tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8504605199867327572024-03-14T03:11:44.822-05:00Good LieutenantForging the uncreated conscience since 2006!Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.comBlogger65125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-49087498655338255802009-02-17T19:20:00.004-05:002009-02-21T18:05:44.604-05:00Present Perfect<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SaCH3pEpsGI/AAAAAAAAALQ/O-HdxNxdLkQ/s1600-h/Gibson_William_400.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SaCH3pEpsGI/AAAAAAAAALQ/O-HdxNxdLkQ/s320/Gibson_William_400.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5305389751030362210" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"...the pop star, as we knew her"--and here he bowed slightly, in her direction--"was actually an artifact of preubiquitous media."</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br />"Of--?"</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"Of a state in which 'mass' media existed, if you will, within the world."</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br />"As opposed to?"</span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br />"Comprising it." </span><br /><br />(From <span style="font-style: italic;">Spook Country</span> by William Gibson)<br /><br />I grew up with Mr. Gibson, I guess, seduced like everybody else by his Prettily Wasted nineteen-eighties version of the twenty-first century--conspicuously lacking flying cars and robots, but full of expensive drugs and more expensive computers. And I still like his recent stuff, too--although he's long since rejected the Future for the bleeding edge of the present. As that passage indicates, he now wants badly to be Don Delillo II, and in some ways he's better with the poetry of Waves and Radiation than Delillo could ever be. He's still trying to work with thriller plots, though; it seems to be what he's most comfortable with. And <span style="font-style: italic;">Spook Country </span>is entertaining enough, as were the few books before it--but for thrillers they're pretty sedate. Not a whole lot seems at stake. But this book, at least, seems to be trying to jumpstart a series of some kind--at least I hope so. It seems perverse to invent a Supercool Cuban-Chinese Gangster Kid with mysterious Santeria-derived ninja skills, and then use him only to plug holes in a shipping container with magnets. (Don't ask.) There must be more non-futuristic adventures in store for that guy, and possibly for the novel's protagonist, Hollis Henry, an eighties underground rock star turned amateur spy. But all the paranoia and gadgetry and portentous pop-culture philosophizing made it worth the time, certainly. Plus, there's a character from Gibson's last, <span style="font-style: italic;">Pattern Recognition</span>, back for a second engagement, and he has the wonderful name of Hubertus Bigend. What more do you want?Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-18168197605048953032009-02-16T16:02:00.005-05:002009-02-16T21:04:52.894-05:00Winged VictoryI'm not sure what I may or may not have told some of you in order to win your affection, but the truth is that I'm not really any kind of ornithologist. Birds are perfectly fine with me in the abstract--it's nice that they can fly around, and everything--but up close they tend to be a little bit scary and more than a little bit unhygienic. They don't seem to have any good reason to like us, and I'm usually pretty sure they don't.<br /><br />But I still have to be sort of impressed when I walk a block or two from my house and come across a damned <span style="font-style: italic;">bald eagle. </span>Well, "come across" makes the encounter sound more dramatic than it was--it was at the top of a very tall tree and paid no attention to us whatsoever. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SZnXucp73RI/AAAAAAAAALI/nHJIyzr2Gto/s1600-h/BaldFreakingEagle.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 242px; height: 190px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SZnXucp73RI/AAAAAAAAALI/nHJIyzr2Gto/s320/BaldFreakingEagle.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5303507229171506450" border="0" /></a><br />But I'm a city boy at heart, and, you know...EAGLE! It was like an airbrushed painting from the back window of an F-150 pickup had sprung to life, right in my neighborhood! (There wasn't much mistaking it, in case you're quite rightly doubting my identification skills--my lousy cellphone photography doesn't do it justice. The bright white head, and the sheer intimidating size. Those are <span style="font-style: italic;">crows</span> sitting there in that photo, eyeing the visitor with some alarm, not sparrows.<br /><br />And on <span style="font-style: italic;">President's Day!</span> Anybody else here proud to be an American? Huh? Am I right? For a moment I felt certain that it was the reincarnated spirit of Jimmy Carter, come to bestow blessing on us. Then, you know, I checked Wikipedia. Now I'm thinking William McKinley.<br /><br />Bird songs:<br />(These are also walking-in-February songs, conveniently enough.)<br /><br /><a href="http://www.mediafire.com/file/xyuztjw2ozm/02%20Rooks.m4a">"Rooks"</a><br />(Shearwater)<br /><br /><a href="http://www.mediafire.com/file/dt2hygzvt4y/09%20The%20Funny%20Bird.m4a">"The Funny Bird"</a><br />(Mercury Rev)Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-35251480951807323452009-02-04T22:25:00.005-05:002009-02-04T22:47:24.280-05:00ProdigalBack at the Alma Mater—Bancroft High, Rust Belt University, whatever you prefer. I have not yet been seized, so presumably I'm still allowed on campus. Or else I haven't been spotted yet. I'm supposed to sit in on a fiction-writing class as an Elder Statesman, which will be fun unless someone lets on to the kids just how little fiction I've written. But it's pleasant and gratifying to linger here and wander through my old time-wasting haunts and drink tea and savor the fact that the place no longer has any power over me. Nobody within miles of me is allowed to impose any deadlines on me or require me to get up in the morning! Even when I was having fun here, I was always at least a third of the way to terrified at all times. There was a good chance, at any given moment, that there was something that I <span style="font-style: italic;">should</span> be doing but wasn't.<br /><br />Also wonderful is something I'd always loved but forgotten all about—our Student Union has the only ATM in the known world that actually asks you to "Input Desired Amount in Multiples of $1." Yes, <span style="font-style: italic;">one dollar</span>. It looks like a programming error, but it's <span style="font-style: italic;">totally for real and legit</span>. And it shows such concern for and understanding of the customer base, on the part of the financial institution responsible. Let me be the first to say that as an undergraduate, it often matters a <span style="font-style: italic;">great deal</span> that you are able to withdraw, say, <span style="font-style: italic;">seventeen</span> dollars instead of twenty. Sometimes twenty is too much. Sometimes ten is. I never actually tried to withdraw a dollar, but I hope that this machine would allow it.<br /><br />What <span style="font-style: italic;">isn't</span> pleasant is the fact that I no longer can get on the Rust Belt Wireless Network! I don't have an account; as far as this institution's Information Technology is concerned, I don't exist! For somebody like me, this is awful, like losing a limb. Like coming home at night and finding the locks changed. Let me be the first to make the public call for an official Alumnae Login. But anyway, this means that I won't post this till later.<br /><br />Also, I was dismayed to find that the burger place in the student union that I remembered with guilty fondness was gone--replaced by some <span style="font-style: italic;">salad</span> joint. Called <span>"Croutons.</span><span style="font-style: italic;">" </span>Seriously, <span style="font-style: italic;">Croutons!</span> Now, a lesser satirist would make some hackneyed decade-old point about health-obsessed Americans, as if I couldn't get plenty of<span style="font-style: italic;"> <span style="font-style: italic;">other</span></span> bad food within forty feet of <span>Croutons</span><span style="font-style: italic;">. </span>But I'll merely point out that <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0701158/quotes">you don't win friends with salad.</a><br /><br />I hope I'm allowed to address the student body this evening. I have a speech ready.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Kids! Stay in school! I know you think that studying isn't "rad," or "dope." But getting mixed up with drugs and gangs isn't "cool" at all. By the time I was your age, I'd killed six guys. </span>[Pause. Lift shirt, exposing surgical scar from 1978. Wait for gasps to die down.]