April 2012
Simonf's Seapunk * Poetry Journal
Mortals never learn from stories
How catastropher becomes;
How above the victor’s glories
In the trumpets and the drums
And the cry of millions “Master!”
Looms the shadow of disaster.
Every hour a man hath said:
“That at least is scotched and dead.”
Some one circumstance; “At last
That, and it effects, are past.”
Some one terror—subtle foe!
“I have laid that spectre low.”
They know not, learn not, cannot calculate
How subtly Fate
Weaves its fine mesh, perceiving how to wait;
Or how accumulate
The trifles that shall make it master yet
Of the strong soul that bade itself forget.
Ravel concerto in G Major
Ravel / Helene Grimaud / Vladimir Jurowski
Ravel concerto in G Major
Helene Grimaud on the black n’ whites
Conducted by Vladimir Jurowski
I’m not an articulate appreciator of orchestral compositions so I don’t quite know how to describe what I like about this one, but I want to try:
For me this piece is a metropolis of sound. You can hear the aristocratic, high-rise decadence and you can hear the off duty cab drivers take drags from their cigarettes. There’s such a plurality of musical themes… I suppose what one would expect is that they merge together in some neat way. I feel that’s achieved here in quite broad strokes. Returning to the metropolis, the subway never sees the street car but they both go up town and they both go down town. They even evaporate for a short while. Ghostly! The pianocraft moves deftly from rapid, exact accompaniment to remorseful, perhaps lethargic ‘solo’ bits. It expresses a kind of modern hope to my mind and all of that hope’s most sorrowful, resigned mirror elements. Well, who knows really. In this case I’m definitely trying too hard. I know not the words!
The Exoregulative Food Poem
- roll with the punches
- eat your lunches
- drink strong coffee
- consider yourself lucky
- yams factor in here somewhere
Space Love Reincarnation
Marvin Gaye
let’s go peace-lovin
and check out this new smoke
naaaaww, this thing i got
it ain’t classified as dope
smoke i got from venus
have had it all week
its getting old
come on and try this new thang with me baby
come on now baby
lets take off clean
get in this sin machine
“Space Love Reincarnation” by Marvin Gaye
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simonf
Breakfast with the Dodo 588
In this episode:
- GOOD MORNING!
- Dave and I talk about translations via Heyy Ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Tufail and Vocation of Man by Johann Gottlieb Fichte
- Songs from “Scream With Me” by David Pajo
EXCLUSIVE: Pierre Poutine is...
A lot of speculation has been going around about the identity of “Pierre Poutine”/”Pierre Jones” at what some might consider the heart of the Robocalls scandal; however, this is only one side, and certainly not the largest part of the overall investigation into wrongdoing by the Conservative Party of Canada during the 41st General Election.
This much is publicly known: Pierre Poutine had a business relationship with RackNine and 2call.ca of Alberta. In media interviews, RackNine owner Matt Meier claimed he able to trace the IP information supposedly momentarily unguarded to an address in Guelph; Mr. Meier confirmed this information with me in a subsequent email, also stating that he was unable to get any more information due to the information being protected behind a “veil.” Of course, by the time I had come into contact with Mr. Meier, I had already begun investigating and had found out the identity of Pierre Poutine. Whether or not there was a layer of protection when Mr. Meier backtracked him, I was able to trace this information to a location that matched information about a Conservative Party campaign staff member.
This staff member had a prior relationship with RackNine, a company that does not try to hide the fact that it openly supports Conservative Party and (small c) conservative operations. It has also been reported that the person behind Pierre Poutine was a self-claimed “cellphone expert”, and had more than enough technical expertise to set up a parallel operation to his existing legal business relationship, or to disguise his unethical and possibly illegal activities as a legitimate business venture. Whether or not RackNine just didn’t vet their new customer with more diligence than a pharmacist vets a customer before filling a prescription for Vicodin, or whether the information provided to Elections Canada wasn’t the full story (or accurate) isn’t for me to decide or investigate - that would be the job of the RCMP. I’m just saying that that particular connection and the information provided to Elections Canada doesn’t check out.
