Thirteen Letters

Oh, the possibilities ...

2009-12-14T08:43:00.000-08:00

Tea Partiers Plan Capitol "Die In" | Talking Points Memo: "The intention is to go inside the Senate offices and hallways, and play out the role of patients waiting for treatment in government controlled medical facilities. As the day goes on some of us will pretend to die from our untreated illnesses and collapse on the floor."

Zombie walk waiting to happen. Just saying.

Friday

2009-12-04T14:01:00.001-08:00

Sinus pressure is making it hard to focus, but I've gotten my head back together and am resuming forward motion. Culling of the clutter has begun in earnest.

"... skeezily chaste ..."

2009-11-23T07:53:00.000-08:00

The Christian Side-Hug: “Front Hugs Be Too Sinful” - The Sexist - Washington City Paper: "The Christian Side-Hug strikes me as almost skeezily chaste—I’d much rather have a brief normal embrace with a stranger than a hip-tap from a person who I know sexualizes even the most mundane forms of human contact.

O.o

Them's Fighting Words

2009-11-18T13:51:00.000-08:00

Will Cadbury be betrayed with a Hershey's Kiss? | Life and style | guardian.co.uk: "For those of you fortunate never to have these confections so beloved of American kids, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups look like small chocolate quiches. The filling has a an abidingly awful flavour that only someone brought up entirely on a diet of bubblegum and Dr Pepper's could love. It combines nuttiness with a greasy, cloyingly adhesive quality in a way that calls to mind squirrel vomit."

Starship economics

2009-11-12T10:40:00.000-08:00

Charlie's Diary: Designing society for posterity: "Economic libertarianism -- in the contemporary American sense -- aboard a generation ship would be just plain suicidal. It's dog-eat-dog capitalism with the brakes off; I'm of the opinion that libertarian ideology is based on a falacious theory of mind, and would in practice degenerate rapidly into a rather nasty form of industrial feudalism. The end point of which is monarchism, and bloody handed revolution. Not the kind of metastable multiple-attractor society I have in mind at all ...!"

From the Department of Simple Blessings

2009-11-10T10:59:00.000-08:00

I'm thankful for the simple act of being able to do chores without the "aid" of a manic episode. Consistent energy is a blessing.

Went home for lunch and have gotten the kitchen 85 percent done. Still have to put away some dry goods, sort through a last box of doodads, and hang a couple pictures. Am going to have to invite some peeps over for hot pumpkin bread once I'm done.

Seeing

2009-11-10T09:49:00.000-08:00

Letters of Note: Your own private book event: "Well, tell your dead grandpa the old German (Goethe) saying: 'The longer you look, the more stars you see...' I prefer that to going crazy." --Chuck Palahniuk

Conservatism?

2009-11-03T05:13:00.000-08:00

Eunomia: "The point here is not to rehearse all the reasons why hawkish, nationalist and hegemonist views are antithetical to a conservative disposition and damaging to all of the things conservatives claim to want to preserve, true as these claims are, but to recognize that there is no persuading such people when many of the fundamental assumptions they hold are diametrically opposed to ours and utterly wrong. There no longer seems any value in making the effort to persuade them."

Kiss my Halloween-loving arse

2009-10-29T12:28:00.000-07:00

The Danger of Celebrating Halloween: Spiritual Life in God: "Lucifer is a part of the demonic godhead. Remember, everything God has, the devil has a counterfeit. Halloween is a counterfeit holy day that is dedicated to celebrating the demonic trinity of : the Luciferian Spirit (the false father); the Antichrist Spirit (the false holy spirit); and the Spirit of Belial (the false son)."

I wonder where the hell this woman's "theology" comes from?

".. molten-faced moon ..."

2009-10-29T11:53:00.000-07:00

Charlie's Diary: How habitable is the Earth?: "But don't get the idea that late Hadean Earth was a fun place to be. For one thing: that great big moon of ours didn't condense from a debris cloud at its current orbital distance. Tidal dragging is widening the lunar orbit by about 3.8 metres per century; it's now orbits roughly twice as far out as it did when it formed. Which in turn means that the young Earth spun on its axis far faster than it does today, and the tides the newborn molten-faced moon raised during the Hadean aeon would have been something to behold (preferably from a very high altitude)."