<span style="font-style: italic;"> ...And I'd come within inches of dying myself. But then I learned about a guy, a really Powerful guy, who doesn't care if you're "cool" or not. He's always there for you, and if you need somebody to turn to, well, he's your man. </span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SYpdyxJKtmI/AAAAAAAAAKo/mOR4PrcZ2QA/s1600-h/Prince.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 100px; height: 100px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SYpdyxJKtmI/AAAAAAAAAKo/mOR4PrcZ2QA/s320/Prince.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5299151038321440354" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">His name...is Prince. And he is funky. Now do your homework!</span><br /><br />Or I could just "scare them straight" about their study habits. I'm a cautionary tale!Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-2048208833773410742009-01-01T23:16:00.002-05:002009-01-01T23:39:30.163-05:00Make It NewWell, I had to do a New Year's post, didn't I? I can never just stay silent forever--I have a sense of Occasion to indulge! So, a good year to you, reader--those of you I have or haven't seen lately and those of you whom I never see. Hope everything is tolerable and calm. Hope you had more New Year excitement than I did, but not too much.<br /><br />As for me, I literally drank herbal tea and went to bed. And this fact doesn't even bother me, which clearly must mean that I am Old. I can handle that. I plan to carefully hold all my Excitement in reserve until I really need it. Although you should still let me know if you're doing anything Exciting. Always.<br /><br />A New Year's song, sort of:<br /><a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?gornjrminnn">This Year </a>- The Mountain Goats<br />Darnielle, clever and wounded. My brother. But a lovely streak of stubborn defiance in this one; there's a hell of lot more fight in this kid than in most of his other characters. Part of why it seems more autobiographical, like a lot of the album it comes from.<br /><br />And in keeping with Internet Tradition, here is a cute video of a four-year-old playing drums. <br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8cHo9iLzY_k&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8cHo9iLzY_k&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />I swear that's me on guitar. You have no reason to believe me. That is, unless you were there. In which case you know that it's all too true.Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-64141593236856094722008-12-06T10:58:00.004-05:002008-12-06T12:11:16.162-05:00Stay down, champion.<a href="http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?zbozkmdmgit">"Tall Saint"</a><br />The National<br /><br />It's a truism that Bonus Tracks aren't necessarily worth your time or money. The songs left over from the recording of an album that turn up on EPs and Special Editions a year after the original album makes a critical or commercial splash. Obviously, if you're a fan you have to buy them, and everybody involved knows that--but those songs got left out for a reason, and everybody knows that too.<br /><br />The National's <a href="http://www.merchco-online.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=3019&zenid=e657410cb88dbcf35da84df9fd0e3a3c">Virginia EP</a> is a nice cut above average, in this respect. Took me a while to give it the attention it deserved, but now I'm really happy it's out there. Some live leftovers and unfinished fragments, but a few songs that stand proudly next to the real, known stuff--to "Mistaken For Strangers," and "Secret Meeting," and the rest. When you make a moment-capturing masterpiece like <span style="font-style: italic;">Boxer</span>, you'll have some good stuff to spare. ("Blank Slate" is another dark/funny x-ray of the universal Matt Berninger character--"gonna jump out of a cake with my heart on a string." Full of questionable notions, but luckily too scared to carry them out. I sympathize.)<br /><br />And "Tall Saint" is terrific--officially a "demo," but it sounds perfectly fine. Got its string part in place and everything. And it's an example of one of the Unacknowledged Secret Genres: the Lost Title Track. It's clear, if you're looking, that "Tall Saint" was meant to make it onto <span style="font-style: italic;">Boxer.</span> It's certainly about the same sort of person, again, and those of us who actually have the physical CD have the textual evidence. No lyric sheet for <span style="font-style: italic;">Boxer</span>, naturally--we have a distant B&W shot of the band apparently <span style="font-style: italic;">frolicking in a meadow. </span>(Perhaps they've returned to Ohio for a Lost Afternoon. We can hope.) Printed, we've just got two cryptic lyric fragments: "Let them all have your neck," from "Ada," and, across from it, the sardonic anononymous advice that the speaker of "Pale Saint" hears as he lies stunned on the pavement. <span style="font-style: italic;">Stay down, champion, stay down.</span> So, really, this guy is the "boxer" of the title, the stand-in for the rest of these haunted losers and for Berninger himself. Taking punishment for a living and getting back up when he probably shouldn't.<br /><br />(No less a record than <span style="font-style: italic;">OK Computer</span> is my Secret Genre-defining example. That awkward, cryptic title comes from outtake "Palo Alto," which eventually showed up on the <span style="font-style: italic;">Airbag/How's My Driving </span>EP. Not a bad tune, but sounds too much like <span style="font-style: italic;">The Bends--</span>and Radiohead having a song about <span style="font-style: italic;">Silicon Valley</span> is just too <span style="font-style: italic;">literal-minded</span> somehow. Like if Springsteen had a song about Chrysler.)Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-74246712949175861432008-12-04T08:51:00.006-05:002008-12-04T09:28:32.424-05:00Say Yes to Michigan.I haven't written much, but here's a song. Maybe this is the way to go for a while--I have unlimited numbers of things to say about unlimited numbers of songs. And I found a place to host the files with minimum hassle. (You can't just right-click, I don't think. You have to go through a download page, so they can show you ads. But it's free. Pop-up Blockers On!) No pretentions to Randomness, here--that was supposed to be a fun exercise, but even <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">the shuffle setting on iTunes</span></span> was just putting Too Much Pressure on your poor, beleaguered Lieutenant. I'll write about the songs <span style="font-style: italic;">I </span>pick.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?ymnhelbzmyl">"For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti."</a><br />Sufjan Stevens<br /><br />You must love Sufjan, even if you are rolling your eyes as you do it. He's ours, after all. Midwestern, sad and sincere. Unapologetic mystic and unapologetic banjo-ist. Sort of arbitrarily elevated to Hip Pantheon four years ago by people who would probably be uncomfortable if a man <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Sufjan_Stevens_playing_banjo_edit2.jpg">wearing wings</a> (!) came up to him on the street talking about the various things Sufjan likes to sing about. Saul Bellow and serial killers and the God of Abraham, etc.<br /><br />This is an early song, from the first of his records to get wide attention. So it's comparatively sparse. Banjo, piano, trumpet, delicate vocal harmonies...wait, did I say <span style="font-style: italic;">sparse</span>? But it's nice. And, naturally, it seems to be sung from God's point of view. Sufjan knows just how He feels.<br /><br />And place names are their own poetry, of course, and Mr. Stevens knows that as deeply as I do. Even if he were wearing the <span style="font-style: italic;">wings</span>, I know that I could just say <span style="font-style: italic;">Ypsilanti</span> and we both would smile. Wouldn't be awkward at all. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ypsilanti">Ypsilanti</a> is a frail, mysterious sort of name for a sad and weary sort of place. And I walked there, once. It took a day. I was young and excitable. I pretend to be different now. A long and silly story that is nonetheless so useful that I'm saving it.Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-25036209648148567812008-11-08T13:52:00.003-05:002008-11-08T16:27:17.438-05:00The Blood-Dimmed Tide Is Loosed!Satisfyingly poetic: only days removed from my tirade about Yeats Abuse, I watched <span style="font-style: italic;">No Country For Old Men</span> again. (Third time, I believe.) Whaddya think? Does Cormac Freaking McCarthy get a free pass to loot <a href="http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/781/">well-worn poems</a> for his novel-titling purposes? I guess I'd decided that he did, without really thinking too hard about it. I was never even a huge fan of Corky McC's, but that's really a pretty good title. I wouldn't have been able to resist it either, if I wrote novels. And there's well-worn and there's <span style="font-style: italic;">well-worn</span>, after all. It's not as if he called it <span style="font-style: italic;">Beauty Is Truth.</span> Or, uh, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Sound and the Fury.<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span></span></span>Is the title exactly spot-on <span style="font-style: italic;">appropriate</span>? Eh, not so much. The title of the novel/film seems likely to refer to Ed Tom Bell, virtuous sheriff, the Tommy Lee Jones character from the movie, and to the "old-timers" whom he wants to emulate. He's freaked out and unmanned by his world's seemingly arbitrary descent into savagery<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;">--</span></span></span>it's no longer any country for him, as you can tell from his increasingly haunted expression in the movie. The speaker of "Sailing to Byzantium" seems a bit more conventionally crotchety and snobbish. He just hates the young because they're <span style="font-style: italic;">constantly singing and having sex</span>, and have no respect for Culture in the way that he does. Hence he's getting the hell out the West to go someplace Old and Religious. If you happen to be under sixty and a fan of "sensual music," it'd be easy to snicker at the guy. But that's what poetry is for--it's allowed to just <span style="font-style: italic;">be right, </span>whatever might be absurd about what it's actually saying. Who's gonna argue with freakin' Yeats? <span style="font-style: italic;">Consume my heart away; sick with desire / And fastened to a dying animal / It knows not what it is...</span> Not me. <span style="font-style: italic;">Nice words. Pretty words. Keep saying words, Mr. William Butler sir.<br /><br /></span>Haven't even said anything about that movie. Pretty fine movie. No <span style="font-style: italic;">Lebowski</span>, certainly.<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>I'll get back to it. <span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span>Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-5744471000241389502008-11-05T11:19:00.002-05:002008-11-05T11:24:14.999-05:00Oh, wait! We *do* still suck!<a href="http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=11&year=2008&base_name=religion_and_the_election_a_pr">Damn these people to hell</a>. (Sorry. Is that <span style="font-style: italic;">shrill</span>?)<br /><blockquote>The tragic news casting a pall over the Obama victory last night is the passage of constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage in Florida, Arizona, and, it appears, California. In Florida, a state that went for Obama by a 51-49 percent margin, 62 percent of voters pulled the lever for the gay marriage ban. That means that the hardcore religious right, which fueled the placement of these bans on the ballot in all three states and spearheaded the campaigns for their passage, succeeded in not only mobilizing their followers -- who were led to believe that gay marriage would spell the end of religious liberty for Christians -- but in casting the issue in a way that appealed to more moderate voters as well.</blockquote><br />I guess we can hope that this is a <i>healthy</i> slap in the face, a cold reminder, here in our Finest Hour. We might be living in the Future, now, but we can’t pretend it’s an unrecognizable place. They’re all still out there, the hardcore conservative true believers, with all of their vicious banality. The era of their freakishly hypertrophied power is done with, but they’re not going to go quietly or cleanly.<br /><br />But damn. Think about all those eighty-year-old black people turning out to vote for Obama. They got born into a world where they were the objects of smirking contempt and hysterical fear—but redemption, they knew, was just around the corner. It was gonna be okay; <a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15722">Langston Hughes</a> said so. Then skip forward a few depressing decades, and these same people are still thinking <i>well, maybe in another generation or two it won’t matter so much</i>. The ones who lived to see this morning are happy now, if “happy” is even the word for something like that. But there are other people feeling that bitter resignation all over the country this morning. <i>Oh, well. Maybe our kids will get to marry whomever they feel like. </i>Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-68666030379179700992008-11-05T02:13:00.001-05:002008-11-05T02:15:51.432-05:00Well, that worked out okay.<span style="font-style: italic;">Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">But to be young was very heaven!</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Wm Wordsworth</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Some Arrogant Jerk</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Come on if you think you can take us on…</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">You forget so easy</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">We ride tonight.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Radiohead</span><br /><br />First thoughts, late:<br />The triumphalist narrative is that the nation has at last Redeemed Itself for all that slavery stuff—and that’s a bit over-the-top, but I’m all too happy to go with the exuberant moment. (You don’t get too many of them, after all.) But this redemption goes all the way down to the prosaic level, which makes it more satisfying. The popular and electoral vote margins are much higher than either of Bush’s. My state, which was National Shame Ground Zero four Novembers ago, has put the shame behind it—almost matching the national popular vote margin. And though I can barely believe it, <span style="font-style: italic;">my county</span>, as white as the day is long, except on its state university campus, has surpassed the statewide margin of victory, and maybe the national margin. Too soon to tell.<br /><br />And yeah, of course, like a certain number of other people embarrassed and appalled by the result the last time, I managed to do a couple things this time around to maybe improve that outcome a little. I’m not gonna take <span style="font-style: italic;">all</span> the credit. But I parked cars for Senator Biden. And I canvassed the home of Major League Baseball manager Jim Leyland’s…nephew. There.Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-76227201454136645432008-11-03T22:14:00.003-05:002008-11-03T22:17:47.508-05:00Let this be my annual reminder...<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SQ--gXjtvKI/AAAAAAAAAJQ/7PQ2HHr83jc/s1600-h/hope.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SQ--gXjtvKI/AAAAAAAAAJQ/7PQ2HHr83jc/s320/hope.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5264635952708304034" border="0" /></a><br />...we could all be something bigger.Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-3165728562478772002008-10-28T17:32:00.003-05:002008-10-28T18:40:37.572-05:00The Meek Shall Has Teh UrfsWhoa. That was a lotta comments all of a sudden. I didn't think that would be the post to energize my readership, but the signs are clear. I thought I was a <span style="font-style: italic;">pop culture</span> specialist--but of course the pop culture I like isn't actually "popular." And now it seems the people have spoken, and they're saying <span style="font-style: italic;">make with the Highbrow, you pretentious fool! It's what you do!<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span></span></span></span>Commenter Adm points to the <a href="http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Main_Page">LOLCat Bible</a>, which will of course make you laugh if you're a student of this kind of Intertubes Esoterica, and if you aren't will make you back away in baffled horror like John McCain stumbling into a midnight <span style="font-style: italic;">Rocky Horror</span> screening. E.g. Matthew 7:1, which I trust we're familiar with: <span style="font-style: italic;"></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span></span></span><p><span class="versetext"><span id="12"><a href="http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=John_15#12" title=""></a></span></span></p><blockquote><p><span class="versetext"><span id="1"><a href="http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Matthew_7#1" title="">1</a> "If u juj u wil be jujded. So don't.