Another interesting fact about Pierre Poutine is that the day he stopped cooperating with Elections Canada and hired a prominent Conservative Party of Canada lawyer, is that his communications activity changed and it became a great deal harder to investigate him than it had been in the past. It’s clear that someone much smarter and someone who would know the exact trail investigators would be looking at gave him instructions on saving his, well, ass. A little too late, though.
According to Elections Canada’s expenditure report for the campaign of Marty Burke (Guelph), this person was paid a salary of $1,100 as a member of the staff during the campaign. It’s enough to make him a undeniable member of Mr. Burke’s campaign and a paid staffer for the Conservative Party of Canada. Whether or not he was paid any other amount of money by other people close to the party is unknown at this time. I have reached out to Pierre Poutine, with the only response being from a Conservative Party lawyer - the same lawyer who has been tasked with uncovering the identity of Pierre Poutine. Additionally, I’ve received confirmation from no less than one dozen confidential sources on his identity. Their information checks out and corroborates mine, thus I feel comfortable in revealing his identity publicly.
Pierre Poutine is Andrew Prescott.
For what it’s worth, his lawyer is directly connected to the Conservative Party, as well several other ridings in Ontario (at least).
What are The golden apples of the sun?
I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.
When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
- Yeats, “The Song of Wandering Aengus”
I perform literary analysis for a price (as a tutor) and this blog is more about free distribution of PDFs and MP3s, but because you asked directly I’ll give my little guess. I’m helped along by liking this poem a great deal.
I don’t know what one would definitively classify this “fire” in Aengus’ head as, but one might say it’s the burn of desire. Along those lines it might be more analogous to the low, combustive nature of the buddhist atman (or the flame) and its relationship with samsara (or desire). The flame then isn’t the material of desire but its inextinguishable precursor.
So the dude goes out and makes a fishing rod. The narrative follows that he catches a trout and prepares “the fire,” for what? My guess is cooking (but is it the fire in his head or some new, situational fire?). Suppose that Aengus is subsisting on the available material of his life, represented by the rod and the trout. I would say this trout is par-for-the-course. But the fish turns into a woman so ephemeral that she fades away immediately. This is also the first go at describing apples, so one might get the sense that an apple in this poem is being compared to the “glimmering” girl and her nature. I take it she’s the stuff of desire in its pure form; some kind of perfect, ideal hallucination of his.
Aengus is on a futile mission. He wants what is out of reach, and yet in a strange (maybe even tragic) way it actually does gives him sustenance. The vision feeds his will. Perhaps this is his self-aware declaration that he has chosen the cyclical path of the moon and the sun, passing through darkness and light always with a hand outstretched for the phantom fruit for which his carnal/mental flame burns.
All this reminds me of that famous Stirner quote:
“Because I cannot grasp the moon, is it therefore sacred to me, an Astarte? If I could only grasp you, I surely would, and, if I could only find a means to get up to you, you shall not frighten me!”
In other words, the pursuit of one’s deepest held desires is a futile gesture because the formative stage of desire depends on the untouchable nature of the object. It’s thrilling to want after things, though. I relate to the paradox, if that’s what it is.
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Here’s side 2 off some CREEDLE EP room mate asked me to rip from vinyl for him plus side 2 off TCHORT’s “live off the floor” album GOVERNMENT ISSUE ROCK n’ ROLL.
Written Encounters with Dokun Heeva-Bosi:
History of a Hunch’d Mystic; The Foolish Kahin; The Spindle-Wetter; The Dung-Weaver
Written by Borj Rhan Sheesh; but maybe it was Rabjah, the flying bard who was his teacher; or perhaps it was Bazell Abdoma Heeva-Bosi; some say the author of these tales was Ghonas Zaa II, the humble hand-salter, herself. Who knows?
all seasons dwindle down to fall
my whole life I ate roots
seasoned with peppercorns
now I will pepper these roots
A small night storm blows
Saying ‘falling is the essence of a flower’
Preceding those who hesitate
Yukio Mishima, jisei no ku (a death poem)
Mishima’s second failed to behead him properly after several attempts and eventually had to be replaced by a new second. Masakatsu Morita was the name of Mishima’s second. He performed seppuku himself that same day, though his death poem seems to have been lost along the shores of time.
