Word.

Digital Window Shopping

Time to blog? I think so.

I've been in a blog-reading loop for a few weeks. So much so that I haven't set aside time to write. Guess that's a feature of the blogosphere: digital window shopping galore.

Being in this ether doesn't require much more effort than the ability to click. Real-world window shopping involves a different level of effort-- the actual movement through time and space. Clicking through blogs, I have a sense of the ultimate and encouraging interconnectedness of the Web, but lose that all-important (to me) tactile experience of "fog on glass".

In my junior year of college, I took a class called "Utopian Political Thought". The professor included works by authors who posited "dystopia's" as well-- basically, anti-Edens. I had never considered the genre before, though I had become familiar with it (being Black).

A part of the blogosphere/Web clicking sensation reminds me of a story from that class that I have to dredge up; I believe it's by Borges. Anyway, it's one of those sci-fi tropes where technology performs most functions of daily life except human interaction, so that we become isolated. Isolated, ultimately, from ourselves.

The kicker is, of course, we've isolated ourselves by creating technologies that we hope will bring us closer to one another, make life easier, lighten our load.

Or maybe identity is shifting and I'm in the transition generation. I'm lamenting a loss of something that the next generation may deem quaint. There can be deep and sincere digital bonds, the same way there are shallow and deceptive relationships offline.

I don't know.

Nostalgia's a pendulum that swings non-stop between "what I knew" and "what I hope". When it hits the mid-point, I write-- like now.

So, another report that the U.S. rationale for the invasion of Iraq was a bunch of crap. (Note the Orwellian logic used in the last two paragraphs).

According to the Washington Post: "The report, which refuted many of the administration's principal arguments for going to war in Iraq, marked the official end of a two-year weapons hunt led most recently by former U.N. weapons inspector Charles A. Duelfer. The team found that the 1991 Persian Gulf War and subsequent U.N. sanctions had destroyed Iraq's illicit weapons capabilities and that, for the most part, Hussein had not tried to rebuild them. Iraq's ability to produce nuclear arms, which the administration asserted was a grave and gathering threat that required an immediate military response, had "progressively decayed" since 1991. Investigators found no evidence of "concerted efforts to restart the program."

Administration officials have emphasized that, while the survey group uncovered no banned arms, it concluded that Hussein had not given up the goal of someday acquiring them.

Hussein "retained the intent and capability and he intended to resume full-scale WMD efforts once the U.N. sanctions were lifted," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said yesterday. "Duelfer provides plenty of rationale for why this country went to war in Iraq."

No use having a blog if you don't update it once in a while, eh? So...

I sent my manuscript to the book designer/layout wonderful person. Progress, though years behind schedule. Now all I have to do is record the accompanying CD.

R.I.P. Saul Bellow.

A late night case of the hiccups has me blogging late into the night.

Here's a historical hiccup featured in my hometown newspaper. Strom Thurmond, the racist fuck, then 23, fathered a child with his family's 16-year old maid. (Question: did the Black mother of this child have a choice to fend off the advances of this man? Was it love, power, or some confabulation of the two?).

I have no sympathy for that racist fuck, no matter what his never-acknowledged daughter says. Fuck him. May he rot in hell forever.

But, God, forgive me for my sins.

Although I often skim their site, I don't think I ever cited them before. Seems a crazy enough place to start.

synergesis(haikus)
a.
we hung out, twenty-
somethings, days of headiness;
hip as hip can be.
b.
thirty-something crept
up faster than life-changing
decisions to wed.

Found out today that yet another friend-couple has bought a house in our neighborhood. Cool enough for me. We can all be in this debt thing together. No more need to congregate at a renter's crib-- we're all owners now!

Crazy.

Crazy Stuff

#1: Terry Shiavo
The Republican-controlled congress (lower-case "c" intended) has supbpoenaed a brain-dead woman. Visualize success: a brain-dead woman, in those hallowed halls, being interrogated. For background, check out these folks: AP story; the Rude Pundit (3/18/05); and Majikthise (3/9/05).

#2: Steroids
Why the hell do we need anyone in congress (again, lower-case "c" intended) to ask a bunch of jocks whether or not they used steroids? And why confine the testimony to baseball players? No track-and-field folks? No football players? No professional wrestlers?
Since we're so concerned about people's biochemical purity, how 'bout we have hearings on which congressmen use Viagra to shag interns?

#3: My Hometown
San Diego's bishop denied funeral rights to a devout catholic (another lower-case "c", intended) because he ran two gay bars. Nice. Check the story here (3/18/05 posts). Scroll through the comments, too.

#4: Balls Like a Motherf*cker
Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank? John Bolton(3/10/05 and 3/9/05 posts) at the UN? Alberto Gonzales at the Dept. of Justice? (As Dave Chapelle would say) "Cunnilingus" Rice at State? (I never liked her at Stanford, either). I won't even bother linking to anything about her.

#5: The Blogosphere
Even though reading blogs gives me more reasons to bang my head against the wall-- thanks, God. Where else would I read about all this crazy stuff?

"5000"

Sometimes I just get a jones for Ras Kass.

On another note, I couldn't help shaking my head at the headline of today's Post Express edition-- Battlefield Lebanon: Bush touts gains in Mideast democracy; nearly 500,000 denounce U.S. in Beirut rally".

That's only 430,000 more people than last Monday's rally to get Syria out of Lebanon.

