Touch my monkey.
Monkey see, monkey do.
What you monkey, all you monkey.
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.
More giddy in my desires than a monkey.
Lecherous as a monkey, and the whores called him mandrake.
The strain of man's bred out into baboon and monkey.
And there I saw a monkey. Just like me.
20031021
20030924
Here you are. Sitting on my couch.
Dead after all these long years. Watch
as your finger falls off. Black blood rolls gently
from your ear joining the pool under your ass.
This is a black mass and your attendance is required.
The reliquary is obvious, invisible and violet. The tendonitis
is metaphysical and transubstantial. Life is obscene and
criminal. You should never die sitting upright
damn it light me with your smile. But there you are.
You should never have to die on a snowy winter's eve
slammed into a tree with a steering column up your throat.
But there you are taking the low road. Inevitable.
Superliminal yet invisible. Sitting on the couch. Dead.
You should never die because someone told you
to skip the medication. But there you are. You
should never die because the gun is there and nothing is
fair. But there you are. Be here now
my ass. This is the bosonic joist. The ultimate
heist. We were never here.
P.S. No one ever listened.
Dead after all these long years. Watch
as your finger falls off. Black blood rolls gently
from your ear joining the pool under your ass.
This is a black mass and your attendance is required.
The reliquary is obvious, invisible and violet. The tendonitis
is metaphysical and transubstantial. Life is obscene and
criminal. You should never die sitting upright
damn it light me with your smile. But there you are.
You should never have to die on a snowy winter's eve
slammed into a tree with a steering column up your throat.
But there you are taking the low road. Inevitable.
Superliminal yet invisible. Sitting on the couch. Dead.
You should never die because someone told you
to skip the medication. But there you are. You
should never die because the gun is there and nothing is
fair. But there you are. Be here now
my ass. This is the bosonic joist. The ultimate
heist. We were never here.
P.S. No one ever listened.
Dis-missive
Dear Poet:
You are a complete fuckwadded blog-sucking idiot.
Narcissistic subgenius.
How about pus-stained brillo swab?
Does that one fit?
Now do you understand?
Oh, right.
Poets like you.
But guess what?
Poetry hates you.
When poetry comes to town, it sees you and turns the other way.
And here's my take on poetic seduction:
Fuck you.
Copyright this, my pit bull. Bullshit.
Just in case you missed that: fuck you.
Abusive? Abusive of what? Your overinflated ego? Your collection of progressive march pins? The skid mark you left behind in the public facilities? The minorities who "happen to" be considered by you as your friends when you need a trophy of your forward-thinkingness? Your embracing of meaningless "muscular language" or formal tropes full of gas?
Write something good.
Or get off the pot.
Forget yourself and poetry will follow.
Lester
Dear Poet:
You are a complete fuckwadded blog-sucking idiot.
Narcissistic subgenius.
How about pus-stained brillo swab?
Does that one fit?
Now do you understand?
Oh, right.
Poets like you.
But guess what?
Poetry hates you.
When poetry comes to town, it sees you and turns the other way.
And here's my take on poetic seduction:
Fuck you.
Copyright this, my pit bull. Bullshit.
Just in case you missed that: fuck you.
Abusive? Abusive of what? Your overinflated ego? Your collection of progressive march pins? The skid mark you left behind in the public facilities? The minorities who "happen to" be considered by you as your friends when you need a trophy of your forward-thinkingness? Your embracing of meaningless "muscular language" or formal tropes full of gas?
Write something good.
Or get off the pot.
Forget yourself and poetry will follow.
Lester
20030820
more? Kasey Mohammad, K. Silem Mohammad, Kasey Mohammad and Patrick Herron, from 1/19-1/23 2002
OLD NORSE FOR BEGINNERS
a play in one act
by K. Silem Mohammad
KENT JOHNSON: Old Norse is the name we give to the language which the
Vikings spoke.
ELIOT WEINBERGER: Old Norse is classical North Germanic language used from
roughly 1150 to 1350. Its predecessor is Old Scandinavian....