</span><span id="2"><a href="http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Matthew_7#2" title="">2</a> Bcz u will be jujded teh saem az u jujded teh othr d00d.</span></span> </p></blockquote><p><span class="versetext"><span id="17">Well, okay then. But I read around the texts, and of course the LOLCat Bible is a <span style="font-style: italic;">community</span> translation project--if one person had done this on their own, it would be enormously disturbing. But of course that means that the quality and tone are all over the place. [<span style="font-style: italic;">Just like in the REAL Bible d00d!!!111 OMG!]</span> I thought Psalm 137 was a bit disappointing. (<span style="font-style: italic;">By the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept, </span>etc.) It's even more overused than "Teh Second Coming," but it's been a deeply affecting poem for twenty-five centuries or so--you expect it to deliver the goods. And "</span></span><span class="versetext"><span id="1">Kthx fer teh fluids of Babylon we were all like, n0000000001!11!! when we faut back bout Zion?" OK, maybe.<br /></span></span></p><p><span class="versetext"><span id="1">But this is linguistically complicated. LOLspeak (<span style="font-style: italic;">I CAN HAS CHEESEBURGER?</span>) isn't exactly the same as Message Board-speak which isn't quite the same as Gamer/ Hacker slang (<span style="font-style: italic;">pwnd!!11</span>) which is not quite the same TextmessageSpeak, though obviously they're all closely related. And I'm not fluent in <span style="font-style: italic;">any</span> of them, really. (Hell, when I have to send text messages I use commas and quotation marks and stuff because it hurts my brain not to.) But I guess you could look at this "Bible" as a noble attempt at some kind of Grand Synthesis of Post-Literate Digital Prose Styles.<br /></span></span></p><p>I can sympathize. After all, I'm a Synthesizer by calling. I know approximately two facts about approximately every subject ever. I guess maybe I'm supposed to explain everybody to everybody else. Sigh.<br /><span class="versetext"><span id="1"></span></span></p><p><br /><span class="versetext"><span id="1"></span></span></p><p><span class="versetext"><span id="17"><br /></span></span> </p><p><br /></p><p><span class="versetext"><span id="18"></span></span> </p>Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-49247400099527892902008-10-27T08:46:00.003-05:002008-10-27T09:26:53.197-05:00It's like I'm Vexed to Nightmare, or something...Hey, I love <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Krugman">Paul Krugman</a>. I was super happy for him at his Big Moment--apparently he's really good at his old day job, too, that of professional <a href="http://www.google.com/products/catalog?q=0262062046&cid=12196252632230654495#ps-sellers">economawhatsitronicologonomics</a>. But of course the big prize is only obliquely related to the reasons that he's a contemporary hero, and to how he's made the past decade livable. He was overly fond of Senator Clinton, and he's kind of a cocky son of a bitch, but he's <span style="font-style: italic;">ours</span>. And he's warmed up to the <a href="http://barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com/">Big Guy</a> by now.<br /><br />That said: Dr. Krugman--Paul--<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/27/opinion/27krugman.html?hp">this sort of thing</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> must stop</span>.<br /><blockquote>Economic data rarely inspire poetic thoughts. But as I was contemplating the latest set of numbers, I realized that I had William Butler Yeats running through my head: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”<br /><br /></blockquote>I'm going to right now declare a Mandatory Global Moratorium on the use of "The Second Coming" in any discussion of Current Events. Yes! Of course <span style="font-style: italic;">I've</span> done it. We've <span style="font-style: italic;">all</span> done it! It's so easy, and it <span style="font-style: italic;">always</span> feels horrifyingly appropriate! But that's why it's a cliché! You think <span style="font-style: italic;">oh just this once, it won't hurt anyone; anyone can see that the tragedy is that THE BEST LACK ALL CONVICTION! How true that is! And things falling apart? Hell, that happens to me ALL THE TIME.</span><br /><br />Really, anybody who's used that "worst are full of passionate intensity" bit in the past decade--and you know you have!--has to remind themself that they probably don't agree with old W.B., or he wouldn't agree with them, about who exactly the "worst" are. But that's not even the point! We've done him the courtesy of overlooking that whole Unfortunate Politics thing because of the whole Genius thing, and rightly so. But for the sake of decency, we also have to stop beating this creepy poem into the rhetorical ground.<br /><br />So let's just leave it here. The center cannot hold. Fine. Let's all agree to find another way to point that out. No more blood-dimmed tides! No more mere anarchy loosed upon the world! And for the sake of all that is holy, no more <span style="font-style: italic;">slouching</span> of any kind by anybody towards anywhere! There's a book on my shelf called <span style="font-style: italic;">Slouching Toward Fargo, </span>for the love of god! About minor-league baseball! And of course one-time Supreme Court nominee (and present-day batshit crazy Mitt Romney fan) Robert Bork really did in all seriousness put out a book called <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slouching_Towards_Gomorrah">Slouching Towards Gomorrah</a>.</span> (For somebody worried about the Decline of the West, that's a spectacularly incoherent mash-up of <span style="font-style: italic;">two different</span> pseudo-Biblical tropes that have long since outlived their usefulness.)<br /><br />(The same goes for any unironic citing of Polonius's advice to his children. Never do what <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span> guy tells you! Go ahead, kids, <span style="font-style: italic;">be</span> a borrower. It's fun!)<br /><br />[Footnote: while typing this, I for one brief moment had the title of the poem written as "Teh Second Coming," which should provoke giggles in other online children like myself. That's the perfect shorthand for this kind of Media Yeats Abuse! <span style="font-style: italic;">Yeats r00l1z!!!!11 Ezra Pound is teh suck!]</span><br /><br /><br /><blockquote></blockquote>Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-60283976416559739422008-10-24T22:25:00.003-05:002008-10-24T22:41:18.418-05:00The Usual Apology, and A Weird TaleA quick, guilty return to posting. Same excuses as ever. Lazy, dysfunctional, blah blah, you know the drill. <br /><br />Anyway, here's a little story I wrote. Hadn't written any fiction since my schoolboy days--i.e. a year ago--and wasn't really sure I still could. But I was happily forced. Friend of a friend was running a Halloween themed art show, and I was told to come up with something seasonally appropriate, so they could maybe have some kind of "spooky" reading. Well, the show seemed to be a success, but the "reading" part apparently fell by the wayside--too loud and too many people, anyway. But I'd dashed off this little thing, just in case. And because it was just a lark, an exercise in creepy surrealism for its own sake, it was easy and fun to write instead of stressful and sickening. This might be the key to something. It still sounds like me, after all. (Aimless youth! Mournful guys making wisecracks!) No reason it couldn't become a "real" story of some kind, eventually.<br /><br />I'd been reading H.P. Lovecraft at work, and I realized I could just inject that freaked-out paranoid aesthetic into my usual Mournful Inarticulate People world. And I could make it happen at Maumee Bay State Park. So I did. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Yellow Island<br /><br /></span><br /><i>The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.