Madonna

18) Satanic Ritual Performed at The NFL Half Time Show

I read stuff like this and am disappointed by how ordinary and free of conspiracy and magick my life is. I think it would be better to be paranoid and sort of crazy.

I know some people approach this sort of thing and think: "Oh, well, if you really think about the person who wrote this, you have to sort of feel sad. There's so much fear in this. There's so much loneliness in seeing monsters in every closet and under every bed."

But this is the thing about the internet: these people have found each other. They are all out there, and they are all finding each other. And though once these people—alone in their fear—used to suffer alone and disappear into themselves and cut themselves off from community, they don't do that so much now.

They meet now. (On the internet.) They gather now. (On the internet.) They commiserate now. (On the internet.)

Spend time watching Christian/Alien/New World Order conspiracy theory videos on Youtube, and you discover that they all have a deeply hopeful tone to them. These people are excited. They are ready. They expect to live through the coming apocalypse. They dig it. They dig each other.

They get to be characters in an action movie.

Which is, frankly, why I think creative people—choreographers and costume designers—are there, behind the scenes, doing their best to feed into our need things like "Satanic Ritual Super Bowl Halftime Shows."

I think it IS all intentional. I think that WAS staged to appear like a Satanic ritual. Because someone in Madonna's camp really wanted to give people something to support their paranoia, and in doing so, support their hope.

Bless them.

***

19) NOTHING: A Portrait of Insomnia by Blake Butler

I've mostly just been reading Blake's book for the last couple of weeks. And I haven't been sleeping. On HTML Giant, Impossible Mike wrote a short piece called "I Like Hypnotism A Lot" (20).

In it, he asked if anyone had been hypnotized. I was reading sections of Blake's book, which is full of repetitious sentence structures, and those pairings of words that are unfamiliar and unpackable and sort of beautiful when you spend time with them. And long, long chaining meditations of sentences and paragraphs. And all this streaming consciousness.

And it's hypnotic. And it's a walkthrough to his sleeptime, up-all-night thoughts.

And I was reading the book, and sometimes reading it in bed, and then going to bed and trying to sleep.

And I really do believe that living in the space of a book is giving away one's own thought process to someone else's. A brain is wired using language. Strong voices can rewire.

Blake's voice rewired my thinking. And so, in bed, I could feel the places where, say, my leg touched the bed, and the skin felt more alive in those places. The sense of touch felt stronger in those places. Too strong. Too alive.

I couldn't stop thinking about those places on my legs. (I am a side sleeper. I am also a three-point sleeper. Shoulder, hip, and the inside of whatever knee happens to be on top. So, right shoulder, right hip, inside of left knee; or left shoulder, left hip, inside of right knee.) And then I couldn't sleep.

Hypnosis.

***

21) Slow Writing? by Gabriel Blackwell

It's Gabe's birthday! Happy birthday, Gabe.

***

22 - 24) About half of five novels that were submissions to a Nanowrimo contest. A couple were very good. I'll only count it as two.

***

UPDATE

25) DC's: Gig #14: Les Légions Noires

Dennis Cooper's daily roundups of whatever happen to be on his mind are always worth the time it takes to pore through them. This, for obvious reasons, is my favorite recent one.

Marvin

Some thing are and some things are not about Marvin. Some Marvins are Marvin, and other Marvins are not Marvin.

Go ahead. Sit down and look through your history books. You'll see that I'm right. You'll see. Just check.

Marvin has his hands bound. Marvin leaves his jacket unzipped. Marvin remembers birthdays with unerring accuracy. Marvin looms large in the minds of those who think about people other than Marvin.

Some of those things are about Marvin. Some of them are not. You must decide on your own which is which.

Marvin will repair the fence for you. Marvin lives in fear of being discovered by his uncle. Marvin reads much, much, much, much slower than any other person in the entire world. Marvin has never ever killed a bug.

Some of those things are about Marvin. Some of them are not. You have free will. God has given you free will. I leave it to your free will to make choices.

Marvin resembles no one so much as Marvin resembles Marvin. Marvin has a tree in his bathtub. When John Cage talks about silence, John Cage is talking about Marvin. When Flannery O'Conner talks about God, Flannery O'Conner is talking about Marvin. God is forever talking to everyone he knows about Marvin.

