This
is what I heard that changed my listening habits. An on-line friend, who used
have a friend who worked in a record shop, told me in the strictest confidence
that LP makers have been ripping off the public all these years. You see, as
you buy a record, the rotations-per-minute is listed at 33⅓. But this
friend of mine tells me this is bullshit: the records are designed to be played
back at 30 RPM. On the label, says thirty-three-and-a-third. But they've never
sounded right to anyone! I was astounded to hear that. Yes, she said: records
are actually about ten per cent longer than what's on the label. I was
astounded to hear that. (Oh, I've said that already.) But ... why? I asked. She
told me: it forces people to buy ten per cent more records. I didn't believe
her, so I tested it out. I listened to A Day in the Life at 33⅓ RPM. It
lasted for five minutes and thirty-six seconds. Then I listened to it at 30
RPM: Good God it went on for six minutes and thirteen seconds! There were
thirty-six seconds of music hidden away! Goes to show how capitalism works!
*
Quality
Song Titles, Available for Re-use
A-11
Always Late (With Your Kisses)
Atomic Power
B.J. The D.J.
The Ballad Of Jed Clampett
Billy Bayou
Black Jack David
Blue Eyes Crying In
The Rain
The Bottle Let Me Down
Bringin' In The Georgia Mail
By the Time I Get To
Phoenix
Canned Heat
Chattanoogie Shoe Shine Boy
Cigareetes, Whusky, And Wild Women
Crying In The
Chapel
Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (And Loud, Loud
Music)
Dust On The Bible
From A Jack To A
King
Funny (How Time Slips Away)
Go Cat, Go
Green, Green Grass Of
Home
Hot Rod Lincoln
How Long Will My Baby Be Gone?
I Can't Stop Loving You
I Gotta Get Drunk
(And I Shore Do Dread It)
I Wouldn't Buy A Used Car From Him
In The Jailhouse
Now No.2
It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels
It's A Sin
It's Such A Pretty World Today
Long Gone Lonesome Blues
Lost Highway
(Margie's At) The
Lincoln Park Inn
Move It On Over
New Pretty Blonde (New Jole
Blon)
P.T. 109
Release Me
Ruby, Are You Mad?
Searching (For Someone Else)
She's Gone, Gone, Gone
Sing A Sad Song
Sixteen Tons
Waterloo
(more available upon demand)
*
He knew he'd made a mistake, because he was
running, and fast.
It was too dark to know exactly where he
was running, but running he was.
The street looked somewhat familiar, albeit
dark. Where were his feet taking him?
They took him from an avenue onto a road.
He saw a bus stop. He remembered the bus stop, but he didn't know from when.
How many miles was he going to end up
running? How far can a person run? How long had he already been running?
He had no idea.
Somehow, his ears heard his surroundings,
and in his surroundings, he heard high-pitched swirly noises.
He seemed to be running towards the noises.
Were they his goal?
Sirens. Police sirens. Maybe the sirens
could explain.
He didn't know the time. It has to be
late; there's no cars.
His eyes noticed being able to see more
clearly. He recalled a physics class, or maybe it was astronomy; it seemed the
sun was rising.
A police car was ahead. He stopped running.
A cop pointed a gun at him. "Get down
on the ground!"
He got down.
The cop, who had him covered, barked:
"Why did you do it?"
*
Her husband called her to the window.
What window?
Does that matter?
Yes; what was its elevation?
It was the ground-floor window, the one
looking out onto the street.
So, I guess they had a window there.
Yes.
Not everyone does, you know.
Certainly true.
And also, some ground-floor windows don't
look out onto streets.
I'm not
I mean, there got to be three walls at
least.
Yes well
I know a triangular house, over near the
train tracks.
I'm sure
But that's an oddity, most have four walls.
In an ordinary
So how many?
How many what?
How many windows did this ground-floor
have?
I don't know!
How can you not know? It's your story.
It had ... ten.
That's an entirely reasonable number of
windows to have on a ground floor.
Thank you.