KJ: Old Norse is the language spoken and written by the inhabitants of
Scandinavia around 1000 AD and earlier. The modern Nordic languages of
Swedish, Danish ... are from the 12th cent.
CANDICE WARD: Old Norse is also noteworthy as the language of the Eddas and
sagas (see Old Norse literature; Icelandic literature ... The vocabulary of
Old Norse is known scarcely from runic incriptions, but its descendant the
Icelandic language with its sagas demonstrates how rich....
EW: Old Norse is the term generally used in English to refer to the
language and literature preserved in manuscripts written in Iceland and
Norway during the....
KJ: It is not surprising that some words came into the Irish language from
Old Norse.
CW: Since Old Norse is a dead language, there is no need (according to the
folks who write dictionaries) for an English-to-Old-Norse dictionary.
EW: Old Norse is a collective term for the earliest North Germanic literary
languages, Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Old Danish, and Old Swedish. In
Linguistics 315....
KJ: Icelandic is WRONG. Old Swedish is WRONG. Old Norse is RIGHT.
Picture of a streetsign in York, England. The streetname is Old Norse and
means Swinestreet....
EW: The Narwhal (meaning "corpse whale" in Old Norse) is a rarely seen
Arctic whale. This social whale is known for the VERY long tooth that males
have. Very....
KJ: Old-Norse is obligatory on the Grunnfag and Mellomfag niveu, available
at the hovedfag niveu....
CW: The word tiwaz, tyr in Old Norse, is the exact cognate to Sanskrit
dayus, Greek Zeus and Latin Jupiter. A threefold mystery....
KJ: The word in Old Norse is "igdur"--variously translated as "tits" or
"nuthatches." In fact, it probably sounds to you like a good career
opportunity.
EW: About Old Norse. Old Norse is the language spoken and written in
Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and the colonies of the....
KJ: Horses are how people got around back then, and Raidho (known as Rad in
Anglo-Saxon and Reid in Old Norse) is the rune of travel!
CW: The only change since Old Norse is that the r-ending has become an
ur-ending.
KJ: Old Norse is only spoken by a few, and then only poorly....
EW: ... spoken by so few. Very few people outside Iceland learn Icelandic,
although Old Icelandic is taught at a number of universities abroad, largely
because of our....
CW: Here there is space to mention the three centres where Old Icelandic is
taught, but there are eight others throughout Australia where there have
been or are....
EW: Old Icelandic is taught at the University of Oregon by the Department
of Germanic Languages and Literatures. WWW Links....
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Old Norse is one of my courses (for all the reasons you
mentioned in your Old Norse page). You don't mention....
EW: Old Norse is the synthetic medieval language which we find in the
manuscripts....
KSM: No previous knowledge of Old Norse is required. It will be examined
by means of one three-hour paper.
EW: In the United States he rendered us the most treasured compliment when
he said: "Old Norse is Crown" but as many of you know, Old Norse is in fact
Icelandic....
KSM: No previous knowledge of Old Norse is required. The module will focus
particularly on the Icelandic (which will be helpful to readers whose only
experience of Old Norse is in Icelandic)....
CW: Old Norse and Old Icelandic. Old Norse is a member of the Germanic
family of languages which includes English, German and Dutch....
EW: THE place to look when you are interested in Old Norse is (of course)
EV Gordon's _An Introduction to Old Norse_ (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
CW: Old Norse is a collective term for the earliest North Germanic literary
languages, Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Old Danish, and Old Swedish.
Of....
EW: Most appreciatively, the cost of the book is very reasonable; a similar
book on learning Old Norse is almost double the cost of this book.
KJ: Old Norse is also noteworthy as the language of the Eddas and sagas
(see Old Norse literature; Icelandic literature). See Eric....
EW: And the original Old Norse is transcribed next to the English
translation as well. The Cadillac of all translations ...
CW: Old Norse is analyzed within the framework of Government and Binding
(GB) and functional grammar. The linguistic sources are....
EW: Old Norse is one of the three early branches of the Germanic languages;
Icelandic is a descendant of West Norse....