See the paragraph above the paragraph above this sentence for further instructions. It won't take long to reread it. Reread it. It's important. Trust me.

Marvin shines a light, shines a light, shines a light in the daaaarkness. Marvin is rude to children when being rude to children is completely necessary. Marvin stalls out after 600 miles of running in place. The sun is not efficient. The sun is not efficient. Stop believing that the sun is efficient.

Just stop.

Can't blog. The sun is not efficient.

***

This is Brujeria:



This is Lotte Kestner:



Both can help you relax.

***

Blake Butler and Jamie Iredell will be in Seattle on February 13 reading at Neptune Coffee. Come see, Seattle people.

***

Took a Polaroid photo of my friend Liza:



Came out good. Looks just like her.

Compulsion-Analysis

Today is a day for examining what it is that makes you wonder what it is. This is what I've been thinking a lot about. It's hardly a day to pretend other than that.

Like, what if there's a moonfall event tomorrow?

Like, what if all the birds are more or less finished with flying?

Like, what's that word that's supposed to follow the word you've got stuck in your hand?

Like, how will we all cope now that the bees have gone and flown away to space?

Like, really are you satisfied with the way your beard smells?

Like, if dolphin telepathy is just a couple of years away from completion, what will Big Science do with its free time?

Like, are armies on the march because this battle is finished again and they are coming home or are they going somewhere new?

Like, Friday is just another way of avoiding Saturday for 24 more hours, right?

Like, arms get folded more often than we think but no one's really keeping score, are they?

Like, research research research. Is that all we'll ever read a book about?

But, honestly, let's be honest with ourselves. The pillow remains dry. The stairs keep going up and up. The neighbors have your dog hostage. Relax and live a little, am I right?

Yes, I am.

Forward and onward and upward. Blogging is impossible and for another day.

***

I answered questions about some books I like. I typed "Holy Smokes" twice.

***

I'll be reading in Portland on November 22 with Daniel Bailey and Bryan Coffelt. I think it's with this store, Ampersand, but it might actually occur at a nearby coffee house. When I know more, I will tell you more.

***

Shane Jones's new book, The Failure Six, is very good. I have read about four of the failures. I am up to number five. You should buy The Failure Six. And you should read it in a room with a cat watching you read it.

Song for The Failure Six:



***

Brother Blake has a story here. It's one of my favorites of his.

Someone told me about visiting a museum in Russia that had a room full of jarred still-born fetuses. Someone had sewed tiny lace ruffles around their wrists, and tiny lace collars on their necks.

***

Frickin' Burch is frickin' awesome.

Suitor

His arm had gone and burned up and all that he had left was char-enrobed bones. For all the world like a freshly barbecued rib, it hung from his shoulder still smouldering and smelling of well-done meat. With the most enormous of difficulties, he could swing the thing, but he could not bend it at the elbow. Could not clench or fan the spider-leg fingers. Could not swivel the gristle and ashbone wrist. He could only swing it.

He liked to tease the dog.

Heat was buried hidden in the marrow. Sometimes it caught, it sparked, it flared. A little air was all it took. A little wind through a patch, a chipped-away patch of ashbone armoring. And then some smoke, it coughed out, twirled together, flowed over the scorched meat, and blew out and off from the shoulder.

TO BE CONTINUED...

(After reading EVER by Blake Butler, I decided to write a suitor for the narrator.)

***

CAVES by Matthew Simmons.

A review of CAVES by Matt Bell. Thanks, Matt!

Kendra Malone published a gchat with me to celebrate CAVES. Thanks, Kendra!

***



***

UPDATES:

Oh, sure. Twitter.

Also, Matthew Savoca's book TOUGH! is almost finished at the almost finished Happy Cobra Books website. Just needs a couple of images added and a page for the credits.

Butler

I work at this place that gets deliveries from UPS. The UPS guy always seems to show up at about the same time every day, the time when I'm usually walking down the alley to the cafe to get an Americano or some sort of latte.

I think the UPS guy looks a little like Blake Butler.

I've never seen Blake in person. Only on the internet. There are photos and videos of Blake Butler doing things:

humping a couch

being drunkenly delighted by a smoothie

shaving and repeating himself

painted

etc.

(I have included no links because I would like you to discover them yourself.)