<br /><br />(From "The Call of Cthulhu")</i><br /><br />We were on the boardwalk at the edge of the lake and it was getting rapidly darker, when L told me the one about the island. L said a great many things that didn't make much sense to me, but I always believed her. I had to. Once she told me that there were gas stations all around the city that didn't sell gas—if you were lucky enough to stumble upon one, what came out of the pumps would be silver and opaque and give off a wild rich odor that you wouldn't recognize, and something would happen to your car that would be hard to put your finger on. It would just run <i>better</i>, somehow, or just feel more like it was yours. She said it had happened to her college roommate, but that she didn't have the girl's phone number any more. <br /><br />She said you shouldn't let the silver stuff touch your skin. I pointed out that you shouldn't get <i>regular</i> gas all over your skin, either, but she just looked at me with something like pity. She <i>knew</i> things, things that it took a great deal out of you to know, and all I could do was point out the flaws in her peculiar little arguments. She never stopped telling me her stories, though. <br /><br />Once she told me that her cousin was a werewolf—<i>not the kind you're thinking of</i>, she said, but wouldn't explain what kind she meant. She told me she knew a guy who'd gotten cancer because he used the wrong light bulbs. She told me her father was so nervous sometimes that you could see through him. <i>Literally</i>, she said. <i>He shivers and you can see through the spaces between his atoms. Not much; you couldn't watch TV through him, or anything. But you can make out the color of the wall behind him. </i><br /><br />And that day by the lake she told me about the yellow island. The wind was rattling the tall grass, and you couldn't see the lake at all until you were right on top of it. We all lived only a few miles from the lake, L pointed out, but we <i>never</i> saw it—it was hidden behind factories and weeds and ragged useless woods. Things could go on there that nobody knew about—and sure enough, things did. <br /><br />We were at the end of the boardwalk, where you can climb a few feet up a few wooden stairs to a little platform, where suddenly <i>there the lake is</i>, like you just remembered something important. You can't see a whole lot, really. You can see lights on the shore to the west, getting dimmer as they get further to the north. You can't see the far side at all. <br /><br />You can't see the yellow island, but L assured me it was there, just out of sight.<br /><br />"How exactly is it <i>yellow?" </i> I asked, and she just looked at me. It wasn't the look of pity this time, and I knew that I believed every word she told me and that I always would. She was just looking, and her eyes were a sharper and harder green than I remembered.<br /><br />"It is," she said. "Just yellow. Like some kid's drawing of the sun. Like crayon. You wouldn't know what you were looking at."<br /><br />"Sounds just adorable," I said. "What a cute little island. I guess I'd like to see that."<br /><br />"You wouldn't," she said. "You wouldn't like it if you did." I didn't laugh because I couldn't laugh while I looked at her.<br /><br />"How do you know?" I said.<br /><br />"I've seen it," she said. "Two summers ago. You didn't know me then. I went out after work with all these people from the bar I was working at. I didn't know anybody that well."<br /><br />"What bar?" I asked.<br /><br />"It's not there anymore," she said, simply. "But the owner's kid like to hang out with all of us deadbeats who worked there, sometimes—real asshole, but he had a lot of money to throw around, and he wanted to be cool. And this time he had brought this friend who <i>nobody</i> knew, some other rich kid, but this friend had a boat, and we all went out on the lake at night. Everybody drank a lot. People were telling stories about all the sick shit they and their friends had done—you know, stuff they'd stolen from their neighbors and what drugs you'd never heard of that their older brother could get. You know. I remember this one girl—Emily, I think was her name—she kind of freaked out, but I don't remember why.<br /><br />"No, I do remember," she said, suddenly, interrupting herself. "It was that guy, the friend of the non-friend, the boat guy. He kept saying weird shit. But he was saying it to me, is what's funny, not to that Emily chick. He kinda fixated on me, and I was letting him. Not because I like him, but because I didn't care. But you know how some guys have to, like, point out constellations and stars and shit when they're out at night with a girl?"<br /><br />"I do that," I said. <br /><br />"I know," she said. "But it was like he got stuck. He kept pointing over my head, and saying <i>Algol</i>, like it was the only name he could remember. I still remember it, and I don't know anything about stars. <i>Algol</i>, he kept saying. <i>You know that, right? Algol. The eye of the Gorgon. The winking demon. Winking. You know that, right? </i> And I didn't do anything, but Emily started crying and throwing up over the side of the boat, and then I guess the subject got changed. I guess maybe we were all doing something else for a while, playing some stupid word-association game, or drinking game, or something. <br /><br />"Then it was getting light," she said, "and I don't remember who noticed it first, but it seemed like really suddenly we could all see the yellow island, maybe a quarter mile away. Hard to tell distance on the water, you know? But the island, you could tell it wasn't supposed to be there, like that. Nothing's really that color, you know? It was just flat and empty, and I couldn't tell how big it was or what it was made of. It didn't look like, you know, dirt. It was—not <i>shiny</i> exactly, but it was reflecting too much light. It was too yellow. It was like all the yellow things that anybody ever lost were getting together in one place, they'd been piling up on the bottom of the lake for years and now they were above the surface. And it was <i>familiar</i>. I thought, <i>oh, right, that. I've heard about that</i>, even though I never had. Nobody knew what to say about it. I could tell we were all scared, sort of, but nobody said anything. The weird guy just turned the motor back on and pointed the boat back toward the city. Everybody was pretty drunk, and the sun really hurt my eyes. We all stumbled off and nobody talked about the island the next day, or any day after that. I couldn't remember the weird guy's name, and he never showed up again, and when I asked the owner's kid about him a couple months later—we were both drunk again, at some stupid party—he acted like he didn't know who I was talking about. And at first I thought he was just playing dumb, that he didn't want me knowing his friend for some reason, but then I sort of believed him."<br /><br />She wasn't looking at me anymore. Just staring out across the lake. It was totally dark by then, and I couldn't see the horizon. There was one light out in the darkness. I know there's a lighthouse out there somewhere, but I've never seen it. <br /><br />She looked to the east and pointed at the sky, and I followed her perfect small hand with my eyes. <br /><br />"Algol," she said. "The winking demon." She sighed. <br /><br />"So now, since then," she said, "I get sick at yellow traffic lights." <br /><br />"I think I've heard about that," I said.Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-69637069254665928492008-09-18T08:54:00.004-05:002008-09-18T09:02:17.196-05:00Ready on Day One<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SNJevOH5gAI/AAAAAAAAAHk/1df1KpwhwU0/s1600-h/InigoMontoya.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SNJevOH5gAI/AAAAAAAAAHk/1df1KpwhwU0/s200/InigoMontoya.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5247360681178136578" /></a><br />Senator McCain pledges to firmly face down the threat posed by, uh, <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/217802.php">Spain</a>.<br /><span style="font-style:italic;"><br />Prime Minister Zapatero: Mr. President, my government offers our support in this crisis. I give you my word as a Spaniard.<br /><br />President McCain, through clenched teeth: No good. I've known too many Spaniards. </span><br /><br />McCain also promises to take a firm stand on aggression by the King of Siam, and to take swift and decisive action against the Barbary Pirates.Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-38306003654878438712008-09-14T22:08:00.005-05:002008-09-15T13:51:58.284-05:00Black, Billowing, Shapeless.(David Foster Wallace, 1962-2008)<br /><br />But in the importance and noise of tomorrow...<br />A few thousand will think of this day<br />As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.<br /><br />W.H. Auden<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SM3hF4Ars-I/AAAAAAAAAHY/_EVkU_MCs9g/s1600-h/wallace.gif"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SM3hF4Ars-I/AAAAAAAAAHY/_EVkU_MCs9g/s200/wallace.gif" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5246096632007341026" /></a><blockquote>"But on this one afternoon, the fan's vibration combined with some set of notes I was practicing on the violin, and the two vibrations set up a resonance that made something happen in my head...it was as if a large dark billowing shape came billowing out of some corner of my mind. I can be no more precise than to say <span style="font-style: italic;">large, dark, shape</span>, and <span style="font-style: italic;">billowing, </span>what came flapping out of some backwater of my psyche I had not had the slightest inkling was there...it was a bit like a sail, or a small part of the wing of something far too large to be seen in totality. It was total psychic horror: death, decay, dissolution, cold empty black malevolent lonely voided space.