wondered if her abuela would venture into the kitchen as she rested here, probably not. A vent of gas from the suit stained the wall black.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Ursi had an appointment with the welfare office in the morning. She had decided to remove the suit, see if she could survive in the gravity well. She had doubts that she would ever being employable again, but she could never return to space.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">See tornado rip through playground</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">South Sudan is one of ten countries that might have a mass slaughter this year. Read the whole list.</span></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possessions is a sickness in them</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="color: white;">Sitting Bull</span></span></div>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></span></div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-62926397324138783442014-05-22T10:42:00.001-07:002014-05-22T11:21:37.888-07:00We were given shelter part 9<div class="MsoNormal">
Why did you do that to them? You didn’t have to.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No one has to do anything, but we do. We do.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m going to report what you did when get to this city. That
is the only reason I’m sticking with you.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You’re sticking with me as you will probably die otherwise.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am going to let them know that you murdered without even
pausing. That is what you do.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Those in the city care little for what people do out here.
What they do to make it to the city. They care for you little, even when you
get there. This, this is not a threat that I am going to say, but a truth. I
have documents. You do not. So you even being received in the city is up to me.
I will do this for you no matter what. So accuse me of murder if you want, just
know it might be a waste of your efforts.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I’m supposed to cling to you, one who could and probably
will kill me at any moment for safety. But, aren’t we safe in this corridor.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You are safe from dumb starving animals and God’s Childrens,
but you are not safe from cleverer predators. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Turning a corner and there they are. Pushing a wheelbarrow
with a squeaking wheel. It seems impossible to have not heard them, but there
they were. A small man or child with floppy arms and a hunched over man with a
swollen odd pate and cheap looking cloak. A brown blanket covered the contents
of the wheelbarrow. Something squirmed under the covers.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
See I told you. The smarter ones sneak in.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Excena told the woman who observed the duo with some
concern.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The big one spoke<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here is a sneaky one.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Traipsing through the pines acting like she can hear. But
not us. She hears what we want and we wants quiet.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A dry pop. A wet explosion. The big head dropped off. The
little one flailed around with its floppy arms trying to catch it and
accidently kicks the head down the hill. The little one makes a wet gasping
noise running after it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Excena rips the cover off the wheelbarrow. A squirming mass
of connected limbs, heads, and other body parts covered in dirt lay within.
Blind eyes stared; mouths gasped and dropped snakelets of drool. The man child
ran back up holding the head. The head spoke<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Don’t ruin it. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The body of the larger one still stood next to the
wheelbarrow.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The body’s neck veins throbbed dryly.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The man child brought it back its head, which it gripped in
its hands. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It spoke<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We dug it up. We get to keep them. We like to dig them up
early. Early is good for us. Don’t touch please. We will pick your bones if you
take it. We get to keep it. You don’t need to run off we will walk together.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She set what was left in the wheelbarrow on fire with her
wrist gun. She then grabbed the hand of
the woman and pulled her along with as she walked away. The big man continued
to rasp at her following alongher holding his head. The floppy arm little one
tried to throw dirt on the burning wheelbarrow.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Come on don’t stare at them let’s move.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Excena turned around and spoke to the big man who was
stumbling after them holding his head.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Quit following us. Go dig something else up <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-36218722192680259072014-05-15T08:34:00.002-07:002014-05-15T08:52:35.478-07:00We were given shelter part 8<div class="MsoNormal">
The screen announces with a mild orchestral crescendo, that
it had a broadcast. Mika turned off the cartoon rerun that he was watching
instead of working since it couldn’t compete with the noise of the new screen.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The screen showed a man running down the street. He is
running with abandon, hurtling himself on despite his limbs that kept
threatening to tangle. His hair was shabbily trimmed, his clothes trash. Epic
music swelled as he ran, he tripped once and then pulled himself back up.
