Ok, so let’s first off state that any book which refers to America and AmericaTM is going to have to commit some previous grievous acts of stupidity in order to get on my bad-side. As a matter of fact I read this when it first came out and just read it again, so there’s a great deal of good to be found.

ok… whiz bang post right here…
an honest,
very few holds-barred attempt
to wring out an understanding of
my basic essence…
and ultimately i’m just trying to stop the post teaser from giving away too much… so finally
i’ll also say
that there’s a wild nugget from
rock’n'roll history to listen to as well… so give a click… take a second out of your busy day and see if there is something here worth reading… finite jester

What it is about obscure elements of your own obscure perspective knitting themselves together and reminding us that the world is a far more interesting place than most folks ever bother to consider?

Had one of those moments today. Re-read a book this afternoon, Culture Jam by Kalle Lasn (review coming at some point, after I’ve grokked the supplementary material that suddenly seems increasing relevant)

Iraqi Invasion: A Text Misadventure
Revision 88 / Serial number 54892

Oval Office
You are standing inside a White House, having just been elected to the presidency of the United States. You knew Scalia would pull through for you.

There is a large desk here, along with a few chairs and couches. The presidential seal is in the middle of the room and there is a full-length mirror upon the wall.

What do you want to do now?

I love first novels, being an aspiring novelist myself, I take great pleasure in cracking open a first novel. At either extreme you run the possibility of discovering a great new talent or cackling maliciously at the kind of tripe that will get published. While I’m not prepared to herald Jim Lynch as a major new talent in literature, this is a wonderful book.

Well first off, here’s hoping y’all know what a pipe-dream is.

(the jester laughs in all the shadings of intentional/unintentional irony)

Should you not… check out the Wikipedia entry, and consider adding to it.

At any rate, In Praise of the Pipe-Dream. The impossible, totally irrational vista of whatever it is that you and your pipe are dreaming about in that fleeting moment it takes to construct a whole elaborate fantasy. I recently had a pipe dream which led me to believe that this post might be worth reading.

With a personal logic that perhaps only I will ever understand, I’m posting this in uneasy conjunction with the post on ‘Pain’ that I just made. This is a poem from that period where the ideologies presented in ‘Pain’ where just beginning to become truly grokked by the jester here.

I’ve always wanted to go back to this particular piece and give it the kind of good, poetic scrubbing it needs to work properly for me, but instead, I’ll just call it good. With a wink of the eye, I present…

Are you proud of your pain? Is it a secret you love to share? Has the tale of your torments become the central underpinning of your identity?

Sitting here, as the person responsible for typing out the questions above, I feel required to state that I can’t recall a single person I’ve ever known worth a damn who hadn’t suffered.

today was not the day for poetry
nor was the day before
i did nor thought of anything profound
enough to put to paper
i suffered no tragedy
i reached no state of nirvana

i woke up with a headache
and a slightly upset stomach
put my head down
and plodded through my day
in a grey sort of fog

i spoke in the simple sentences
which my mind was capable of forming

i did not dance

Samorost is a puzzle game that requires you to find hotspots on the screen to work your way through the puzzle. It is brilliantly constructed from what looks like animations of photos.

Enjoy…

Oh, yeah. There is a sequel here.

This isn’t the sort of book you love for the way the sentences are put together, or even the fundamental beauty of the plot. This is a fun story, but the beauty of it is the questions raised.

Jostein Gaarder was a philosophy teacher, and his other book Sophie’s World reads like your basic introductory philosophy course wrapped up in an Alice in Wonderland-style fantasy.

Pagans!!! Witchcraft!!! The Devil!!!

Cheesy slasher movies that have a soft-spot in our hearts simply because!!!

Supersticious hog-wash that has no place being discussed in such a serious fashion!!!

I want to prove that I know what friggatriskaidekaphobia means (or at least that I’m clever enough to know where to look it up!!!)!!!

i need to ask you a favor
there is something that you all have to do
and i bet you haven’t done it recently

get in your car and go for a long drive
point your vehicle
in a direction away from all the cities
you should leave at dusk

keep driving until you can no longer see
the yellow glow caused by the streetlights

keep driving until there are no houses
go until you find yourself in the middle of everywhere

Every so often you stumble across those books that are devoured in an afternoon because the characters live, the plot propels itself without excess of artifice, and because there are enough little bits and pieces of genius in the thing to make it adhere itself to your hands and will not be set far from one’s thoughts until the last page has turned. This is one of those.

A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media
00:21:11 GK intros Billy Collins
00:23:00 Billy Collins reads ‘The Trouble With Poetry’
00:25:20 Billy Collins reads ‘The Lanyard’
00:28:04 Billy Collins reads ‘Flock’

Billy Collins starts reading at about 9:30 into Segment two if you click on that… he’s our current poet laureate, and listening to this… yeah, he deserves to be. Delicious, nutritious and hilarious. The last poem he reads is short, sweet and spot on. Lewd Cognoscenti rating is off the chart.

Ok, so this probably defines me as the geek, but i am incredibly proud that if you do a search on google for “craft club finnegans wake” we are the first result.

It’s a simple pleasure, but the fact that we are currently beating the wikipedia entry for James Joyce which references the Tom Robbins book that we got the idea from is the feather in our cap.

i try to be an introspective soul
most every impression i have had of the world
has been put to further thought
i always try to reevaluate that which i have learned

i have found that it is a humbling experience
to pull a piece of poetry or prose
from a dust covered folder
where you put it years ago

Another night where I cannot sleep. I’ve just finished reading a biography of Charles Bukowski and as I’ve been accompanying the text with martinis, it’s gotten my brain back onto the subject of artistic integrity. Not so much the drinking side of it that I previously explored, click here to read that, but the whole concept of living being a pre-requisite for good writing. Living, actually living life, taking in as much of it as humanly possible, opening your lungs wide and breathing deep of all that floats around us in its myriad ephemeral forms.

This was a random, let’s see what’s on the new release shelves of the library, find. Called out to me because it was a nicely sized book that promised to make the myth of Atlas and Heracles relevant to our modern world. Seemed like an intriguing notion.

Nearly 100, LSD’s Father Ponders His ‘Problem Child’ - New York Times

ALBERT Hofmann, the father of LSD, walked slowly across the small corner office of his modernist home on a grassy Alpine hilltop here, hoping to show a visitor the vista that sweeps before him on clear days. But outside there was only a white blanket of fog hanging just beyond the crest of the hill. He picked up a photograph of the view on his desk instead, left there perhaps to convince visitors of what really lies beyond the windowpane.