I'll forego sarcasm and just re-state the numbers:
Monday, 70 thousand folks demonstrated against Syria's influence and presence in Lebanon
Tuesday, 500 thousand folks demonstrated against U.S. policies in the Mideast.

"The Bush administration brushed aside anti-American sentiment, saying it was happy to see people peacefully express their views".

I'm not making this up. I'm refraining from sarcasm. My country, the one in which I just bought a house, elected this man to a second term of office.

I find solace in the fact we're a constitutional democracy with Presidential term limits.

Two pieces from November 2004

1. (fragment)
I am the Black infant
mortality rate, more elusive
than census data portends
with tallies of death
per capita; I am

death in perpetuity.

breast-fed memories of
wet-nursing master's heir,
weaned at first breath
to hold my tongue and
swallow bitter milk

like it was honey.

2. Augusta(haiku)
inky starlit sky
seeping through Georgia pine, trees
sway rapturously

Words learned while reading Colson Whitehead (- Kai, check out his 13 essays about New York).

epigonic
carapace
recondite
appurtenance
plangent
funicular
adumbrate

Been so long since my last post that I almost forgot my login/passord.

Glad to remember.

I spent the past five days in El Salvador. My wife's cousin got married last Saturday. Nos disfrutamos La Misa y La Fiesta, and chilled aggressively.

I spent a lot of time there reading; W. Somerset Maugham's the man, as far as short stories are concerned.

I read a collection of his titled Cakes and Ale. The copy I read was apparently a gift from my mother-in-law to her sister(s), as it bore her inscription from 1968.

Nothing like good literature passed on lovingly. Word is bond.

Late at night, I'm most apt to write. Last night was no exception. I dug out my trusty copy of "The Pocket Muse: Ideas & Inspiration for Writing".

Here's a draft. In the next version, I'll replace the "we" and "ourselves" at the end with something more introspective. That said, I give you...

something about silence

“Write about a noise or a silence that won’t go away”
- Monica Wood

innumerable voices clog my
mind with histories buried alive

I cannot sleep through graveyard
cries, the desperate clawing clamor.

remembrance pricks my
conscience, pries open eyelids

crusted shut with slumber.
swabs clean ears plugged with

cotton promises that God will
deliver us from His evil Creation;

humankind. stuck on this planet
in the stillness of a universe too vast

to comprehend, stuck in consciousness
too minute to comprehend a universe

greater than our God. I, human,
being in this silence, hum a church tune

or invoke the Elder Words scribes
and griots gift generations.

still peace comes to me as it
comes to all in the moment

of accepting, quietly, the inevitable
loneliness we drown out with words

and song, or escape through ritual
myth and legend. we abhor the

smallness of life, elaborately gate
ourselves from real community

until silent stillness compels us
to hum a different tune

post-election haikus
1
my country, full of
liberal, open-minded
voters, will wake up.
2
i feel winter's chill
now, the moon's glow dims toward
horizon-rimed dawn.

3
ohio, buckeye
state. blackeye state. "bull-(connor)!"
...kerry conceded?

4
geographic'ly
a sea of red bound by blue;*
truth book-ending lies

*peep the Nov. 7th post-- and Pascal's analysis

A verse comes to me from somewhere...
"I got so much trouble/**
on my mind-- refuse to lose!/
Here's your ticket/
hear the drummer get wicked"
(Publice Enemy)

**cross-reference: Brother Marley

What can I say?

Thank God it's Friday.

In my post-election traumatic disorder, I'm re-ordering my Self along lines that have bolstered my spirits in the past, hence:

K'Alyn and Dub Ell.

Good-feeling music that you can smile and think to. Real artists.

Yes, I check the Drudge Report headlines...

This one's a gem-- "The Daily Mirror: A large pic of Bush with this caption: “How can 59,054,087 be so dumb!” "

I didn't see the pic despite my best attempts, but I imagine it looks like this.

Setting aside cynicism for a minute at this late hour...

The American people are not dumb. We have created an incredible space for human progress. Unfortunately, like every other system humans create, ours is vulnerable to demagogues who exploit our fears.

I am confident that hope outlives fear, that arrogant power ultimately yields to justice. So, it is for us, the hopeful and justice-loving people, to organize. And once we get power, we must meet the needs of our times with more complexity, maturity, and love* than these (4-syllable curse word)s.

*Too poetic? I hope not. I believe in the "Power of Love", like Luther.
At the same time, I ain't mad at Chuck D: "What we got to say?/ Power to the People!/ No delay/ Make everybody see/ In order to/ fight the powers that be" (from PE's "Fight the Power").

James Baldwin

The text from this card, part of a series by Robert Shetterly, reads:
"People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster."

My brother-in-law gits bizzy. Skills enough to make your ear tingle.

Fresh from the Red Bull Music Academy in Rome, he's got a new single, "That's Life".

(P.S., Don't sleep on "In and Out").


who PJ be

Who'd 've thought Eminem would throw a political analysis into the mix?

Check out this article, which includes links to his video for "Mosh."

And don't forget our friends at GNN, who put up their own article on the-- sorry, I'm just buggin' to see this video. For real. I was a teenager when I first got the politico-hiphop bug via KRS-ONE and Public Enemy. It's hard to swallow the fact of Eminem making an overt political statement through music. Even harder to digest the fact that "Mosh" is #1 on MTV's "TRL". Somewhere, Bob Dylan's rewinding a reel-to-reel copy of his song about the time's changing.

(If the above links don't work, go to Launch. Then choose a "videos" search for "Eminem" and pick the "Mosh" result).