<br />...<br />I understood on an intuive level why people killed themselves."<br />Infinite Jest (1996), 650</blockquote><br /><br />Yeah, he knew about this. And we knew he knew. Oddly and horribly, that makes it more shocking--you thought, <span style="font-style: italic;">this guy understands so intimately the stuff a mind can do to itself, and he can write about it more cleanly and funnier and more nakedly than, like, anybody else ever. </span>And that made you think that he was ahead of the game, somehow, that he was smarter than all the awfulness and somehow that made him free from it. That he'd won. Doesn't work like that, and it's always obvious after the fact. Damn.<br /><br />He never <span style="font-style: italic;">could</span> finish a story, damn it. He was allergic to endings. He was mocking you for ever thinking that everything would ever wrap itself up neatly. This is either one Big Ending or one final Unfininished Story. Seems obscene to think of the end of somebody's life that way, but we're stuck with it. Fiction is what we do.<br /><br />I wouldn't be writing phrases like "funnier than, like, anybody else ever" if it weren't for him. I also wouldn't have read a fraction of the stuff I've read since 1997, and therefore I wouldn't be here. So there's that.<br /><br /><blockquote>...fully aware that the cliché that you can't ever truly know what's going on inside someone else is hoary and insipid and yet at the same time trying very consciously to prohibit that awareness from mocking the attempt or sending the whole line of thought into the sort of inbent spiral that keeps you from ever getting anywhere...the realer, more enduring and sentimental part of him commanding that other part to be silent as if looking it levelly in the eye and saying, almost aloud, "Not another word."<br /><br />"Good Old Neon" (2004)</blockquote><br /><br /><blockquote>The board will nod and you will go, and eyes of skin can cross blind into a cloud-blotched sky, punctured light emptying behind sharp stone that is forever. That is forever. Step into the skin and disappear.<br /><br />Hello.<br /><br />"Forever Overhead" (1999)</blockquote>Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-12453444047874616812008-09-14T08:13:00.001-05:002008-09-14T08:16:18.664-05:00Bad.<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/books/14wallace.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin">This sucks.</a><br /><br /><a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/david_foster_wallace/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about David Foster Wallace."></a><blockquote><a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/david_foster_wallace/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More articles about David Foster Wallace.">David Foster Wallace</a>, whose darkly ironic novels, essays and short stories garnered him a large following and made him one of the most influential writers of his generation, was found dead in his California home on Friday, after apparently committing suicide, the authorities said.</blockquote><br /><br />Don't know what to say yet. And I have to go to work. Later.<br /><br />a<span style="font-style: italic;">ll we gotta do is be brave and be kind...</span>Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-20120475049477127802008-09-04T21:33:00.003-05:002008-09-04T22:07:20.827-05:00Tonight, I call upon all Americans......To get the hell off my lawn!<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SMCazmfgGjI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/Ng2HtKzjqEg/s1600-h/abe_simpson.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SMCazmfgGjI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/Ng2HtKzjqEg/s320/abe_simpson.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5242360177555937842" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Liveblogging Senator McCain's big speech.<br /><br />Blue screen! When they replay clips of this speech, he'll be <span style="font-style: italic;">on the battlefield of Gettysburg.</span><br /><br />Crikey. He even says "Warshington." He probably sits on a "davenport." <span style="font-style: italic;">Senator, do you now or have you ever owned a davenport?</span><br /><br />Camera found a black person!<br /><br />He said "latina." I don't know why that's funny, but it is.<br /><br />He said "culture of life" really slowly, like the secret code phrase that it is, while looking right at the camera. YES I AM ON YOUR SIDE YOU CRAZY JESUS NUTS. LEAVE ME ALONE.<br /><br />Obama will raise your taxes. Because he's black.<br /><br />Scary socialized medicine. Not convincing. He just can't do red meat; he just doesn't care enough. Crowd liked it okay.<br /><br />Camera found a latino dude!<br /><br />Obama "wishing away" the global economy? Huh. Why?<br /><br />Boring clintonian worker retraining stuff.<br /><br />"Education will be the civil right of this century." Not a bad line, but I don't think we're done getting all the <i>other</i> civil rights yet.<br /><br />School choice. More demagoguery. But unexceptional.<br /><br />"Obama" "bureaucrats" "unions" in the same sentence.<br /><br />Biggest cheer yet--stop sending money to countries that don't like us! What's he even talking about? Foreign aid? A miniscule part of our budget? But nothing gets angry white people more riled up.<br /><br />Drill! Everybody drill! Even bigger cheers. These people are parodying themselves. Make a joke about Hillary Clinton, John! They'll eat it up!<br /><br />He will develop "electric horseless carriages."<br /><br />"Reassembling the Russian Empire." Ooooooooooh. But apparently "our prayers" can help.<br /><br />Seems a bit defensive. "I know how the world works. I am not afraid. I can handle it." Weird, hectoring tone.<br /><br />"I hate war." Aw, don't lie, dude. You hate being <span style="font-style: italic;">in</span> wars, everybody does. But planning wars is <span style="font-style: italic;">awesome--</span>and you don't got to pretend for this crowd; they're with you.<br /><br />Here's the line about the scars that everybody was talking about. They love it. <span style="font-style: italic;">Ecce homo.</span><br /><br />"Let's try sharing." Wow. Also in favor of caring and good manners.<br /><br />"Imperfect servant." Nice, actually. Still pretty messianic, but it works here.<br /><br />Vietnam. Vietnam. Blah blah blah. "Hadn't any worry that morning." Sure.<br /><br />Wow. John McCain was in Vietnam? That sounds like it was pretty horrible. What decade was that again?<br /><br />Oh, it really was a good story the <span style="font-style: italic;">first</span> thousand times. There's no way to say that that wasn't the Real Thing. (Unless he's been lying all along.) But it just...it just doesn't have anything do with the job he wants. There are all different kinds of Character.<br /><br />Let's see if he tells the lying "cross in the dirt" story. Probably not. People called shenanigans on that one. <br /><br />"Learned to love this country when I was a prisoner in someone else's." Good line. But has he ever <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> internalized, or publicly acknowledged the fact that it <span style="font-style: italic;">was,</span> in fact, <span style="font-style: italic;">someone else's country? </span>That even though he did his duty, and did it honorably, anyone looking honestly can now see that he never should have been there at all? Not to my knowledge.<br /><br />Somebody had a sign with "maverick" spelled wrong. Love the GOP. Love 'em! <br /><br />Stop saying "fight!" I thought you hated war!<br /><br />Stand up, you pathetic sons of bitches! Pull yourselves together. We never quit! He needs to grab a weak-looking guy in the front row and slap him silly.<br /><br />That's enough for me, I think. Really didn't seem all that great, especially by comparison with his opponent's big moment. But who knows how it'll play with the Mysterious Undecided Voters. I just really hope that some of them couldn't help giggling when he did his weird jerky arm gestures.Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-48092026806919430902008-09-04T08:34:00.004-05:002008-09-04T08:49:37.869-05:00Clear and new -- both good things!I'd sorta given the Palin-blogging a rest after an enthusiastic start. It got to be like shooting dead fish in a barrel--and where's the fun when <span style="font-style: italic;">everybody's</span> doing it? But this is just...it's just wonderful, is all. <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/213160.php">Josh Marshall</a> brings something to our attention:<br /><div class="body"> <p></p><blockquote><p>Anybody notice anything odd about this part of the transcript of the Palin speech released to the press?</p> <blockquote>Starting in January, in a McCain-Palin administration, we're going to lay more pipelines ... build more new-clear plants ... create jobs with clean coal ... and move forward on solar, wind, geothermal, and other alternative sources.</blockquote></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote> </div>...and at first I thought, <span style="font-style: italic;">what?</span> Seems innocuous. Sure, "clean coal" is bullshit, but Obama totally went with that line, too. But then...OMG. I got that beautiful warm feeling of liberal smugness that we get when everything we believe in is justified. You see? <span style="font-style: italic;">They spelled out "nuclear" PHONETICALLY!</span> They were taking <span style="font-style: italic;">no</span> chances! <span style="font-style: italic;">Yeah, we've got a lightweight on our hands, and yeah, she comes from state where "alternative fuel" refers to burning the furniture for heat. But we can't risk </span>any<span style="font-style: italic;"> more links with Bush! She's got to say it right!<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span></span>(See, if only somebody had thought to do that for W ten years ago, this wouldn't be a problem. Oh, who knows? Maybe they did.)<br /><br />And then somebody went and undid all of their excessive caution and made the situation a hundred times worse--they handed out the WRONG transcript! Thereby announcing that <span style="font-style: italic;">yes, we're pretty sure our candidate ain't too bright.</span><br /><br />Jon Stewart better know about this. I want this joke pounded into the ground by the weekend.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span></span>Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-85984613800857705422008-09-03T09:45:00.003-05:002008-09-03T10:05:42.427-05:00Everybody's Having a Good Time! In Maine!You know, I'm not much of a journalist; I've only just now figured out that I can actually get <a href="http://toledocitypaper.com/view_article.php?id=1955">paid for it</a>. But I know enough to know that you can wait your whole lifetime for a chance to write a headline like this one:<br /><br /><h1><a href="http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/2008/09/03/D92V9PDO1_odd_missing_gorilla/index.html"><span style="font-size:100%;"><blockquote>8-foot mechanical ape missing, owner mystified</blockquote></span></a></h1>And if you're the <s>guy</s> woman who gets that assignment for the Bangor Daily News, you know perfectly well that you could go your whole career without your work getting picked up by the national wire services. Destiny is banging on your front door, and you'd best answer! I think <a href="http://www.bangornews.com/detail/50035.html">Diana Graettinger</a> rises to the occasion. And if you're the bored guy at the AP scanning headlines from all over all day long, you'd better believe your eyes are gonna light up at that one. <span style="font-style: italic;">County Commisioners Debate Sewer Proposal. Ball Bearing Warehouse to be Sold At Auction. GIANT FREAKIN' GORILLA MISSING!!!!</span><br /><br />So what I'm saying is that a lot of people are having the best day of their lives. And we haven't even talked about the college guys who are high-fiving and cracking beers around the <span style="font-style: italic;">GIANT MECHANICAL GORILLA </span>in their damned living room. They've never felt so alive! On a day like this one, you feel that there is hope for us all.Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-9239424492313212222008-08-29T11:25:00.005-05:002008-08-29T12:17:06.878-05:00Apologies, followed by sneering condescension.I know, I know. I always said this wasn't a political blog--there are so many people who do that better than I could, and most of my likely readers probably aren't gonna find it as entertaining as I do. But you know, it's that time of year. It's officially general election season, as of last night, and you're going to be hearing about it more and more anyway, whether you care or not. So how could I bear to leave my two cents unspent? I seem to be on a roll today, anyway, so I'll keep it going.<br /><br />So: I've already gotten my jokes in this morning, but let me just say in all seriousness how terrific this McCain VP thing is. My reaction was precisely the same as that of everyone in the world who isn't a <span style="font-style: italic;">conservative</span> blogger. <span style="font-style: italic;">Who? </span><span>Let this be a lesson: "Thinking Outside the Box" is the last refuge of fools and scoundrels, the sorts of people who <span style="font-style: italic;">say</span> things like "let's Think Outside the Box on this one." The result is inevitably something like this--somebody comically unprepared being thrust into a situation where they're going to be ridiculed.<br /><br />The sorts of people who worry about these things, who assume that the Democratic Party will always find a way to lose, well, they're worrying already. <span style="font-style: italic;">We can't ridicule her,</span> they're saying. <span style="font-style: italic;">She's young and appealing and a Girl. We'll look mean. </span>And hey, I'm normally as much of a worrier as anybody--but the hand-wringers should realize right away that we <span style="font-style: italic;">don't need</span> to ridicule her. Play it straight, mildly question her experience and possible minor scandal, and let the situation take care of itself. It's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_miers">Harriet Miers</a> all over again, except that McCain isn't allowed to make her back out. McGovern tried <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Eagleton">that</a>. Yeesh.<br /><br />Clearly, this was a way not of countering the choice of Biden, but of making a desperate grab for an <span style="font-style: italic;">Obama-</span>like figure. <span style="font-style: italic;">See? Our party's got a Dynamic Next Generation, too! Take that, you smug liberal elites! </span>But you can see just how pathetically weak that line of attack is, and you can guess just how well it's gonna play. <span style="font-style: italic;">Seriously? You want people to mentally compare this woman to Barack Freakin' Obama? That's a bright idea.</span> Our Dynamic Next Generation is a battle-hardened Chicago pol and US Senator and Blockbuster Author who just happens to also be Bigger Than Jesus at the moment. Theirs is a lightweight <a href="http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=08&year=2008&base_name=sarah_palin_on_teaching_intell">whack-job</a> who's run a hick state for a year and a half.<br /><br />It's <span style="font-style: italic;">Dan Quayle</span> all over again, is what it is. (Hey wouldn't it be funny if Obama had picked Evan Bayh, the Democratic Dan Quayle? Okay, funny to <span style="font-style: italic;">me</span>, maybe. Sigh.) And I know, I'm about the zillionth person to say that in the past few hours, and just as many people have said <span style="font-style: italic;">but...but...Dan Quayle WON!</span> Yeah, but is anybody seriously suggesting that Bush 88 won <span style="font-style: italic;">because</span> of Quayle? He was in the same box that McCain was in--all the viable options either <span style="font-style: italic;">weren't </span>really viable, like Lieberman, or he just couldn't stand them. (Mittens Romney, just like Bob Dole was to Bush Sr.) Quayle was immediately dismissed as a joke, and rightly so.<br /><br />Nah, Bush 88 won because of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Horton">vicious race-baiting</a>, as every schoolboy knows, and because Dukakis was sorta <a href="http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n146/DailyGotham/Dukakis_tank.jpg">inept</a>, which every schoolboy also knows. And hell yes you're gonna see some vicious race-baiting in the coming weeks. It's gonna be Scary Radical Black Celebrity Muslim pretty much non-stop, and McCain will have to cluck his tongue and act like he's Above All That, even though the size of the racist vote has <span style="font-style: italic;">always</span> been his only real hope of winning. But it's not going to work. Because it's twenty years since Willie Horton, and the nation is, honestly, marginally less racist, if only because it's less white. And more importantly, because our guy is most definitely NOT inept. Did you happen to catch him on TV yesterday, addressing a few of his closest friends?