KSM: A course in Old Norse is also offered....
KJ: Old Norse is still the language used for the Icelandic sagas. You may
consider the Scandinavian languages....
EW: The sumbel (sumbl in Old Norse) is a solemn ritual in which the
participants sit together and participate in drinking, speech-making and
gift-giving, in many....
KJ: My sense is that (in English-speaking scholarship) "Old Norse" is used
as a catch-all term for Scandinavian languages duing the Viking and Medieval
Periods....
CW: Old Norse is one of ten branches that make up the Indo-European family
of....
KJ: The standard insult in Old Norse is to suggest homosexuality, which is
often expressed in terms of using such and such a man "as a woman." There
are....
CW: Icelandic (Old Norse) is the official language; Old Norse literature
reached its greatest flowering in Iceland....
KJ: ...gay vikings.
EW: Old Norse is a language which is rich in words describing sexual
matters.
CW: Nynorsk, created in the 1850s from spoken Norwegian and Old Norse, is
spoken by about 20% of the population. Of the seven additional....
KJ: ...for male vs. female giants. Since Old Norse is a highly inflected
language, and lemmatizing these texts would have been too time....
JORDAN DAVIS: ...the pwerson wants something to feel as real as possible.
EW: Here is my first draft, in English and old Norse I would like some
critique, even if you don't read.... Portions have been digitalized. The
entire text in Old Norse is also available on the web for the stout of heart
or curious....
CW: The final example assumes that the font "Old Norse" is not currently
implemented....
KJ: "Old Norse" is, in my view more the product of the invention of
tradition than it is of linguistic reality. I think that....
EW: I do not know what an old Norse is, but I expect you can lead it to
water, but you may have a devil of a job getting it to drink!
CW: The term "Old Norse" is sometimes used to mean specifically what we
here call "West Norse" or what we here call "Old Icelandic." It is
sometimes applied....
KSM: Old and Middle English (down to 1400) are compulsory, but Old Norse is
another favourite, and you can also study literature in other languages....
CW: Old Norse is a collective term for the earliest North Germanic literary
languages: Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Old Danish, and Old Swedish. The
richly....
KJ: Old Norse is a nice language due to its amazing similarity to English.
Well, I guess I shouldn't say amazing, most of our language came from
Germanic roots.
KSM: No previous knowledge of Old Norse is required. It will normally be
taught in the Michaelmas term, so....
ALLEN BRAMHALL: What or Whom is a Warlock?
CW: OK, maybe it seems strange even in context.
EW: Alternative theories?
CW: ...style with no standard. Some of us try to get the right feeling by
conserving some of the old style and tone in language. My Old Norse is too
poor for that.
KJ: Old Norse is out. Let's not even consider Old High German, then with
the singular edohso and the plural edohsan....
CW: This also ignores that Old Norse is a declined language, that is, the
nouns change form with the case used. Dictionary lists are fine....
KJ: Old English, or Old Norse is usually the kind of thing only learned in
the Ivory Towers of Academia.
EW: ...knives into plowshares, took to raising kids and carping at by-laws,
and meekly blended into the landscape. Old Norse is important for the
history of English.
CW: My own impression from reading a (very very limited) sampling of Old
Norse is that ON culture had a razor-sharp ear for word play, and I....
KJ: ...had an auto accident. Thus, all commentary is MINE, ALL MINE!
Ahhh, ha-ha-ha ... 3rd ed.
KSM: No previous knowledge of Old Icelandic is required.
CW: ...takes skills that only a few have, and an in depth knowledge of Old
Icelandic is necessary for understanding most of both the manuscript and
book texts.
EW: If you think that Old Norse is an easy-to-learn, attractive and
user-friendly language, you might be an expert and I've been looking into
this well over twenty years and my Old Norse is reasonable and I can speak
German, which in my mind is a prerequisite if....
KSM: There is no pre-requisite for this course, but Old Icelandic is much
easier if you have already studied Old English...
CW: Like Old English, Old Icelandic is a Germanic language. Icelandic
belongs to the north Germanic group of languages ("Norse" or
"Scandinavian"), which ...