Swelling strings, guitars and pounding drums made his actions seem worthy of a
champion. He couldn’t be the protagonist thought Mika. The street in the video was the one right out
front, Mika began to realize. Was he being asked to identify with the
commonplace events of the street? It was a neglected street. A couple of city
offices that the mayor had defunded but left staffed, mainly so people could
wander in and shout their complaints. This was mixed with a couple of private
shelters and kitchens/social welfare offices like the one he worked for that
people tolerated, and then black market stalls, kitchens, and junkies. The
screen showed a series of clips of junkies doing junkie things which even the
hardest core of drug enthusiast would have found depressing. Ripping apart radios and bicycles and then leaving
the parts scattered in ritualistic displays. Puking into gutters. Scouring the
same patch of dirty sidewalks for hours saying I know I left it here, it was
right here. Crouching in dark spots administering drugs. This hirsute, sweaty man that was being shown
to him was definitely of the junkie tribe.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The man turned and shouted (silently for he wasn't sound
tracked) and ran towards the plastic door of one of the neighboring agencies.
He slammed into it full force, bouncing back onto the sidewalk, leaving a spot
of blood on the doorway.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The music rose in intensity and an operatic female voice
joined the proceedings. Black armored
van dripping with sound equipment appeared. It stopped and out poured figures
in full body suits. They surrounded the man who was now struggling to rise and laid
into him with black sticks that telescoped from their gauntleted hands. More
blood hits the door, and the sidewalk, and the mirrored goggles of the
attackers. Then they haul him into the van as the music reaches a climactic
pitch.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A montage is shown next. More of the black vans, vomiting
out parties of truncheon happy squads taking down sweaty junkies, little
kitchens cooking suspicious looking meat, and street preachers. Some of the
attacked clothing disintegrates in the assault and the indignity of being
hauled off mostly nude is added on. The soundtracks is quieting and the sound
pouring off the vans takes over, a combination of babies crying and laughing
mixed into a rude car horn symphony cut through with white noise bursts and
ancient death metal. A whole montage of eyes popping open in shabby tents and
sleeping bags trying to understand that sound, the sound that now envelopes
them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then a vision of the street filled with shops, restaurants,
happy children stuffing multicolored “food’ in their mouths. Jubilant clean
skinned people in well matched outfits relishing a day. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Waterfront market coming soon from the Business Coalition
and the Mayor’s office in bold print moved across the bottom of the screen.<o:p></o:p></div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-77696694044830037722014-05-13T11:32:00.000-07:002014-05-14T08:37:36.961-07:00Matt Taibbi<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Taibbi’s reporting drips with caustic humor and
intelligence. I picked up several of his books and worked through them and
found an account of current history from the Kerry Bush election up until now
through the lens of that reporting. Elections, the financial crisis, war,
Katrina, immigration, stop and frisk, and corruption of our political order and imbalance of our legal system are
all given a review. We can see the transition from a democracy to an oligarchy. People may find Taibbi’s voice cynical and anarchist, but I
find it mostly refreshing as he takes no prisoners and finds both parties at
equal fault.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.powells.com/partner/35761/biblio/9780812993424?p_cv" rel="powells-9780812993424"><img src="http://www.powells.com/bookcovers/9780812993424.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #4C290D;" title="More info about this book at powells.com (new window)" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Divide is the most current and the most important as it
shows, to crudely paraphrase Taibbi’s thesis, the move of America towards a
dystopia. An oligarchy that is criminalizing being poor by intertwining the
social safety net with law enforcement and at the same time refusing to prosecute financial
crimes criminally (only seeking fines). Taibbi gives us a tour of the
bureaucracy of welfare, stop and frisk, immigration laws of Georgia, and other idiocy. He uses situations that seem worthy of the fiction of Heller and Kafka, a largely computer and statistical model referencing bureaucracy gone amuck, serving only its illogical needs. Then he counters this
with the inadequate prosecuting of financial crimes. HSBC bank can launder $100
million for the mass murders in the Sinaloa cartel without a single person
going to jail but a homeless man caught with a single joint gets to serve 40
