In a meeting with several reporters this afternoon, House Minority Leader John Boehner outlined the top three measures he’d pursue if he becomes Speaker of the House next Congress to create new jobs. But, those who thought he’d outline specific programs and how they would create jobs were disappointed with a familiar litany of wish-list items: repeal health care reform, eschew climate legislation, and renew the Bush tax cuts.
In other words, repeal a program that largely hasn’t yet taken effect; prevent new legislation that is also not in effect; and keep a current tax structure in place. Step four: profit. Or jobs.
via.
via Wikileaks — The War Logs: NYTimes/The Guardian/Der Spiegel.
Creative Writing, Episode 1 - “Scraps”. Written and directed by Jeremy Brothers.
I remember this scene from my undergraduate degree.
Big Joe Williams — Throw A Boogie Woogie.
Mr. Plovák is a Landlord With No Address.
After the Czech Republic decided upon, built, and launched a Floating City (named Ovanmolnen but colloquially called, “The Floating City”), residents had noticed that birds kept poking their heads up above the edges (air-gophers, was the nickname they were given) — as if the creatures had climbed a book ladder and stumbled upon a missing shelf. Clev and Alexandr had noticed this and asked engineers to attach of net of swinging fish in case the metropolis floated out to empty waters.
Alexandr banged his cane (“Look at me!” he’d say. “Walking with an Abel!”) and shouted at the glass floor and then the open window in the ceiling.
“Ghosts of earth-bound myths! Quietly disappointed aliens, wishing we’d move faster! Magnificently oblivious 747’s! Hello! This is the future calling! What have you got for us — space archeologists who reconstruct past planets and stars from microwave light fossils in their own undisturbed section of the universe, rewinding those strands of light like a tape burped out of a car? What have you got?”
They made their way through the city — the brick walls filled with painted white slogans slowly breaking apart (“HOOD MILK — IT FITS IN BUILDINGS”), a janitor who coughed when they had stopped to chat and blocked his way (“There,” said Clev as they moved. “Now you can sweep with impunity”), the rooftops walking back and forth between Brooklyn’s why-should-we-be-anywhere-else? sheen and a Greek Island’s walkability and brightness of color, the football pitch in the middle of the lake, leading to some spectacular dives by players trying to keep the ball in before it touched the water as sweepers stood at the edge and watched on cheerily, the 18th-century houses positioned inches from the ‘road’ and the warping brick sidewalks — and continued to talk, Alexandr taking the lead.
“I think the New Global Novel will be dull, incredibly dull.”
Clev balked.
“What makes you say that?”
“From the moment an author perceives his ultimate audience as international rather than national, the nature of his writing is bound to change. In particular one notes a tendency to remove obstacles to international comprehension.”
“I think that’s wrong. Incredibly wrong. I think we’re opening up the chance for a Global Whitmanism. If there’s something just aesthetically grand about taking the Red Line from Portland’s airport into downtown proper, if we want to talk about Nob Hill, the floating ice top of whatever-it-is overlooking the rest of the city, the coyote they spotted huddled away on the light rail one time, those weird floating cube Sunrose condos, the fact that the Timbers are going to be returning with a brand new stadium, the breweries and the roses (and is there a counter-top design where — during the Rose Festival — they fill empty glasses with roses?), the breakfast spots there, you go after it, you try and do it right — and eventually, it’s a question of whether you can nail the spirit of the place. And that’s the real challenge.
“Which isn’t to say that if we had a giant head of Walt Whitman out there in space, he wouldn’t be able to bite down through the ocean waves and into the core of the planet and swallow us whole. I imagine that there will be a decent counterpoint to all this. Just — private things. The map is always open to exploration. Open up any Atlas and I’ll bet you see an “Open 24 Hours” sign glowing somewhere. Even if this is all for one person, something scribbled in one notebook, and left on someone’s porch and in someone’s yard.