EW: Although Old Icelandic is separated from the other languages studied so
far within the framework of the Göttingen word length project, the same
model, viz....
KJ: As most of the extant manuscripts we study were produced in Iceland,
"Old Icelandic" is arguably a more accurate term.
CW: Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Old Danish, and Old Swedish. Of these,
Old Icelandic is the most richly documented, in the broad variety of Old
Icelandic....
EW: Of course classical Old Icelandic is what students usually get taught,
but there are many interesting facets of....
CW: Literary Old Icelandic is often presented in a normalized textbook form
and (together with Old Norwegian) is referred to as Old Norse. See also....
KSM: Expertise in Old Icelandic is not required....
KJ: We must keep in mind the fact that Old Icelandic is not identical with
Old Norse, and that Icelandic literature cannot be clearly differ- entiated
from the....
CW: Since both are Germanic languages, Old Icelandic is similar in some
respects to Old English. This does not mean, however, that they are
pronounced precisely....
KJ: Also Old Icelandic does not make a great deal of sense: there is no
difference between Old Icelandic and Old Norse [ON]: Old Icelandic is Old
Norse.
KSM: Expertise in Old Icelandic is not required.
****************
Dearest Kasey,
I was hanging on to my seat the whole way, chugging 40s of Olde English 800.
OE 800 is really how I relate to this incredible drama. You know, mead is
closely related to malt liquor. My theory is that with enough malt liquor
one can sound like s/he's consumed quite a bit of mead, which makes one in
turn sound like someone speaking either Alt Hoch Deutsch oder Old Norsk.
Sundafyllir. Or Old Icelandic. I mean, runic Swedish. I mean. Burp.
And what a denouement! Bravo! Very filmic. Mannvitsbrekka.
Hic. Fill my bay up with fish, o wise one. I am as drunk as the ocean.
Scyld Snorri
Editor, _Olde English 800 for Advanced Alcoholics_
& Author of _Dude, Who Stole My Shield?_
scyld@oe800drunks.com
http://www.oe800drunks.com/
Frank Booth: "Heineken!? Fuck that shit! PABST BLUE RIBBON!"
****************
OLD NORSE FOR BEGINNERS
a play in one act
by K. Silem Mohammad
ACT TWO
PATRICK HERRON: Good day to ye all and pleased I am, to meet ye. I'm
Patrick, and sure as me namesake St. Patrick banished all the snakes from
Ireland, I'll be glad to chase away all your woes. I'm friendly....
GABE GUDDING: Hi Patrick! You did a very good job! Seems like a tremendous
amount of work, you can be sure that shooter like me are really thankful! I
wish you the best....
CANDICE WARD: I'm Candice, and this is my ghetto fabulous home page. I've
recently changed a lot of stuff on this page, so I hope you find it....
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Hi everyone! I'm Kasey, and I'm five years old. This is
my very own part of Mommy's page, where I get to tell you all about what
I've been doing and how much....
CANDICE WARD: Hi Kasey, Mamaw is so glad to have a new baby girl, I know you
will fill our lives with joy....
MAIREAD BYRNE: Hi Kasey!!! Haha I am reading your diary. Do you know some
chick named Zoe from Drew? Her dorm is near mine. Her roommate hates her.
KENT JOHNSON: Hi! I'm KENT! I can only describe myself as a thirtysomething
Asian dude living in Sacramento, California....
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hello! Hooray! I'm David and I bid you welcome. I hope you
enjoy yourself here. Feel free to explore my home, but please don't touch
the coffins. We may bite....
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Hi David, hi David, hi David, hi David!
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: ...saying hello at once and that was the depth of the
conversation. It was just "Hi David, Hi David, Hi David," and then I had to
go and it was, "Bye David, Bye...."
MAIREAD BYRNE: I am Mairead, caretaker of Lady Yasaman's galleria. Within my
care you will find many things.
GABE GUDDING: Wow! She knows us! I feel so special. Hi, I'm Gabe. And you
are...?