days in jail. The grotesque onslaught of short sellers on Fairfax Financial is particular bizarre episode. Case by case Taibbi goes through this surreal tilting of justice. A country where violent crime is on the downswing but prison populations are exploding. Those who suffer mostly are blacks and Latinos and some whites, but main the trend is towards the poor being the brunt of this upside down world of justice where crime is only prosecuted for one population. a population without a voice, a population the majority of Americans despise and fear. Fear that they will be there soon. Whole communities are turned into occupied territory where the stupidest little mistakes that all kids make during adolescence, can pull you into a system that can grind you into nothing. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.powells.com/partner/35761/biblio/9780385529969?p_cv" rel="powells-9780385529969"><img src="http://www.powells.com/bookcovers/9780385529969.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #4C290D;" title="More info about this book at powells.com (new window)" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Griftopia is Taibbi’s sour take on the financial
crisis and its aftermath. He reviews what he calls the “grifter era” where
everyone in government and business have moved towards seeking a fast buck
instead of long term planning. Pennsylvania attempts to sell its turnpike, and
Chicago does sell its parking meters to fill a one year budget gap(for a 75
year lease) This resembles the sacking
of a crumbling empire rather than a plan for continued business. He treats the
bailouts, the Tea Party, Affordable Care Act(which has done nothing to break up
the insurance cartels and is many ways a gift to them) with scorn, disgust and
also compassion. The consensus between the two parties to back up business at
every turn while keeping people squabbling over social issues is creating a
culture of cynicism and corruption, truly alienated from democratic impulse.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.powells.com/partner/35761/biblio/9780385520348?p_cv" rel="powells-9780385520348"><img src="http://www.powells.com/bookcovers/9780385520348.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #4C290D;" title="More info about this book at powells.com (new window)" /></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Derangement is about the loss of a collective public
narrative during the Bush era. People on the right and left started to use Taibbi's wonderful term “reality shopping” to
find their own narrative. He explores and infiltrates Pastor Hagee’s megachurch
and the 9/11 truth movement. He finds an America disenchanted with its
political options, seeking easy superhero narratives (the Matrix and V for
vendetta being common touchstones), and mostly very lonely. I found this book
deeply sad, the optimism of the conspiracy theorist (even though they think
they are facing a truly evil and murderous foe) versus the cynicism,
disinterest and shabbiness of reality is deeply depressing. Taibbi finds
humanity in both of these camps and avoids easy humor, even though he exposes
some troubling beliefs and subtexts in the current era of popular movements.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.powells.com/partner/35761/biblio/9780802170415?p_cv" rel="powells-9780802170415"><img src="http://www.powells.com/bookcovers/9780802170415.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #4C290D;" title="More info about this book at powells.com (new window)" /></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Episodes or dispatches from the disasters of Bush’s second
term. Taibbi retains interest whether reporting on the corrupt do nothing
congress, or reporting from where the thin veneer of civilization is wiped away to reveal the
uncaring face of reality. For these later parts his trip into post-Katrina New
Orleans with Sean Penn is a piece of reporting worthy of Heller or Thompson, a
piece of apocalyptic comedy equal parts satire and deadly serious, and three
surreal days in Abu Ghraib.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.powells.com/partner/35761/biblio/9780307345714?p_cv" rel="powells-9780307345714"><img src="http://www.powells.com/bookcovers/9780307345714.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #4C290D;" title="More info about this book at powells.com (new window)" /></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This earlier work covering the 2004
election is his busiest writing, filled with skits, jokes and lots of gonzo
antics like drug taking and wearing silly outfits. Its thesis, that Taibbi
delivers in more nuanced fashion in later books is of the presidential election
as an elaborate version of the third world military parade. He heaps endless
scorn on all the candidates and both parties, and the reporters who give it
such an air of importance. The only politicos he retains any love for are Dennis
Kucinich and Bernie Sanders, which seems about right. This book is cynical and disgusted, but in
the end whom is more cynical, the pageantry or the one who exposes it. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> </span></div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-72985697112049173632014-05-09T11:30:00.000-07:002014-05-12T12:12:00.990-07:00Transmissions from Submarine #14 third transmission.<div class="MsoNormal">
A danceable solution to teenage revolution<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Roxy Music<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Joseph Desire Mobutu changed his name to Mobutu Sese Seke
Kuku NgBendu waza Banga, which has been alternately translated as “the
all-powerful warrior, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will
go from conquest to conquest , leaving fire in his wake.” or “ the rooster who
watches over all the hens”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Terrorism is part of our History
–Angela Davis<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A giant flowed by in the river of filth. Graham had a video
of porn transmitting on his suit. A cock entering the same mouth over and over
again. Amphetamine sweat dripping of skin. Poetry was being downloaded on his
phone. He felt the clock ticking. This seemed the dying down of the universe.