“Because I think one idea that might be missing when someone talks about the fact that the internet will remember everything is that we have to be there for that to happen. If I don’t log on and I need to remember something that the internet might help me with, what do I do? I try and do something, and if I can’t, I move on. Eventually, I forget. And — and this might the crucial thing — no sponge is perfect. And nothing is settled. Even mountains get bored.”
Two beautiful women passed. They were whispering, looking over at the loudly chattering two.
“Mmm. Look at that jailbait!”
“Hey! Be nice!”
“What? I’m saying he’s cute!”
Then, loud enough to be overheard, but seemingly aimed at no one in particular, Clev said, “Would you look at that! My mouth sore somehow ended up inside my nose!”
Alexandr took the moment that created to flip through some of the drawings they had received —
— and found that he was glad the department and the government had decided upon the one they did, this amphitheater design. There was one problem: people had brought their cars. In a floating city with the parabola of experience so tight, people had brought along something to squeeze the parabola even further.
He wasn’t entirely unsympathetic: he remembered how excited everyone was when they first learned how to drive, the ever-widening mouth of the radio containing Duke and Coleman, that kid from Sweden or that brilliant woman from Calgary, John Steinbeck and his dog going over their manuscript for Travels with Charley together, the dog repeatedly insisting on using words like “flosculous” (relating to flowers, savoring flowers) and “fulgurate” (to flash or dart like lightning), muttering “Whatever you say Rhett Butler” when he didn’t get his way; how newspapers would tatter and threaten to turn under the weight of a Red Sox cap — as ubiquitous as yesterday’s fedora at North and Kenmore station these days — weighted down with a wallet, briefcase, or book underneath the open window; and this land — the land which he had traveled upon under the guise of midnight buses and gentle waves of late night blues arcing its way back through time to ill-tempered claviers seeking the looseness of a sudden breakaway push on the back of a horse to go crashing through the woods in the Berkshires and tumble off the beast as it took a screeching halt at the edge of San Francisco Bay — what to make of it? (Had anyone tried to pull a “Pac Man,” for instance? Run into Long Beach and come up in Revere?)
But there were too many cars, and there was too little space. So when he and Clev had a free evening, they pushed them over the edge into the ocean around Cuba. One after the other. Dodge Woody. Toyota Seabiscuit. They figured that would be the end of it.
Often Clev looked at the sea. He would walk along the outdoor rails and the indoor windows, push onto the balls of his feet, and look at the sea shifting underneath. The sea, a parallel brother running alongside their over-civlized boat.
What was that quote from Richard Serra?
And I’m more interested in the ocean as a way of thinking about space than I am about urbanness. I’m interested in the largeness of the ocean, I’m interested in the Aurora Borealic feeling of the ocean. I’m interested in the sensibility of the ocean, and I’m interested in ships.
I will not live in Manhattan, I will live in the Borealis. This rootless forest fire of neon floating above the planet like a runaway kite from a faraway beach. These ripcords of smoke. The screenwriter staring up at the thing from a campsite in Alaska and typing out, “Fade to, fade to, fade to” throughout the course of the night. To live in the Borealis — and, by metaphoric bounce-back, the ocean — would mean a stage of action more multi-dimensional than the American Midwest. One would just steadily grow in this gelatinous cathedral.
Clev’s phoned beeped. The Floating City Governing Council had disabled a feature installed on the phones of everyone on board called ‘Textas,’ where one received texts from the entire state of Texas as soon as they had happened. For his phone, the program still worked. He grumbled and put it away.
The two of them had arrived in their shared office overlooking the expanse of the city. Clev sat down and took out a piece of paper.
“What are you doing?” Alexandr asked.
“I’m writing a book.”
“Why?”
“Well, look at us. We’re floating over the planet. I think that gives me license to write a global novel.”
“What’s it on, then?”
Clev peered over his desk to one of the windows in the floor of the city.
“Let’s say … is that China? Let’s say China. And if it’s China, let’s have it be about a guy who works in a factory in the morning, plants trees in the afternoon, does jazz on a boat in the evenings, and helps out a bit with the tea leaves at night.”
