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words falling like ducks from the sky

i never thought to see the death-knell of this country; the long slow death-rattle and thatter-thump of crooked heels tatt-tattering the pavement, as that small heart bursts its outer confines and grieves out the ears and noses;

the cracking out of falsely servile poses.

by hook or by crook and all that is in between.

i have no words to speak but i must scream.

and watch the fail of heaven’s promised rain upon the parched and scattered earth, feel that seared and quaking ground heave up, expel the loathesome carabuncles from off its shore.

i thought to see a brief surcease from watching that slow decline and fall; but to see the ignomy of empire, in all its seediness, cloak itself about the thing to hide its shriveled loins. well. for some, at least, the last scales have fallen from the eyes, the fizzling smoke and mirrors fade away, to see, with bitter dread, the creaking machine that croaks and craves for blood to feed its frenzy.

perhaps the myth was ever thus, a broken claptrap horse dressed up in gaudy finery. but now, at least for me, the last threads of finery have fallen away. do i see it now for what it is? am i awake, at last, from my pale slumber, to see the clouds of nightmare brooding in the sky? or perhaps i only stir, fall deeper into sleep.

i have no heart to find the silver in this woe, paint it how you will. what hope, when all that falls is steaming blood and ash? and i partake, against my will or heart, in the slaughtering of thousands who have done me no wrong, but who i wrong, by simply being who and where i am.

the city on the hill has guttered out.

Book recommendations from Neal Stephenson–among other things

I read this Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash among others” href=”http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/20/1518217″>very cool interview with Neal Stephenson on Slashdot the other day and decided it was worth linking to.

His list of book recommendations alone makes it worth checking (so I’m quoting that here):

Neal:

Fiction I have lately read and enjoyed:

Set this House in Order by Matt Ruff

Ilium by Dan Simmons

Iron Council by China Mieville

Perfect Circle by Sean Stewart

The I Love Bees alternate reality game

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke

The Fool’s Tale by Nicole Galland (in galleys; soon to be published)

Short story collections by Etgar Keret: The Bus Driver who Wanted to be God, and The Nimrod Flip-out. Last time I checked, The Nimrod Flip-out was only available from an Australian publisher named Picador, but this should pose only the most minor of challenges to Slashdot readers. Keret is a young Israeli writer who has also done some work in film and graphic novels.

Nonfiction:

Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates and Lincoln’s Cooper Union address

Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson

Thank god for Dr. Hunter S. Thompson!

I caught a bit of his rambling in this Rolling Stone article.

No one can write like him:

Bush signed his own death warrant in the opening round, when he finally had to speak without his TelePrompTer. It was a Cinderella story brought up to date in Florida that night — except this time the false prince turned back into a frog.

Immediately after the first debate ended I called Muhammad Ali at his home in Michigan, but whoever answered said the champ was laughing so hard that he couldn’t come to the phone. “The debate really cracked him up,” he chuckled. “The champ loves a good ass-whuppin’. He says Bush looked so scared to fight, he finally just quit and laid down.”

Wherefore the weblogs halting behavior?

Now that my life has changed utterly (the transition from cubitant to gradstudent being completed), I find that my online habits have been changing as well. Mostly, I’ve been struggling with what to do with this thing, this space which is increasingly devoid of content. I often *mean* to write something here, but I find that I don’t really think of it. It doesn’t occur to me like it used to, when I was poking away at spreadsheets and databases in the cube farm.

My initial thought is to incorporate this, somehow, into my school-life. I’ve had thoughts of turning this, here, left-side into a dumping ground for school notes and thoughts related to studies, while turning that increasingly defunct right-side over there into an amalgamation of what the left/right dichotomy used to (doesn’t it still) mean to me.

I’ve thought about collapsing the two into one single entity. Just letting it all stir together in a grand stewpot, letting the chips or whatall just fall wherever. I’ve also thought about finding some kind of new vigor and, while continuing the old classic left/right style, adding a new school-related thing. I sort of balk at this last option–managing three weblogs seems to fall just a hair away (if not over!) the line of complete and utter sheer madness.

The sadness, for me, is that I’ve been having a lot of really great thoughts and thinks about things that I feel are sort of falling by the wayside. (Another possibility: Am I feeling paralyzed by the insanity and madness that seem to me to be roiling just beneath the thin skin of our “civilization”, just waiting to burst onto the scene in a fury of violence and savagery? I am afraid of what is to come, even as my life blossoms with all kind of possibility. And perhaps ashamed of my inability to take action or speak in the face of where the world seems to be heading. So I just kind of peer out at the world through my little hazy glass porthole, hoping that maybe I’m wrong, and things really aren’t as bad (though I think ‘fucked’ would be more appropriate) as they seem.) So, basically what I’m saying is that I intend to keep writing in this space in *some* format; though there may be something of a reconstruction or a remodeling in the near future.

Also, I kind of even doubt if anyone is even poking around here anymore (not that that was ever really the reason for writing here, though a nice side-effect), so I should just do whatever strikes me as useful and good and maybe something groovy will come out of it.

all the sauce in heaven

just watch that nectarine juice dribble off god’s chin, or so sayeth the beetleman…

contrariwise, there’s a cold heap of stew just waiting to be cooked up in a stewpot; all those delicious potaters; crammed heap of dandelion wines; heaps and crocks of cheesemongers; and plenty of stones to go around; yellowing umbrellas that spray water everwhere; uncle’s hats and trawsers; steamboats and curlicues and madcap reindeer horns; jelly ticklers; puncher cards and heaps and heaps of turkish delight in turkish baths; fluttering incunabulae; just-in-time-for-its getting there just in time; bouncing, burbling mountaintops jiggling with their oncelerosity; just watch that breaded sky break out; dallying gentlemen, waiting for that coy milkmaid to saunter by….

oh, maybe not so contrariwise after all.
just eat that scrumptious stew. full to bursting.

crunching the bits to bits and pieces

oh my, well that was an expensive conversation or five.

at least it was a good one, anyway.

the sun’s been beaming, and otherwise the grey old nackers have been keeping hooded and away. that’s grand, i suppose, and here’s hoping they have a grand old time hydeing out there. better than them hydeing in here. and that’s mr. hydeing to you.

i loike me the paragraph tags. that’s for sure.

that’s the ticket.

and all the words in me mouther have dried up.

and all the words in me brickabrack brain.

Sinking in, twiddling toes in the water

There’s nothing like moving to a new city to throw of one’s sense of rhythm, and like a bobbing doughnut, I’m dancing along just a half-beat along from the great throb of life. I can even feel my heart skipping a beat or two, these days, wanting to tap into that new tap-tappity-tap, but just not quite getting there.

Which is just fine. Really. I mean, it takes a little while to find the grocery store and discover which streets dead-end and which go through to the bottom of the hill and which streets its really best not to have to walk upwards. (The first time I came to Seattle, about 4 years ago, I stalled out 5 or 6 times trying to clutch into first gear from a stop. There’s nothing worse than that acrid burning smell from stalling out one too many times…)

[WHICH, completely unrelated, but it’s too cool for words: the old Hitchhiker’s Guide text adventure game has been graphicalized and put online, thanks to those kindly folks at the BBC.]

Now that I’m solidifying in this new place, having felt a bit wraith-like of late, ghosting about town, lurking on the backs of buses and things, I mean to post to this thing a bit more and perhaps add a bit of changes to the premises. Nothing drastic, mind, but maybe it could use a bit of sprucing.