Violin transmissions deep from within. A group of men ran by in army fatigues
black plastic machineguns swinging on their arms semen crusted on their pants.
He kicked tampons of his feet. A car had crashed and caught fire he found it
strangely beautiful, an almost pastoral love scene, nature and technology.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A half-track pulled in front of him. A dwarf in fatigues and
one arm jumped out of the cab and grabbed him by the crotch and pulled him into
the dark of the interior. A woman with fatigues and an ugly gun was seated
inside. A man was sputtering in the corner a plastic bag wrapped over his face.
Sit down and turn that porn off.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A stretch of sand covered in burning palm trees. Faces of
the leaders were projected on the faces of the hotels. Dropping the body where it soon became covered
in a fine dusting of sand. A group of young people in beautiful swimming suits
were running in and out of the water, stopping to take photographs with each
other, drinking wine, eating cheese, fruit , and bread. Their laughter carried
up towards them over the waves. Graham dreamed of walking out in the water. He
was hosing urine out of the half-track under observation from the woman and the
dwarf who it turned out was also a woman. Jets streaked over the city their trails
catching the sunlight in pink streaks. Graham was amazed at the beauty of their
movement. They delivered bombs far away and glinting with sunlight disappeared,
their trails still reflecting the sun. He dreamed of the pilots. What dreams
are contained behind those goggles and masks?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Todo pertence a todos<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Shall we commit suicide” is an essay by Winston Churchill
on aerial bombing.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Watch a whole street disappear in this amazing video<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
New details of how the execution went horribly wrong….<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Photos from a country that doesn’t actually exist.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The phone rang Malin set his pen down to answer it. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They are coming to arrest you now.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He didn’t know the voice<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Should I run?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You can. They will probably kill your wife if you leave
though.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The phone clicked off.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Malin let his handset drop to the desktop. He looked over
his history of the revolution. In its second draft. 70% of it was finished. He hadn’t attempting poetry in years so he
could complete it. He was sure it was his legacy. He began to scrawl a poem in
the margins of the draft.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The knock came twenty minutes after his draft was finished.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Through the keyhole he saw the swaying man and women. Their
uniforms tight their baldrics and holster black and shining with polish. He
certain they were drunk. He certain they were still teenagers. Their backs were
to the door. He could not see their faces.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Vampire mice may hold the key to eternal life<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Women of the world take over, because if you don’t, the
world will come to an end. It won’t take long<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Jim O’rourke<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Survivors your computers may be monitored.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Federico Fellini’s working title for La Dolce Vita was
“Though life is brutal and terrible you can always find some moments of
sensuality and sweetness”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Swung, his face at last to the wind, then his neck snapped.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Archie Shepp<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Can Xue the Chinese writer, has largely been untroubled by
censors. Her tales of bizarre ailments, entrapment, and sexual menace are set
in alternate reality of grotesques and surrealism. The censors have found her
work too difficult to find political fault with. Her name translates as stubborn dirty snow. She
has found inspiration and her work has been compared to western authors such as
Bruno Shulz, Shakespeare, Goethe, Calvino, Dante, and Borges. She has also completed
studies on these authors. Tragedy befell her family during the Cultural Revolution
and she was mostly self-educated. She describes her work as “life literature”
or soul literature”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally we hear from the woman at the center of the
controversy<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A man who I lived with years ago is my friend on Facebook. We
shared an apartment in a grim church filled city. A city I spent a year in. I received
nothing from that period of my life except a couple of books and records I
still treasure occasionally. Every photo he posts of his wife is blurred. It is
like she is totally out of focus. I have never met this wife and probably never
will, since me and this man are on very separate paths in life and will
probably never interact. Does he not realize how inadequate each photo he
presents the world, is there some effect around the wife that blurs or smudges
each photo. This man posts links to articles by Pastor John Hagee on the blood
moon with the words “interesting reading”. Hagee is the head of a megachurch that
is especially attached to political support for the country of Israel. The
reason for this is the necessity of the holy land being in Jewish hands for the
final war of Armageddon. He sees four blood moons as one of many signs and
wonders predicting these final events. I think of hiding this man from my Facebook
feed blocking his occasional reports of his, in my opinion, lunatic beliefs.