<br /></span>Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-67879094628771087412008-08-29T10:17:00.005-05:002008-08-29T10:28:55.604-05:00On the other hand...This could be a stroke of diabolical genius from McCain's people. Palin's a funny guy! Pontius Pilate! And as long as brings his Very Good Friend From Rome along, I'm in! You know who I'm talkin' about!<br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zPGb4STRfKw&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zPGb4STRfKw&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br />But seriously, is he a citizen?Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-80022262009235944712008-08-29T09:23:00.003-05:002008-08-29T09:46:59.832-05:00Please please please...If the rumors are true...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SLgIaqkof9I/AAAAAAAAAHI/Q-eauLG-uZQ/s1600-h/mccainflicksmall.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SLgIaqkof9I/AAAAAAAAAHI/Q-eauLG-uZQ/s320/mccainflicksmall.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239947420643131346" /></a><br /><br />McCain / <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_(1999_film)">Flick</a> '08!<br /><br />I mean, c'mon! Are Alaskans even citizens? Do they put America first?Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-10532273460096668682008-08-15T11:49:00.002-05:002008-08-15T11:54:20.712-05:00I Did Some Wonder LoafOkay, I haven't really done much of this sort of thing. But I'm gonna set aside all the philosophizing and rock-snobbery for a moment and post a damned embedded video. Because this is the funniest damned thing ever; I can't stop thinking about it. `<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/T4_MsrsKzMM&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/T4_MsrsKzMM&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-16994803802449371292008-08-13T15:32:00.002-05:002008-08-13T15:56:18.844-05:00Shameless Self-PromotionOkay, sure, it's bad enough that I have <span style="font-style: italic;">one </span>blog that I post to every once in a while Whenever I Freaking Feel Like It, Damn It! But now <a href="http://653below.blogspot.com/">I've got two.<br /></a><br />This one is entirely focused on my occasional workplace, which you might know something about. So the official Target Audience is just my co-workers, but it's perfectly possible that you might find it amusing from time to time. Lots of shop talk and insider politics, but hopefully at least some stuff that's entertaining to anybody. My job is funny. And that blog has exactly the focus and sense and purpose that this one has always lacked. All of us at that job really <span style="font-style: italic;">really</span> hate our boss, you see--which is perfectly normal, but I'm hoping I can raise it to an art form. He fascinates me; we have such astonishingly different ideas about what it means to be a decent human being. I want to explore that; I want to raise my young co-workers' consciousness about the cruelty and absurdity of the working world; and I want to make myself more popular. :)<br /><br />Of course, I can't ever link to it from <span style="font-style: italic;">this</span> site again, since I don't want it to be any easier to tie all of this to me than it has to be. :-) Though really, anybody to whom I've ever sent an email would instantly recognize my sneering condescension and liberal use of adverbs. I just can't hide! :-)Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-850460519986732757.post-79211699847985739192008-07-27T19:02:00.013-05:002008-07-27T23:45:16.595-05:00We Gotta Start This One Off<i>Now it's so competitive,<br />The sleeplessness and sedatives.<br />I know it sounds repetitive.<br />Every show can't be a benefit...</i><br /><br />[bitchin' guitar solo]<br /><br />Yeah, there's a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Stay-Positive-Hold-Steady/dp/B0019T9F9S/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1217203604&sr=8-1">new Hold Steady album</a>. Yeah, I'm pretty happy.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp1.blogger.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SI0OW9h3LEI/AAAAAAAAAGo/K2dCvofD3cs/s1600-h/staypostive.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp1.blogger.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SI0OW9h3LEI/AAAAAAAAAGo/K2dCvofD3cs/s200/staypostive.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227850530083515458" border="0" /></a>Look, I won't do a real review here, not yet—what I really want to do is some sort of lengthy, pretentious survey of all four records. But for now I'll just say that when it was over I immediately hit "Play" again. I <span style="font-style: italic;">never</span> do that. Even stuff I really love I have to give a rest after each listen or it just doesn't sound right. Familiarity breeds contempt, musically speaking. But I'm on about my fourth time through <span style="font-style: italic;">Stay Positive</span>, and it's still working. I'll just say that after the Hold Steady followed up the bracing shock of <span style="font-style: italic;">Almost Killed Me</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Separation Sunday</span> with the lovable-but-spotty <span style="font-style: italic;">Boys and Girls in America</span>, I felt that we couldn't be quite sure—but now there's no doubt that we're in the presence of Greatness. Fist-pumping, lighters-in-the-air, ten-thousand-hands-clapping-in-unison-type Greatness. It's <span style="font-style: italic;">difficult</span> for the cynic in me—<span style="font-style: italic;">how can anybody still sing about teenagers and drugs and cars and Bad Boys in Love With Good Girls Gone Bad and keep a straight face? How can Craig Finn be this smart and still believe all his own Transcendent Power Of Rock and Roll bullshit?</span> Then I remember—oh, yeah! It's all <span style="font-style: italic;">true</span>.<br /><br />Just a taste: "Let me know when you're ready" is rhymed with "John Cassavetes." And, of course, with "hold steady." Hell, yes.<br /><br />This was the possibly only thing that could make me stop listening to the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tallahassee-Mountain-Goats/dp/B00006YXH6/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1217204679&sr=8-1">Mountain Goats</a>, about whom I didn't even <span style="font-style: italic;">know</span> until this year, except as yet another band with a silly animal-based name. But John Darnielle got there first (unless you count the Monkees.) He's been using that name for over a decade. And lately I've been feeling like the eleven-year-old <a href="http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/why_was_i_not_informed_about">finding out about Bruce Lee</a>. I feel like I felt after <span style="font-style: italic;">Separation Sunday</span>! And it might seem like a jarring shift—these bands superficially don't sound much alike. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://bp0.blogger.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SI0Ol0MaNbI/AAAAAAAAAGw/CBBeDd5PPAE/s1600-h/darnielle.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer;" src="http://bp0.blogger.com/_hKnzCAoc0V4/SI0Ol0MaNbI/AAAAAAAAAGw/CBBeDd5PPAE/s200/darnielle.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5227850785275655602" border="0" /></a>But I realize that it makes sense—Finn and John Darnielle may be the two best narrative songwriters in America. (Prove me wrong, <a href="http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/50979-okkervil-river-reveal-full-details-of-the-stand-ins">Will Sheff</a>! You're in the game, but we'll see how this new one turns out.) Both are drawn to the seamy and the hopeless the way their characters are drawn to opiates and fortified wines. And, of course, they've each got a voice that would peel paint.<br /><br />Of course, Finn the Catholic badly wants his characters redeemed—he wants to redeem them <span style="font-style: italic;">personally</span>! Darnielle's people are clearly going straight to hell and you can't stop them. But it's easy to imagine a Hold Steady version of the downtrodden-teen-lust anthem "This Year," or the thunderous blues of "See America Right." They totally should do that! But will probably cover "Born in the U.S.A." or "Piano Man," instead. Fair enough.<br /><br />[Note: I had to change that profile photo. It always seems like it'd be delightfully whimsical to do "mock-thoughtful," but the irony doesn't necessarily translate and it's kind of a lame joke anyway. Like having a moustache that's meant to be funny. This one's a compromise. Not pretty. Not unflattering. Not funny at all.]Matt Desmondhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05049817294442385108noreply@blogger.com0