Because the UPS guy sort of looks like Blake Butler, I also think I pretty much know what Blake looks like delivery packages in short brown shorts.

***

On EVER

EVER, Blake's Calamari Press-published novella begins: "From in the light I touched the light."

In the light, the light touches you. You do not need to actively touch the light. The light is there, surrounding you. So, why the need to act to touch the light? Disconnection.

EVER is a book about the body. About being within it. About separating from it. About skin. Boundaries.

The language is tough and slippery. Its targets, though, are constantly moving, so that makes perfect sense.

It's also a book full of brackets. Brackets hold in pieces of equations. They allow for thoughts to exist within thoughts. They allow for more separation.

It's a simple book. Really pure. Really good. Buy it.

***

"Are you just writing nice things about Blake's book because Blake is a friend of yours?"

Umm. Well, sort of. Technically, though, I am a friend of Blake because I admire his writing.

Some people complain about how insular and chummy "literature" can be. Friends just helping friends. Friends promoting friends. Friends looking out for friends.

Bah. Like-minded creative types flock together. We are primarily interested in the success of the like-minded because we are fans. And we are, in some way, interested too in our own success.

And I don't mean just our aesthetic twins. I mean the whole damn family. The extended aesthetic family.

***

I took a nice walk outside. Two, actually. The walks occurred in different time zones.





***

Dream

I had this dream that a friend of mine had a baby. She had a baby and she filled her baby's crib with water. She put the baby in the crib, dropped it in the water, and left the baby there.

The baby didn't die. It lay there surrounded by water.

"Now when the bay cries, it won't wake me up," she said. "Because the baby will be crying under the water. Look."

She pulled the baby from the water, and the baby coughed a little and started to yell and cry. "And now," she said, and she dropped the baby back in the water. The baby's face was screwed and pinched, and its mouth was wide, wide open. The baby was, under the water, screaming and crying. We couldn't hear a thing.

"Pretty smart, huh?" said my friend. "And when I take the baby for a walk," she said, and she pointed at a metal pail filled with water.

***

Today, Obama is president. He's the first African-American president. That's pretty great.

Also, though, Joe Biden is, like, the 44th white male in a row to be Vice President. That's gotta be some sort of record, too, isn't it?

Take heart, white males. You are still totally undefeated in the "elected to Vice President of the United States of America" category. You still totally rule that one.

***

Youtube allows you to watch the movie Rock and Rule. You should watch it. Lou Reed and Iggy Pop are in it.

***

Berta, Berta - Branford Marsalis

***

UPDATE:

I forgot to mention EVER by my friend Blake. EVER arrived to me a couple of days ago. I read it aloud to myself. It's an enormously satisfying book, and Blake is—as we already knew—a really talented writer. Go buy a copy already.

Ishpeming

Ishpeming straddles Lake Superior to Marathon, reaches into the water, pulls out a clump of frozen hotdogs, breaks them apart one by one, rolls them between its fingers, heats them on the thigh of its corduroy pants, and throws them into the sky. Comets they thereup become. Ishpeming laughs like a frog.

In its lungs, cancer grows like educational dinosaur sponges. In its brain, cancer grows like soap bubbles under a flowing faucet. In its eyes, cataracts are solidifying.

Ishpeming teases the lanes of the roads apart with his fingernail. He grasps and gives a hard tug. Cars fly off into Minnesota. The sparrows in his ears are pissing Ishpeming off.

§

Lodie is a sniper, and kills cities for a living. She is on a raft in Lake Michigan. When she sees Ishpeming, Lodie pulls the rifle from her back.

The bullets are filled with mercury and shaped like little drill bits. And spin like little drill bits.

Lodie steadies the boat by steadying her breathing and then steadying the water around the boat.She dips a finger in the water, and it stops all it's God damned roiling.

The shot hits Ish's temple, and it burrows in. The mercury injects, hits the blood stream, runs around looking for the heart. When the mercury finds the heart, it coats the sides and dissolves the valves between the chambers. This leaves Ishpeming royally fucked.

Lodie turns away, and does not see the city fall.

§

Ishpeming falls. The ground shakes and then the ground stops shaking.

Someone opens up a bottle and pours malt liquor on Ishpeming's feet. That same someone walks for a long time in order to pour malt liquor out near each of Ishpeming's hands. The bottle is empty at the final thumb and someone is unable to take a memorial drink.