Then I think of this shutting off, this turning off a person. Sometimes I’m
convinced the algorithms of Facebook are hiding more and more of what I post,
we get more and more isolated in this electronic labyrinths until we are
shouting alone in our room, customizing more and more everything we input.
Filter everything so that blurred faces are all we experience.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I never thought of myself as depressed as much as paralyzed
by hope.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Maria Bamford<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If you like Camera Obscura try Feist<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Selena Gomez takes the crop top to a whole new level.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some vagina facts…<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The soldier is more a girl than a woman. Her outfit is green
and her young face is framed by her dark hair. Her large nose flares and her
breathing is a white puff in the morning chill. Her rifle is held tight at
attention.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What will you do?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fight.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Where will you fight?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In their land.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Will we need maps of our own land?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We need maps only of the enemy’s lands.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What roads will we travel on?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I will march on road of their skulls.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When will you stop?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When there is no more fight in them and we salt their earth<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What happens if you are captured?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I will bite my own tongue off and drown in my own blood before
I say a word to them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When you’ve begun to think like a gun<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The rest of the year is already done<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When you’ve begun to think like a gun<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The days of the year are suddenly gone.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-John Cale<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Baron was sure the sample case was
light as he drove into Mumsburg. He didn’t care, what he could sell he could
sell; the trip hadn’t been bad yet. Roadside food was not sitting well in his
stomach. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A pile of money was sitting in the
middle of the road. Bills fluttered around like the leaves of autumn. Baron pulled the car to halt to prevent
colliding with the offering. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A woman ran out of the house he
stopped by. She held a baby in her arms. The baby’s face was red from
screaming.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This object won’t stop. It makes
the funny noise all morning. I forget the words for these things.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The woman clothing seem thrown on
at random, her arm entirely out of the sleeve of her shirt. Baron held the
baby. The woman wandered away from them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Where is my door? She said as she
climbed on top of Baron’s car and then sprawled back<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Car was driving toward him. A man
opened the door of the moving vehicle and then tumbled onto the street; the car
veered off the road and smashed into a tree. The man crawled away.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Baron wondered what do with the
screaming baby. The mother looked thoroughly passed out. He thought there was
some blood coming out of her nostril. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What’s person? Do we believe this?
He heard from behind him.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A man in a suit covered in mud and
leaves was walking towards him with a cellphone in his hand.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What’s person? Do we believe this? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The man said waving the phone.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hey can you watch this baby? Do
you know that lady?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The man looked puzzled and then
started to slowly chew the cell phone. Drool drizzled out, a button beeped. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The baby stopped screaming. It was
asleep. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
People in the local community have said that the continued
presence of armed militia members is hurting business.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Several homes in Portsmouth were set on fire last night. We
have footage of the arsonist setting fire to our porch.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We are all born mad. - Samuel Beckett<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-76480808540367774872014-05-08T08:44:00.001-07:002014-05-08T08:44:54.163-07:00We were given shelter part 8<div class="MsoNormal">
Throb of the rotors vibrated the world like he was enclosed
in a metal box, painting the whole landscape mechanical. Three of the gunships hovered
without movement. Sad sweeps of light tenderly poked through the trees. The
girl next to him still had dirt behind her ears. Puss leaked from her nose
where the tubes had been removed. Others of the God’s Children were scattered
around the trees. Any movement they made and they would be revealed. To be
revealed is to be obliterated. A blood mist mixed with tree chips. Slurry to
pollute the streams. He had seen it many times before.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A babble of voices streamed through the trees. Strung up
loud speakers were giving lectures from the mayor. His ever-changing book in
newer and newer editions. All God’s Children were taught to hate the book. Now you
could really tell what it was saying. He liked some of the sentences. It was
always broadcast in pleasing male and female but sometimes it didn’t seem that
different from Papa’s speech. Lots anger and confusion mixed with simplistic
life lessons. Then the baby screaming and crying could be heard. The sound
trucks were cruising up the road blaring that blather. You could not think for
the sound, the sound. Fingers itched at triggers. One bullet or rocket would
place them. To be place was to be gone. Urine. The girl next to him had soiled
herself. Tinny shrieking, rotor throb, pleasant babble, urine.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-87254776016664175452014-05-08T08:41:00.000-07:002014-05-08T08:41:13.708-07:00We were given shelter part 7<div class="MsoNormal">
The screen was on. Mika was not imagining it. There was an
office on it. It was the office of the Mayor.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Mayor himself emerged from a door and walked to his
desk. Sitting down with a cup of coffee in his hand he began talking.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Good morning. There have been some clever adjustments of
mobiles out there so that some of you have tuned out my messages. So I have
gifted you, and this is a gift, with screens. All over town you will find them.