So, what's the street?
What street?
The one out the window.
What do you want to know about it?
I don't know. What's its name?
The street is called Jones Street.
That's good.
Yes.
Unspecific.
Yes.
Imagination-provoking.
Thank you.
Okay. So, go on with your story.
That's the whole thing. "Her husband
called her to the window."
Very mysterious, yes. With a twist and
everything.
*
Une
Bagatelle Hystérique
Jones was at his work-station when Smith
came by.
Smith: "Jones, quick, gimme everything in your pockets."
Jones: "Why?"
"It's Brown. He's had an accident, so
money is needed."
As Jones pulled everything out of his
pocket, he asked: "What kind of an accident?"
"Apparently, he stabbed himself in the
eye."
Jones dropped his pocket's contents into
Smith's open hands and cried: "Eeew! Sounds
nasty!"
"I hear there's blood everywhere. He's
in a surgery now."
"Man! How does a person stab himself
in the eye?"
"If he lives, we'll find out. Gotta go."
Jones sat numbly for a while. Did Brown
fall on ... what could you fall on? Was he gardening or something?
He realized then that he had given Smith
everything from his pocket, including his list of computer passwords.
This was the worst thing.
He got up, sweating in panic, and tried to
recall the direction Smith had gone. Would Smith realize he had them? Would he
recall whose they were?
He put his hand in his pocket, wherein he
found his computer passwords, safe and sound. Phew!
Later, they saw pictures of the scene of
the accident. Yes, there truly was blood everywhere.
*
Now
Let Us Praise Famous Bugs
Lowly little beast on the bathroom floor,
rounded back and no head to speak of, little knowing cats prowled about day and
night, and who knows who's the invasive species here? The cats have probably
never met the likes of you, have never smelled the likes of you, and perhaps
would not like the taste of you. All this is quite unknown, so you have a
pretty good chance of not knowing, ever, the danger you are in on the bathroom
floor. Go forth, and good luck in your mile-long life.
Oh, bee, bee of March, if indeed bee you
be, you showed me spring was not far off at all; you said to my fingers that
all was in readiness. From what tree, from what branch, do you hail? There's a
moist nest, that I know, for your ancestors appeared here regularly last
summer. Whose child are you? Who escaped an early
death?
Tiny to the eye, and always in gangs, the
gnats come out for their brief day in the sun. They shine like flakes of gold
when the light is right. And what is their knowledge? It must be something marvellous!
*
Some months ago, while we were at our usual
tiny cottage on the serene shores of Long Lake, I got to talking to the manager
of the property. We started off by remarking on the glorious weather, and that
even when it rained it cleared up after fifteen minutes, etc.
After these moments of serene reflection, I
said: "But still: 'It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live
here.'"
She was a tiny bit, and asked:
"Why?"
"Well," I began: "Nature.
Nature! We've spent our species' life trying to get away from it. It's nasty!
Everything's trying to kill you. The moss invades the porch, roots are trying
to undermine any foundation you could ask for, snakes in the water, foxes all
over the place, and hungry bears amble out of the woods every week. You wind up
coated with filth twice a day. Pleasant enough to visit, sure, but there's no
going back. You can't go home again, as Thomas Wolfe titled his second book,
his follow-up to 'Look Homeward, Angel,' a lyrical novel of great beauty,
which, with the help of an editor‑"
"You can stop now," she said.
"I agree that nature's disgusting."
*
I dreamed I went back to work last night.
Everyone had been absent due to a plague
for something like twenty months; the building had been empty
during that whole period.
And, during that long period, everyone had
grown increasingly neurotic and insane. For those months, crazy had reigned,
with nights and days rent with screams and sirens. You could almost taste the
madness.
A terrible jostling was at the elevator,
for only one was operational. I took the stairs instead, nearly slipping on all
the vermin droppings, grime, and dust. The hall to my workplace was littered
with the plastic sheets of unfinished construction and watch-you-step signs.
I passed a meeting room; within, it sounded
like a ritual sacrifice was going on, with screams and sirens.