God, who lives in the sky, ignores the entire situation, instead concentrating on a new project. He has started a band with some friends, and is on the phone trying to hustle up a gig or two in the next couple of months. The band has been getting pretty good lately, and has been practicing twice a week. God doesn't think much of his singing voice, but the other members of the band are pretty keen on it. It's a good time for God.

§

The corpse of Ishpeming does not stink as it rots to pieces. The rot is not so much organic as it is mechanical. It is, like, entropy.

Or something.

The comet, still zipping around the heavens, tears through God's drummer's neck. The drummer dies. Blood is everywhere in God's garage.

Outraged by the death of drummer (the best of all the drummers who called God after seeing his flyer on a light pole) God destroys the universe.

TO BE CONTINUED

***



***

Order Blake's book.

***

UPDATE:

Go here and read the top story linked, "The Behavior of Pidgeons" by my friend Gabriel Blackwell.

Dipset

Cam'ron of Dipset is the brand new spokesman—sorry, person—for the American Death Industry. He believes that this verifies to spokesperson-watchers—who are, we are all aware, legion and shit—that he is a man of great intellectual heft. Finally, he will be taken seriously. He wakes up every day with a renewed sense of self.

His new self engages in mirror conversation with the old, less-respected-for-his-gravitas Cam'ron.

A tree in the yard, privy to the nuances of the conversation, dies.

The soul of the tree reaches the center of the Earth, where its roots are plugged into the soul of the rest of the world.

The rest of the world survives an attack by the soul of the tree killed by the subtext of self-doubt that occurred during Cam'ron's conversation with himself in the mirror.

The soul of the world takes its revenge by destroying all trees the world over. As the trees the world over wither, Cam'ron boards a helicopter—an ex-military helicopter that was purchased by the American Death Industry to transport its spokespeople—and is flown to Providence, Rhode Island, where he meets with the American Death Industry and is shot in the face.

Dipset, motherfucker.

***

Blake wrote a bunch of pieces about famous dead people. I have been writing responses. Above is my response to his piece on Tupac.

(I have one left, Blake. Then we should find a publisher.)

***



I miss pills. I stopped taking pills. I think I should start taking pills again.

What do you think?

***

Daniel Bailey's east central indiana. It is good.

Shillin'

Sorry. I'm a little late. I don't have much to say this week, so I will just shill.

Vote for Obama.

A shill is a person who promotes something for because s/he has a personal interest at stake in the thing promoted. It is, generally, a epithet.

I am embracing the word. I have a personal interest. I would like to spend four years not cringing every time the leader of my nation opens his mouth to speak. I would like affordable health care. I would like a sensible tax policy. I would like scientific literacy from the people whose job it is to make decisions about the wise use of science and technology.

I am a shill.

***

Errol Morris is a really interesting filmmaker. He made this. It shills for Obama.

***

Shepard Fairey is a really interesting graffiti artist and designer. He made this:


Barack Obama x Z-Trip x Shepard Fairey x Fresh Pressed from Barack On! Obamathon on Vimeo.

It shills for Obama.

***

My folks don't usually vote for Democrats. They live in a very small town. They put up an Obama sign and some kids ran it over and threw a rotten pumpkin at their house.

They put up another sign.

They are shilling for Obama.

***

A friend of mine has big hair and glasses. She made this blog.

It shills for Obama.

***

Justin Dobbs came up with a Facebook group called Moose for Obama. After Sarah Palin became John McCain's running mate, others jumped on the bandwagon not realizing the bandwagon already existed.

Moose shill for Obama.

***

Blake Butler sold his very good book Scorch Atlas to Featherproof Books.

Sadly, he does not shill for Obama. I like him anyway. And can't wait to see the finished book.

***

Shane Jones, one of only two people I have let guest blog for me, has a chapbook from a new press.

I hear it is going fast, and you should order it now. And Ken Baumann's. And Jimmy Chen's. And Blake's. And Brandi's. And Nick's. All of them.

I am unclear on the "shilling for Obama" status of these people and would love to hear about it from them.

***

Drunk person shills for Obama.

Frankly, if I had known there would be drinks at the call centers, I would've volunteered.

***

That's all. Vote Obama.