They are part of the new connectivity. My every day will be available to you,
everything except what I do in that room back there. That might sound sinister,
but is not. I sleep in there. A place removed from view. The only place I go
that no one records me. Sleep is mine. Sleep is death. I don’t share death. I
share life. Every sneeze, snot, scratch, bloody nose and other excretions is
given a view. These are life. Closed eyelids are death and not shown. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I sit in my office already fully wrapped in a suit, drinking
coffee and writing. It isn’t coffee it is something that barely resembles the
idea of coffee. I like the idea of coffee. I do not like drinking this.
Visually this may evoke the idea of coffee. I like the idea of coffee. It’s one
of those things we need back. I talk and I write about the promised return of
coffee, People invented the whole world over coffee. In days when alcohol was safer
to drink then water, coffee appeared to preserve ideas, sober thoughts which
formed our present ideas of society and life itself. We are in another era
where alcohol is safer than water and we need coffee back. We probably won’t
get coffee but we can talk about it and how we yearn for the idea of it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-9137142232334379072014-05-02T08:54:00.002-07:002014-05-12T12:10:27.682-07:00Transmissions from submarine#14: second transmission<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Could social media notifications have a smell in the future?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All language is but a poor translation<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Franz kafka<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dog levitates up the stairs.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ghost invades soccer stadium.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The wet ropes cut into his skin even through the tattered
robes. The robe’s sorry state did nothing to combat the static chill of the
beach air. He watched the raft continue on its way with a feeling resembling
numbness. The revelers continue to croak shouts of revelry with forced air.
Bottles were passed, clothes ripped off, breasts, penis and reddened skin were
exposed to the air. Some revelers rolled off the raft to splash into the water,
others sprawled unmoving. Blood leaked from the nostrils of a shouting man he
lifted his bottle to the light painted heaven but his words could not be heard
over the roaring surf. The current moved the raft towards the cauldron of rocks
and mist, the tattered sail unable effect the raft’s progress. He watched the
bodies sink or float away from the raft but refused to look as it disappeared
into the steaming cauldron. No one else swam to shore.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why a deadly virus in the Middle East has the whole world on
alert.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A tank is a tank in Chicago, in Paris or in Mexico<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Carlos Fuentes<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ranked: the greatest selfies of all time.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My phone has begun to transmit my dreams across town. These
dreams include me checking my Facebook status and typing texts, going to work
and not doing a single task and then leaving. There was a dream about being
quarantined for a sickness. You were there. The kept us in a shabby cafeteria,
a red rope is all that kept us contained. The uninfected were on the other side
of the rope selecting food and paying for it. Typical cafeteria stuff. The
carpet was awful. The last dream I remember recently was me touring a war torn
city in a jeep with my father. It was covered in spilled paint and garbage,
reminding me of a Tarkovsky movie (especially scenes from Stalker and The
Sacrifice). We discussed what we’re seeing as if it was a movie. The lackluster
checkpoints never bothered us; they seem to have given up on their war. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Power grows from the barrel of a gun – Mao Zedong<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Black is the color of my true love’s hair. blaaaack…black….blaaaack!
– Patty Waters<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Portrait of Linda in three colors, all Black<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Knock back stick around, the kids clamor and lurch with
their mouths and hands, thrusting swallowing. Her stick husband thing covers
his flesh with light cotton. She crams them out the door and feels urine
moisten her pants. She floats up the stairs; singing on the wrinkled flaps of
her brain is her name “Sandra” and the fleeting essence of her life, sensations
and her recollections of events. She turns locks in doors to feel the spinning
motion, to feel that she was winding up a vast machine of which she had wrested
control away from the others. She entered her son Richard’s room and pushes his
army men and trucks into the center of the room, and then stuffed bears and
blankets. It burned. All of it, she controlled it as the fabric disappeared and
when it was a pulsing pile of plastic, she put on the gloves and began to craft
it. It resembled a small melted man who had lied down to rest. She flung its
stinking mass on his bed. She entered Ruth’s room and removed the head of each
doll, and stuffed them in her pillow case. Over the next couple of hours she
transplanted the flower garden to her and husband’s bed until it was covered in
mud and reaching gasping roots. She watered it with her own urine. Then she went
downstairs to welcome her family to their new world.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Death don’t have no mercy, in this land –Reverend Gary Davis<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Sela used her car for everything. It had filled with food
wrappers and there was so much rust she could see the road through the floor.