“That’s a lot for someone to do.”
“There’s a lot going on in China. I mean, there are company-cities down there of nearly half a million people. That’s Boston. Or Portland. Though, here, let me try this.”
Bill Murray sloshes out to the center of a stage filled with snow.
Bill Murray: I’m convinced I can roll this penny down the entire length of Chile. We’ll start in the snows of the volcano and hope that we can build up enough momentum to last us the entire length of the journey, and it’ll be a lot of fun, you know?
Now, I know this is a little hasty, and I don’t want to rush you or anything, but I just want to say — I just want to get it out of the way right off the bat: “Why Chile? Why a penny? And why you, enduringly handsome Bill Murray? Shouldn’t you be doing some sort of Ghostbusters something or other?”
Well, yeah, but this is a lot more fun. I don’t even know if I can do it. I’m thinking I’ll find a good, solid patch of ice, and see how long that takes me. This region didn’t even originally belong to Chile, I think, though I can see why they’d want it: I mean, just look at those alpacas. Those are some beautiful alpacas. I’d love to take one of those home to Chicago and ride around Millenium Mile for a night or two.
And the crash of the ocean. Listen to that. Like friggin’ Poseidon decided to join an orchestra just for the cymbals, he only managed to get one, and now just spends his days banging it up against the land from beneath the waves. That’s nice. I like that.
Oh! Here’s a spot!
He bends down to the ice and sets up his penny for a roll. Lights down. Lights up on a desert in Tarapaca. Chile’s flag waves in the distance. Bill is fanning his mouth with his hand in the dry heat. A group of Aymara Indians pass, all wearing bowler hats.
Bill Murray: I — you’re not bankers, are you?
Aymara Indian: No. La historia cuenta que en algún momento alrededor de 1920, un cargamento de sombreros hongos fueron enviados a Bolivia a través de alguna ruta complicada por el Perú para que pudieran llegar a los europeos que trabajan en los ferrocarriles. Pero resulta que los sombreros eran demasiado pequeños para ellos, y se distribuyeron entre los lugareños. Y los han guardado.
Bill Murray: I’m sorry, I don’t speak Spanish.
Aymara Indian: Bueno, no tienes la suerte que estamos tan talentoso como estamos?
Lights down. Lights up in Antofagasta. A huaso — a cowboy, wearing a chupulla and a scratchy red and orange wool poncho — is in the middle of interrogating Bill, who cuts the horseman off as the lights go up.
Bill Murray: Alright, listen, Sancho —
Tucapel: Tucapel.
Clev put the pen down to scratch his chin. Murray and Tucapel stared at the giant pen laid across the sky.
Crowd: (Goes wild.)
Thom Yorke: Thank you very much, everyone. This is a song called “True Love Waits.”
Crowd: (Goes wild.)
Thom Yorke: Do you mind if I sing along?
12/10/1873
Madame,
Water sliding beneath the pigeons’ feet like an overeager butler, you say? Though, wait, you didn’t say it, I did. Sorry. Uh oh. Only so much space left on the postca —
Sincerely,
George Arkland.
Postscript. Come to think of it, I could have just use the space where I write my name for —
The Pulp Sonnets and Other Poems:
1. Michiko Kakutani is Right Behind You.
2. Pun Poem.
3. A Sonnet for Simon.
4. Write a Poem.
5. What Do I Do With You?
6. The Pulp Sonnets.
I’d love to see a publishing press focus on made-for-internet books (of which, ahem) and facsimiles of doodle-filled, edit-ridden notebooks simultaneously — not collage novels, necessarily (though I’m curious to see how someone making one would hew the line between a collage novel and a graphic novel), but unmistakably “personal objects,” rough, zine-styled pieces of work that would look at the chance of being bent in the back-jean pocket with glee.
And on a related bent — here’s a story from last year about the online Chinese literary scene. A Twitter novel isn’t the only thing they’re doing.