At my desk, I turned on my computer to read
the latest emails and gossip. According to what I read, the whole building was
in niches and gangs, cut-throat and vicious, much like a junior high school.
A woman passed my desk; I only saw her from
behind, but what a behind it was. I truly drooled.
And I thought: Isn't it strange that not a
thing has changed in all these months.
*
Jones met with his scientist friend at a
coffee shop one afternoon. The scientist had with him a heavy suitcase and a
small satchel. After salutations, Jones simply had to ask: "What's in the
suitcase?"
The scientist touched his nose wisely, and
said: "It is the sum total of human knowledge."
Jones asked: "What, written down or
something?"
"Yes indeed. All on single-sided
paper, printed in single spaces. Over ten billion words altogether."
"Why, that's amazing!"
The scientist opened his satchel and
produced a bundle of sheets, some three hundred in all. "This, on
single-sided paper, in single-spaced type, is the précis." The scientist
circled around to stand behind Jones to give him a brief tour.
As the scientist let Jones glimpse page
after page, though not allowing him to touch any, the scientist said:
"Here we have it all, everything we know; everything scientific we know
about the universe. From astronomy to zoology, everything is here. Tens of
thousands of years went into it."
Jones reached out to touch a sheet.
"What's on the other side of the pages?"
The scientist snatched away the whole sheaf
and screamed: "DON'T YOU DARE LOOK AT THE OTHER SIDES OF THE
PAGES!!!!!"
*
I was hanging around with my friend Joan,
in her junk shop called Ye Junke Shoppe, on a
Friday afternoon, after I'd had an appointment cancelled. We were talking about
old times, people we knew, and so on, when a middle-aged man came into the
place. We continued talking as he rummaged around, until finally he came up to
the counter with a small mirror in hand.
"Tell me," he said: "Who
owned this mirror?"
Joan said: "It was a good-looking
young guy, sold it to me on Monday."
The man gazed into the mirror. "A
young man's face gazed into this looking-glass. Why did he sell it? Surely, he
had dreams, ambitions, and so on. And yet, he sold his glass. I sense a tragedy
here. His face‑I feel like I can see it here‑was not a foot
distant. And still: the mirror has not broken." He paused. "How
much?"
Joan checked the tag. "It's three
dollars."
He pulled out three dollars, took the
mirror, and away he went.
I said to Joan: "Wow. I've never seen
anything like that before."
"Yeah," she replied. "He
sells me the mirror every Monday morning, and buys it back every Friday
afternoon."
*
A void walked into a pub; the pub was
called the Feisty Anchor; and I was there because I was what you might call a
regular.
The void was quite the stand-out; or maybe
cut-out should be the term; it was shaped like a man, but it was entirely
black, like a hole in the universe.
The void sat down at a table; half the
table could suddenly not be seen; this silhouette called: "Can I get some
service here?"
Maggie went over to the void and said:
"Sir?"; the void, unceremoniously to be sure, shouted: "A pint
of stout! And fish! And chips!"
We returned to the darts, occasionally
gawking; the pint glass floated, and was emptied, into who-knew-what; the fish
and chips followed the stout into the void.
I went over, finally, and said: "I
couldn't help but notice;" the void replied: "It was an error in
chemistry, dammit!"
"Don't tell me," I said; "You
were trying for invisibility, and this happened instead;" the void
replied: "Ay, goddammit! Now look at me! Or rather: don't!"
"What brought you to this sorry state,
what sin?" I asked; the void replied: "All I wanted was to see some
ladies naked!"
*
Psychiatry
Napoleon came into my consulting room.
Napoleon is of medium build, with brown hair. He often wears spectacles, and he
was wearing them that day. He sat down as if annoyed at the chair.
I started. "Well, Napoleon, how are
you doing today?"
Napoleon sighed, long and lonely. "I'm
not sure. Somehow, I just don't feel myself today."
"Why do you say that, Napoleon?"