But, that car brought her everywhere. The hour drive over the hills to school
and to the warehouse where she worked most days. It especially brought her away
from her mother’s house where she no longer wanted to live. Over the summer fuel prices had risen. She had
to cut the drive to school. The warehouse closed. She then could only move the
car once a day. She found new neighborhoods to park it in so she could sleep.
One neighborhood was filled with empty houses. A herd of starving cows moved
between the houses, their ribs visible beneath their skin as they moved over
the muddy ground. Sela had grown used to the footprints of raccoons on her car
window in the morning. The pale casts of
tracks showing the movements of the raccoons while she slept.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Anti Balacka Christian youth loot the Muslim market.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The happy song makes me so happy<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Can twerking revive
classical music?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Grateful Dead member warns against drug use.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Religion, it’s not a leap of faith, it’s high functioning
autism.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-Eugene Mirman<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I built a robot for sadness. I gave it tear ducts so real
that salt tears could pour down its immobile features. I began to tell it my
darkest secrets. That I now longer loved my country and never really did, that
I wished I knew for sure that the engine of the world was running down so we
could enjoy one last fuck in the park, that only food made me happy, that I
never loved anyone over myself and was sure no one else did either, I had
forgotten to brush my teeth in the morning for a week, my clothing no longer
fit and fell of my frame, and I had woken up for a couple of days with
bloodstains on my pillow, that I hoped these tears would form a map to a new
land, and that every morning I wished the world was wiped away. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The robot snuck out of its hidey-hole and began telling my
neighbors all my secrets. All the shit I thought about them and everyone else.
As I tracked down the robot I found my neighbors just shrugged their shoulders
and didn’t care. Everyone told everyone all their secrets everyday already, and
they had grown deaf to that sort of thing. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
ISIS moved a convoy of two hundred vehicles past Abu Ghraib.
Black flags fluttered in the hot wind.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Operation cherry blossoms at night was a proposed plan to
fly kamikaze planes filled plague fleas into San Diego. The operation was
approved but never carried out. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<br /></div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-11563307793662060452014-05-01T08:40:00.001-07:002014-05-01T08:40:55.093-07:00We were given shelter part 6<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">The buzzing poles that marked
the perimeter of the safety corridor seemed to be only holding back floundered
farmhouses, parched fields, and tree stubbled hills. Excena scanned the
landscape and saw nothing that betrayed movement. The corridor only had certain
entrances that you had to negotiate with a definite pattern or be turned to
dust. It must be protecting them from something. The vibrations leaking through
the air from the poles had been causing disruption to her insides. She had been
passing black water perched over sparse streams throughout the day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">The
wounded crew member she had brought with her had begun to admit a low moan much
of the time. He just mouthed the provisions she had proffered him, dropping
most of the pieces out of his trembling lips. The smell of his ravaged skin and
soiling occupied the air between them. He did not have long.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">She
heard voices behind them, loud and uncaring. Some survivors had made it into
the safety corridor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">They
came out of the scrub. A man and a woman, their clothes rags, their movements
stilted like a predator approaching prey. The crewman lay still in the middle
of the campsite. The man wore a sparse beard. The woman had bruises on her
face; her lip was cut and trickled out blood. The man glanced over the crewman
briefly then began to sort through the bag tossing bits of medical supplies and
food around.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">These
people don’t have shit. Search his pockets.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">I
don’t want to touch him. He looks like he messed himself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">Don’t
make me ask you twice. Don’t think he is going to wake up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">She
cautiously crept closer to the prone crewmember.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">Excena
grew tired of the pageant and slipped out from behind the tree she had used to
hide herself. The man looked up as her shadow crossed him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">Don’t
move.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">He
took in the wrist gun and complied.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">The
woman froze over the crewman.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">Did
you just punch your wife, or whatever she is?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">The
man didn’t speak.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">I