587
simonf
Breakfast with the Dodo Ep 587
In this episode:
- THE DODO CRIES
- RARE DAVE INTERVIEW
- MUSIC
March 2012
NDP HIP HOP MUST STOP
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“Too Much To Ask” by Bad Religion
why do non-vegan people think i give a shit about hearing a list of foods they have eaten on a given day
“well i guess i had some sushi and that’s fish right but pretty sure i didn’t eat any chicken or pork since the last time i saw you”
ok thanks great congratulations
this is a hilarious behaviour, also good is ‘oh, well, i dont eat meat either basically—i guess i had ribs yesterday, but that was the first time since last week. you eat fish, right?’ this is frustrating because it tells me the person is competitive and kind of defensive, which means that even if they get competitive about promoting veganism in their own diet, it wont stick because the thought wasnt ‘meat is murder’ but rather ‘im gonna murder this chick in the snobbery race i think shes inviting me to’.
anyway i have some more positive theories about the mindset of the person suggested to me by your quote:
-this person knows nonvegan consumption hurts you and wants you to know you’re in their thoughts (this is interesting; its not who theyre eating that theyre thinking about, its who they know)
-this person actually caught the vegan bug from you and is doing a check-in with their fav vegan, even tho theyre still transitioning (probs slowly and sort of inanely, but with love)
morning!In my pessimism my first thought is usually that they’re looking for a ‘pass’ (aka exoneration) from a vegan friend. Our presence makes people guilty, because it reminds them that they should and could give more of a damn. Suddenly we’re like the Catholic priest in a town full of sinners and boy do they want to confess so they can feel more at ease with their own conscience.
Another pessimistic thought I have is that they think of you as ‘the person who over-thinks their food,’ and so they assume you want to talk about food, fullstop, and totally don’t get WHY you think about ‘food’ so much.
If I say a lot of nonvegans act in guilty or ignorant ways, it’s only because I’ve been there myself and have at some time or another hit every spot on the defensive omnivore bingo card, I’m sure.
I’ll be keeping c-stoned’s thoughts in brain.
The non-vegan’s statement carries within it the conversation about animal suffering via consciousness (eating a fish might be better than eating a chicken, might be better than eating a pig because of brain complexity). What desperate little most of us know about neurology allows for an awkward model wherein things with little or no brains are potentially more on-the-table than things with big wrinkly ones. The s/c hierarchy prefers the consumption of plants, but we should all ponder and research over the decentralized ganglia of oysters and beyond.
Anyway, I find that the resulting conversations that branch from this concept welcoming, because it side-steps the nastier business (and the greater logical crime) of the “good life” hierarchy (ethical farming/husbandry), which leads us to consume animals based on the “good life” we gave them (or in the case of hunting, entirely “free” lives). In fact, conversations about complexity and consciousness essentially define my veganism. Go deep with these people! One might ultimately find common ground in that mutual attractor of respect for the mind-cups of the world-soul.
“I cannot understand anti-abortion arguments that centre on the sanctity of life. As a species, we’ve fairly comprehensively demonstrated that we don’t believe in the sanctity of life. The shrugging acceptance of war, famine, epidemic, pain and lifelong, grinding poverty show us that, whatever we tell ourselves, we’ve made only the most feeble of efforts to really treat human life as sacred.”
—
Caitlin Moran
“i think we demonstrate both with war and prolife attitudes that we care about the self, and who we see as the self. prolifers are infants who dont think about the mother. combatants are infants, who dont care about the other.” (via curioustoned)
SYNERGETICS: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking →
rwgrayprojects.com
By R. Buckminster Fuller
Dirty Love
Frank Zappa
like a pink donation
to the dragon
in your dreams
- “Dirty Love”
- “200 Years Old”
- “The Deathless Horsie”
“The hipster-bebop junkies never showed at 103rd Street. The 103rd Street boys were all oldtimers-thin, sallow faces; bitter, twisted mouths; stiff-fingered, stylized gestures. (There is a junk gesture that marks the junkie like a limp wrist marks a fag: the hand swings out from the elbow stiff-fingered, palm up.) They looked alike somehow. They all looked like junk.”
—
Babies haven’t any hair;
Old men’s heads are just as bare;-
Between the cradle and the grave
Lies a haircut and a shave.
Hoffenstein
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