Napoleon paused, then said: "I had a
dream that upset me. I haven't been able to shake it off."
"Would you like to tell me about it,
Napoleon?"
"Well, I was a child in the dream. In
a house that seemed pretty familiar to me. An ordinary house, like in those
suburb places. I called for servants, but no-one came. In fact, the place was
empty except for two adults, a man and a woman, who seemed to know me. It was
quite a disturbing dream!"
"Where do you think it came from,
Napoleon?"
"I really don't know. Was it someone
else's dream?"
"I haven't come across anything like
that in the relevant literature, Napoleon."
He leaned forward resolutely. "I
pulled a dream from someone else's head. Yes."
"It's certainly possible. I mean:
You're Napoleon."
*
We'll always have those two o'clock nights
which we hold all to ourselves and our thoughts.
We'll have those thoughts at single times
and at all times, in which we evaluate ruthlessly the things not done.
We'll see the future that's smaller than it
was at one o'clock; we'll think about our funerals, and about what to do with
our things.
We'll follow our thoughts as they enumerate
the wasted and lost time. It's impossible to keep track of it all. The regrets
grow petal by petal with no friction to prevent it from happening.
We'll evaluate our wasting bodies. I used
to be strong. I had much better digestion. Barring an accident, one organ or
another is going to kill me. Which one is it going to be?
We'll try to shake off these feelings, but
they'll not go away. The only cure is to get out of bed, to go drink a glass of
water.
We'll get back in bed, trying to go as
slowly as possible.
Organs will kill us, like with everyone.
Everyone loses time, and has regrets.
You can't take it with you.
Maybe tomorrow will miraculously be better.
A last look; it's three o'clock.
*
Reflections
on 2H6 & 3H6
1. Though they've been yoked together since
before the folio, I think there's no way these two plays were entirely written
solely by Shakespeare. 2H6 has some three or four self-contained chunks
of plot that are only tangentially related to the Wars of the Roses; 3H6
has none (though the mid-play scene with the father who has killed his son and
the son who has killed his father might qualify).
1.1 However, there is no other name signed
to these plays other than Shakespeare, so maybe they are entirely by Shakespeare.
There's no evidence otherwise.
1.1.1 Stylistic analysis tells us nothing,
since writers can imitate other writers. Maybe Shakespeare felt like writing
like Marlowe one day, and Jonson the next.
1.1.1.1 In attributing the authorship of
scenes, critics have often arbitrarily (and hilariously) attributed the good
stuff to Shakespeare. and the bad stuff to other hands; as if Shakespeare
couldn't write stink.
1.1.1.1.1 One entire line in 3H6‑I
forget which‑is verbatim from Marlowe. How did that get into
there? And which was written first? It's entirely unknown, and will never be
known.
1.1.1.1.1.1 I understand the Roses Wars
now.
1.1.1.1.1.1.1 Literary criticism is
entirely useless.
*
A
Pair of Shoes (1886)
Here we have something for you, if I may
presume so much. Open-top Persian slippers with a no-scuff rubber sole. Hermes
himself had a pair just like them. You may know him as Mercury.
Not to your liking? Running shoes? These
orange Converse are head-turners, aren't they? They're so good they got a six-month
warranty. A famous Fisherman had a pair. They're in the Vatican now.
How about elegance? Check out these high
heels. They're stabilized with gyroscopes in the heels, believe it or not. They
only come in red. I think you can see why. A peasant girl named Karen had to
chop off her feet to get away from them, she loved them so much.
Too fancy? How about these? You basic Hush
Puppies, always in brown. Very distinguished. Very elegant, Very comfortable.
Andy Warhol drew thousands of shoes early in his career. If it's good enough
for him, isn't it good enough for you?
Speaking of the arts, here's the
granddaddy. Black. Leather. Shoes. Made in Austria. Nothing skimped here, no
corners cut. This is the one. It's Shoe. I'm telling you, if Vincent Van Gogh
saw these, he'd have quit painting.