am going to need to know.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">Yes,
we got in an argument.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">Please
don’t hurt him, he is all I got.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">All
you have is me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">Wait
said the man.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">Excena
turned the wrist gun to his knee which vaporized into red mist, the remainder
of the leg landing a couple feet away. The hollow pop of the report echoed back
over the proceedings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">The
woman ran to the howling man her face wet with tears.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">Why
did you do that? You need to help him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">Gather
up those things he threw around. Both these men will be dead soon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">Excena
kicked a knife out of the man’s trembling hand. He was gasping and straining
for breath. Blood pooled into a puddle downhill of his efforts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 20.0pt;">Cry
over him for a minute if you want. But, if you want to live follow me, I’m
going to the city.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-44920472677362812652014-04-25T09:05:00.001-07:002014-05-12T12:09:53.046-07:00Transmissions from Submarine#14:first transmission<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Why Diane Keaton never
married<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Children’s corpses reveal
desperate attempts to escape…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">The radio leaked all his
hand. A slow horn wail flowed through his arm and his thumb leaked. The cars
lights had flickered off but he kept driving by the red glow from across the
swamps. The river had caught fire in the night; the air was thick with
headache. Moisture wrapped the seat fabric close to him. The refrigerator and
the phone rattled the house all night. He thought unplugging both of them but
the vibrations continued. Driving was his only solace.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">There was a beam poking
through and lighting the street ahead. He stopped and found that a cone of
light was coming from his headlight. Ash had caked over them and this one beam
struggled out. Some kicking and he got the light free. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">E-cigarette rules a big win
for tobacco<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Republic lawmakers shy away
from rebel rancher’s racist remarks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Ernie, “Ern” to his friends,
dreamed about his secretary. He dreamed he held her hand as light flooded their
picnicking. But water leaked from ever where in his dream, it ruined all the
food and bundled the blankets up in mud. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Issue #10 features 9 stories,
3 dark verse, 10 reviews and loads of extras…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">End of the internet as we
know it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Sandy, mother of three in
Ohio, discovers the idea of “zombie apocalypse”. She hopes every morning that
those shapes will totter past her window. She wants to see her neighbor’s
intestines tossed like red garlands on their yards. She alone will save her children;
she will know what to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">“Game of Throne’ glamorizes
rape…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">25 celebrities who are secretly
hairless. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4732448533070098283.post-13835403768970624192014-04-24T15:33:00.006-07:002014-05-01T09:00:08.629-07:00We were given shelter part 5Two men entered the office with an air of unconditional right. Their jumpsuits were quite tight but the way they fit made their forms seem almost sexless to Mika. They rolled in a metal cart with a screen and looped wires on it. One man began to use a variety of tools to attach the screen to Mika’s office wall. The other pulled out his mobile and began to type in it. When he was finished he showed the screen to Mika.<br />
Written on it was.<br />
I can speak for my partner. Do not interfere with his performance. Any problems or concerns I can provide you with the proper forms and the proper address which at your own expense you can send them.<br />
What exactly is the screen? I don’t want the screen? <br />
Who decided this? I don’t even need half this crap that I have in here already. Why not take some of it out instead installing that? <br />
Do you want the forms? Do you wish for them? <br />
Said the offered screen.<br />
Mika mumbled no.<br />
The men finished their work as Mika waited for a single document to load on his computer and checked his mobile for messages. Nothing at all.<br />
The communicative man walked up to Mika’s desk after his partner was finished. He held his mobile and it squeezed out a couple scraps of paper that fell onto the desk.<br />
The finally offered screen said receipt and after its showing the men excited.<br />
The pieces of paper sat for a while on the desk. Mika no longer possessed a wastepaper basket so their disposal would be difficult. They sat there like a forgotten crop that had been improperly harvested. Mika left them lying on his desk for a time then silently, finally, and guiltily tucked them into the printer and watched them get absorbed by the input.<br />
The screen sat on the wall. Mika kept thinking that he heard it warming up. But it was silent and off every time he looked up.<br />
<br />grimishamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407215932843627301noreply@blogger.com0