MAIREAD BYRNE: I am Mairead, wandering bard of Nwm. If you are a lover of
fantasy, this is the place for you.
GABE GUDDING: Oh, right....
KENT JOHNSON: Hi Gabe! It's so nice of you to let me know you actually have
a cat who looks almost exactly like mine....
MAIREAD BYRNE: Hi Gabe: I don't know what your "Brown Crust" is, but I'd
suspect a fungal infection from your description....
GABE GUDDING: Hi. I'm Gabe and I don't really know where I am.... [realizing
her nudity, he blushes deep red and looks away] Um ... sorry ... I ...
just....
KENT JOHNSON: I'm Kent, and this is Gabe, and we're going to Pennsylvania
where we live....
GABE GUDDING'S PARENTS: Hi Gabe. Mom and Dad. We turned your entire room
into a giant aquarium for all the turtles. It's a drag....
MAIREAD BYRNE: Hi Gabe, Yes I'm reading this, no I don't remember the
cheesesteak but I do remember the cheesecake....
GABE GUDDING: ...hard to speak with her bright black eyes so steadily sad in
front of me....
KENT JOHNSON: Hi Mairead. I haven't seen you here before--welcome! Is your
name some exotic Celtic name or does it mean you are marry-ed?
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hi there ... you might not know me, so let me introduce
myself. I'm Alan and I'm an Asian boy. Actually, if you want to be more
politically correct, I guess....
PATRICK HERRON: Hi, I'm Patrick and I'm trying to play the guitar. You will
now enter the hidden world of my thoughts, my wishes and other psychopathic
elements which....
HENRY GOULD: Hi Patrick: Here is Henry, I would like to join the CashFlow
101 party, and here I'm new, but deeply fall in love with RichDad, keep in
touch, and run the....
MURAT NEMET-NEJAT: Hello everyone! I'm Murat and I'm 28 years old. I'm a
graphic designer. I'm very alone for a long time. I....
MAIREAD BYRNE: Heya Murat! Heard any good jazz lately?
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hi Murat! Thanks for your perfectionism. Your albs are the
best since Vangelis.
PATRICK HERRON: Hi Murat. Hazel nuts have been gasified very successfully in
Italy where I saw it being done for a town water supply during a tour in
1985.
ALAN SONDHEIM: I'm Alan and I rock and roll all day long! I also have a very
unhealthly obsession with Cat Deeley. AAAAAAARRRGGGHHHH the brain pain is
hurting me!!
KENT JOHNSON: Hi, I'm Kent, and I'm an alcoholic and an addict.
MURAT NEMET-NEJAT: Hi, Kent. Sorry to hear this news. How are you doing now?
Wish you feel better. You know it's a wonderful sun-shine day today! So take
care and have a great....
KENT JOHNSON: I'm Kent and I'm 14. I've been aggressive skating for about a
year now.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Hi, Kent! Boy it's great to be here. Yes, I re-write
everything myself ... AFTER I STEAL IT!!! Oops. Shoulda mumbled that
part....
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hi Kasey, wait a minute while I go put some clothes on. I
don't think you want to see me almost naked.
PATRICK HERRON: I'm Patrick and as you can probably tell, I'm CANADIAN!!!
WOOOOOOOOO!!!!
MURAT NEMET-NEJAT: Hi Patrick. You are most fortunate to live in an area
where you have such wonderful salmon fishing.
KENT JOHNSON: I'm Kent and I'm 15. I've been aggressive skating for about 2
years now.
PATRICK HERRON: Hey, I'm Patrick and I live in Salisbury. I am an aggressive
skater with maybe half a year's experience. I skate with my friends James,
Ryan, and Matt.
KENT JOHNSON: Hi Patrick!!!! Sometimes being an "A" can ... sometimes being
type "A" can have a very negative effect on people around me--I sometimes
feel as....
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: I'm David, and in my slingshot is the unrated cut of
_Caligula_.
KENT JOHNSON: Hi, I'm Kent and I'm the dad.
PATRICK HERRON: I'm Patrick, and these are my hunting grounds. Go find your
own sheep, boy.