Veddy Interesting

2009-10-29T10:15:00.000-07:00

Werner Herzog's Rogue Film School: "Related, but more practical subjects, will be the art of lockpicking. Traveling on foot. The exhilaration of being shot at unsuccessfully. The athletic side of filmmaking. The creation of your own shooting permits. The neutralization of bureaucracy. Guerrilla tactics. Self reliance."

"... the time for wedgies is at an end."

2009-10-29T09:11:00.000-07:00

John Hodgman: A conversation with a famous writer and minor television personality - Kansas City News - Plog: "Jockdom is very noble. It's not deliberative. It's certainly the best way to win wars. It's the best way to motivate teams of people to fulfill a goal -- not just war, but getting things done. The most important way to motivate a factory floor. But as you know, we're not as much of a manufacturing society as we were before. China and other big industrial nations are rewarding their nerds and technicians rather than creating a culture that makes fun of them -- it would be wise for us to embrace the book-smart as much as our culture has traditionally embraced the street-smart, the jock-smart. I'm not saying nerds must have their revenge; I'm just saying the time for wedgies is at an end."

Phew!

2009-10-27T18:57:00.000-07:00

The order by which people are admitted to heaven // Notre Dame Magazine // University of Notre Dame: "To be admitted under the special Mother of the Lord provision (“the back door”): Unitarians, Pete Maravich, exotic dancers, journalists (see Appendix D)."

Barking Foxes

2009-10-27T12:44:00.000-07:00

What Obama’s Doing With Fox News: "What ought to make conservatives pissed off at Obama is not that he’s taking a page out of their playbook, but that he’s improved upon it. Conservatives moaned about liberal bias in the press to carve out an alternative ideological media under the guise of 'balance,' but never managed to marginalize the 'liberal media' in any significant way; it was just too damn big."

Adventures in Federalism

2009-10-27T12:09:00.000-07:00

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan: "It's weird, isn't it, that federalism is becoming an advantage for reform - marriage equality, ending the marijuana prohibition, the public option. But it always was. Conservatism, as I understand it, is not about resisting all change or defending an ideological purity. It's about the least worst, practically relevant solution to emerging problems."

Who wrote that Masked Letter?

2009-10-27T11:39:00.000-07:00

Letters of Note: The Masked Letter: "The letter reads perfectly well on its own, however only when you place a mask over the paper does the true meaning appear."

Zeitgeist

2009-10-26T19:14:00.001-07:00

Zeitgeist, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.

For a few glorious days, Amanda was home. We cooked and hiked and watched Doctor Who and Watchmen. I was as pleased as punch to spend her birthday with her. It was lovely sharing.

October weekend

2009-10-20T17:33:00.001-07:00

promises, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.

Saviolo on facing a left-handed opponent

2009-10-06T10:38:00.000-07:00

Vincentio Saviolo His Practise: "V. When you goe to charge a lefte handed man in your warde, looke first in what ward he lyeth, and how hee holdeth his weapons, answering him in the same forme: and touching your demaund, to knowe wherfore I strike not at the Dagger side, I will tell you: when I finde him in this ward carrying his lefte foot formost, if I should make at his Dagger side and strike firste, I put my selfe in danger to hurt my self, because in thrusting I runne upon the pointe of my enemie: but making at his lefte side, I am out of danger of his pointe, whereof making to his Dagger side I am in perill: for if you strike firste and the lefte handed man have a good Dagger, and be quicke with his sworde, he will alwaies put you in hazard of an imbroccata: and in truth there are fewe lefte handes which use stoccataes, but for the most part imbroccataes."

Zingers

2009-10-03T20:04:00.000-07:00

Morgenbesserisms � London Review Blog:

"In some languages,’ Austin observed, ‘a double negative yields an affirmative. In others, a double negative yields a more emphatic negative. It is curious, though, that in no language known to me, whether natural or artificial, does a double affirmative yield a negative.’ At which point Morgenbesser piped up from the back of the audience: ‘Yeah, yeah.’"