*
260. "Jab"
This word bothers me a lot. I know it's
partially used so as to not use the Dread Word "needle," but even so
I find it an ugly-sounding word. B is not a good ending to a word; scarab, tub,
car, job, ugly-sounding words. So instead of using the word "jab," I
propose we employ the word "fuck."
"Off to the clinic to get my
fuck." "Have you scheduled your fuck yet?" "24% of those
aged 55-65 have already had their fucks."
I'm sure you can sense the improvement.
Besides, if you think about it materially,
"jab" is inadequate. If you can get jabbed by an umbrella, there's no
substance transmitted. With the needle, the whole point is to transmit
material, subcutaneously. In this, a needle is much more like a fuck than a
jab. The evolutionary point of the fuck is to transmit material, which makes it
much more like, plus, the operator, in both cases, is a tube. (In fact,
"needle-dick" is a well-known insult.)
It's a strong case here, so help me
foreground it. Let's say you run into some anti-vaaxer
lunatic. Wouldn't it be appropriate to tell him or her to go get fucked?
*
Daniel Barenboim, having finished off
Banquo's speech, paused, with his poetic quill aloft. Something was disturbing
him. He looked out his London window at the people passing by. For the first
time in his life, he set aside his papers, got his hat, and joined the
populace, a full clock before time.
He stopped a moneylender, saying: "I
am a playwright. How can I be more popular?"
The moneylender said: "Bring your
drama into our homes!"
Barenboim envisioned a viewing system capable
of doing such a thing ... with projections of some sort.
He stopped a fishmonger. "Would you
want the actors full-sized in your home-viewing?"
The fishmonger said: "No need! In
theatre, you're so far away anyhow."
Barenboim thought of mirrors, and lenses,
that would split the images into many parts simultaneously.
Then he stopped a child. "What would you
want in your home theatre system?"
The child replied: "Swordfights and
other fights! Monsters and shipwrecks! Wizards and storms!"
Barenboim felt the system at the tips of
his fingers. Powerful lights would have to be involved. But how?
He returned to his room, where, before
continuing on the Scottish play, he set down several notes for his Tempest
folder.
*
"You turn on your computer. You're
doing something on it. Something entirely mundane. But still, you can hear it;
somewhere inside that box there's a rumbling and a grumbling: the sounds of
things happening. But wait: think about it: what's happening in there?
I'm telling you, there's something going on, and They know what they're doing,
though they don't want anyone to know. This is why they're pushing solid state
drives on us. With one of those, they'll have the ability to ramp up their
projects, and none of us will ever know exactly what they're doing in our
computers.
"Here's what's really going on in
there.
"There's a woman in there. She's a
cleaning lady, and her name is Phyllis. There's been a multiple murder in her
area. The police and detectives have left. They believe they've gathered all
the relevant information. Phyllis is left to clean up with a mop and pail. She
mops up all the blood and brains. Spick and span. In the next room, which was
not involved in the slaughter, she tidies up. There she finds a hank of hair
with some skin attached. Perhaps it's meaningful.
"That's what's going on in my
computer."
*
"Phyllis picks up the hunk of hair
with the skin that's attached to it. She quickly puts it down again, and goes
again out into the room of slaughter. She figures there's got to be some cops
still around, like guards of a crime scene or something of the kind. Out in the
lobby, she finds one. She explains to him what she found. The cop listens
quietly, then replies: We'll check it out immediately. I think you should
resume your duties in another part of the building. So, Phyllis goes away
uncertainly. To a floor above. She listens to activity below. Surely there's
something going on down there. Surely, they're investigating.
"This is what's happening in my computer.
There's a whole story going on in there. I don't know who the author is.
Perhaps it's some artificial intelligence at work, spinning a story from a
bunch of given parameters. I don't know the details. It's certainly not being
written in English, as given above. It's all clicks and clacks, binary clicks
and clacks. The stories are being exhausted. Every possible story, in some kind
of quantum hybrid machinery. Once it's got all the stories, who knows?
"It's not far-fetched."