CANDICE WARD: I’m Candice and I come from a country on the other side of the
world. It’s filled with lots of sheep and rugby-playing people. That’s
right--New Zealand!
KENT JOHNSON: Oh hi Candice. What a lovely surprise to see you here. What's
up baby doll....
CANDICE WARD: I WILL VOMIT ON YOU, I SWEAR TO GOD!!!
KENT JOHNSON: Online, I have the morality of Satan's spawn.
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hi Kent! The "skin effect" is called ... The Skin Effect.
KENT JOHNSON: Hi I'm Kent and I'm a BOOTAHOLIC! :) I'd say my Fav pair is my
Lace Up Packers made by Olathe! They have BIG ASS 3.25" Under Slung Leather
Heels....
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hi Candice. My girlfriend asks: where do you find your
beautiful clothes?
CANDICE WARD: [smile, a certain diffidence--perhaps aloofness--and talks
softly] Sometimes I'm Candice and sometimes I go by my soap opera diva name,
Ms. Styles.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Hi Candice ... AGAIN. Yeh ... uhm ... UPDATE. PLEASE. I
dunno if you've been wiped off the face of the earth or what ... but ... hey
... yeah ... I love your art....
CANDICE WARD: I'm Candice. And I don't miss the stress. I hate those moments
of coming out and looking....
GABE GUDDING & MAIREAD BYRNE: O ya hi Candice what’s up?? Have a nice night!
Um ... we r just goin to the bathroom LOL....
ALLEN BRAMHALL: I'm Allen, and my life is boring. I like going to church.
God is my father. I go to Menallen Elementary (The school for losers). Like
most kids say, school SUCKS!!
PATRICK HERRON: I'm Patrick and I hate opera and teachers.
ALLEN BRAMHALL: Hi Kasey, how are you doin'? Are you ready for the pirate
show??
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Hi, I'm Kasey and I'm on all fours for Orgasmonaut Band.
Give me a call.
JORDAN DAVIS: Who are you and what do you want?
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: I'm Kasey, and I want that digi-armor you have. So fork
it over, now!
JORDAN DAVIS: No way.
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hi, Jordan. I'm 105 years old and I listen to your show
every day.
MAIREAD BYRNE: HI JORDAN, HOW IS YOUR MONO DOING?
KENT JOHNSON: Hi, Jordan, from Old Man Johnson here. A lot of us complain
about people not "supporting" local music because they don't come out to
every single local concert....
CANDICE WARD: Hi Patrick, Just wanted to thank you again for the frogs--they
are really healthy looking and very active. I look forward to seeing them
grow so that I can....
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Hey! I'm Kasey, and I'm 15 and I live in Georgia, USA. I
am totally obsessed with 'Nsync! I went to their concert on November 22,
1998! It totally rocked!
CANDICE WARD: I'm Candice, and I want you to play "I Drive Myself Crazy"
because I *love* how crazy those fine boys go!
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hi, Kasey: I congratulate you for your exquisite spirit.
GABE GUDDING: Hi Kasey, If you aren't getting periods and you want to get
pregnant, the first step is to go to your gyn. Explain the situation. There
are many reasons why....
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Hi Gabe. Interesting question ... sort of like the
Kantian dilemma of do you lie to save someone from a murder, and if so,
which is worse?
MAIREAD BYRNE: Kasey you are a bitch. Hi Kasey. Kasey I will torture you
forever.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: [Picking up diaper and holding it like a puppet, making
it talk in a silly, squeaky voice] Hi David! I'm Dilly Diaper! Come here and
play with me!
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: [Running over to Diaper] Hi Dilly!
CANDICE WARD: Hi Kasey. Unfortunately our idea of what smells good and our
dog's idea of what smells good are two very different things!
PATRICK HERRON: Hi Candice. JMO, the runt is not always the smartest pup in
the litter. I've bred 3 litters....
KENT JOHNSON: I'm Kent and I live in a box with my cat. It needs a new roof
but I haven't been able to find a good newspaper yet. So here is how my life
started. I was born....