Creekward

2009-10-03T15:04:00.000-07:00

Couple beers and cornpone in a tote, trotting downhill.

Though a mown corridor, ragweed-walled and yarrow, well-poisoned with ivy.

Past the persimmon and the osage orange, fruit un-bletted, littering grass.

Never did find elderberries this year, though I marked the white froth

of blossoms, lost amid the sumac. Avoiding beggar lice, I hope --

but stop to pick weed jism from jeans. Autumn is the hopeful season,

laying down seed against the night.

Soon, the fallen tree, still rooted and green, railroad tie propped against,

spanning the creek. No company but the barbed wire and the cries of birds

that I never learned.

Bitter beer --just enough to blunt the mad ache of my moments, for a span,

divested of family and fatherhood, the others scattered to see uncle and cousins,

mamaw in her nursing home.

And, cowardly, I'm here, thinking of St. John of the Cross and wondering,

when the dawn?

Impatiently crossing the creek into greenness, scuffing the dry bed,

looking for rocks, to my right water flowing through a years-new

bed. Time digs new channels, whatever your wish. Find something

many-chambered, pock like slag or limestone. Will pour vinegar on it,

when I get back to the house to see.

Never learned the names of this bracken -- was late to the lore of the green

and growing. White aphids float, skeeters whine, but I no more feel them

than the eyes of god.

Papaws surrounding me, fruit gone. Was too late this year for more than a couple,

left rotting in the fridge. Carrion flies pollinate them, darkly amusing

to ponder.

Up-channel, crossing the cattle-marred flow, remembering prouder waters and

clear. Barriers of branches and barbed wire, the sound of the passing harsh

against dessicated leaves, dryly rotting.

Railroad rightward, across the fence and through the new growth. They poison

the lushness, some years. Used to find passiflora incarnata there, groundcherries

further up the line.

Am looking at the middens now. There is an abrupt threshold of earth to sinister,

leprous with glass and porcelain, old tin. Everything flows, Heraclitus might say,

refuse swimming through earth. Bending to something white and jagged, I pour

an involuntary libation to the small gods of this liminal place.

There is no lesson here, no stillness. I crave what I have always craved,

and it not here.

black

2009-10-03T12:23:00.001-07:00

black, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.

Skull

2009-10-03T10:32:00.001-07:00

Skull, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.

OLD Adam, the carrion crow,
The old crow of Cairo;
He sat in the shower, and let it flow
Under his tail and over his crest;
And through every feather
Leaked the wet weather;
And the bough swung under his nest;
For his beak it was heavy with marrow.
Is that the wind dying? O no;
It's only two devils, that blow
Through a murderer's bones, to and fro,
In the ghosts' moonshine.
Ho! Eve, my gray carrion wife,
When we have supped on kings' marrow,
Where shall we drink and make merry our life?
Our nest is queen Cleopatra's skull,
'Tis cloven and cracked,
And battered and hacked,
But with tears of blue eyes it is full:
Let us drink then, my raven of Cairo.
Is that the wind dying? O no;
It's only two devils, that blow
Through a murderer's bones, to and fro,
In the ghosts' moonshine.

--Thomas Lovell Beddoes

hand

2009-10-03T08:34:00.001-07:00

hand, originally uploaded by Thirteen Letters Photography.

A poem for October

2009-10-03T08:09:00.000-07:00

Going down the strange lanes of hell, more and more intensely alone,
The fibres of the heart parting one after the other
And yet the soul continuing, naked-footed, even more vividly embodied
Like a flame blown whiter and whiter
In a deeper and deeper darkness
Ever more exquisite, distilled in separation.

So, in the strange retorts of medlars and sorb-apples
The distilled essence of hell.
The exquisite odour of leave-taking.
Jamque vale!
Orpheus, and the winding, leaf-clogged, silent lanes of hell.

--Medlars and Sorb-Apples, D.H. Lawrence.