PATRICK HERRON: Hi Kent. Sorry to hear about that ... it's sure a common
problem--builders should stick to building.
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hi Kent, Graymont has what you need. They make Niagara
Mature Putty.
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hi Kasey, as I stated earlier, I was moved by your book like
no other book I have read. I sent it to my....
HENRY GOULD: Hi Kasey, just here to let you know not to let ignorant people
get you down. You have grown in the Lord, and that is obvious. You....
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hi, I'm David, and I lost my coins--crystal coins. Can you
find them?
MAIREAD BYRNE: Hi David. I just picked up the leopard and I am very happy!
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: ...brutal wrestler from my school with his arms wrapped
around the trunk of a pecan tree, saying his first words to me ever, "Hi
David," sweetly, as I walked by....
ALAN SONDHEIM: HI DAVID, I WAS BORN IN A INDUSTRIAL FAMILY, MY > FATHER
INDUSTRY WAS > PAPERBOARD INDUSTRY.MY MOTHER INDUSTRY WAS > GRAMAPHONE
MANUFACTURING > INDUSTRY....
MAIREAD BYRNE: Hi Kasey!!! You're Pretty! ... We will, we will Rock You!
Will, we will rock you! Hey rockin' Robby and Kickin' Kasey! Just stopped by
to say hi ... soo ... HI!
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: I'm David and I'm collecting coke can since 6 years. I
have 1120 different cans and about 100 cans from all over the world for
trading. Empty cans, full cans....
GEORGE THOMPSON: Let me introduce ourselves. I'm George and I was born in
1921--WOW I've seen a lot of changes. I flew planes for a while, and retired
from a glass company....
PATRICK HERRON: HI GEORGE! JUST A NOTE TO ALL! GEORGE IS ONE OF THE BEST
MODEL CANOE BUILDERS WE KNOW. HIS WORK IS VERY HIGH QUALITY. TRULY AN
HEIRLOOM....
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: His name is George. Hi, George. Your name is George. He
looks like a George. Like George Washington. I like George.
GEORGE THOMPSON: Hi, I'm George and I sing the bass part.
PATRICK HERRON: Hey dude--I'm Patrick and _I_ play the bass....
GEORGE THOMPSON: Hi I'm George and I live in Florida and at night while I am
in sleep paralysis mode a ghost comes and has sex with me. When I wake up I
have just....
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hi George. They will not answer you because they are
embarrassed that their "prophets" and "apostles" said these things.
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: I'm David. And look at those fucking curtains. Jesus.
GEORGE THOMPSON: Whoa. They suck.
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hi, I'm David, and I'll be your anesthesiologist today!
GEORGE THOMPSON: Hullo. I'm George and I'm quite athletic. I have good built
and of good looks. I'm interested to be your friend. Hoping for your soon
reply. Thanks....
PATRICK HERRON: I'm Patrick, and you and I are going to be much better
friends really soon.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Hi George I have sent you an e-mail, I like your
perspective on life, you are a good person.
GEORGE THOMPSON: I'm George and I'm beautiful the way I am.
HENRY GOULD: Hi George and maybe Dad!!!
GEORGE THOMPSON: Yo I'm George and I'm twelve. I want to be a paratrooper
and a cop. Back to Home.
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hi, I'm Alan Sondheim and I'm typing here andx someone is
going to read this out loud and....
CANDICE WARD: Hi Alan, do you know this bug? ... Previous message: Hi Alan,
do you know this bug? Next message: Caller-ID in detail-file?
PATRICK HERRON: Hi Alan, We received a similar bug report.
ALAN SONDHEIM: HI! I'm Alan and I'm a biologist and philosopher. If you
think life is bad ... How would you like to be an egg? You only get laid
once.
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hi Alan. I was just wondering. Am I an oddball? How many
others like me, have contacted you, with respect to traveling?
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hi! I'm Alan and I'm Wendy.
GEORGE THOMPSON: I'm George and I'm really nervous.
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hello fellows, let me introduced myself, I'm Alan and you can
call me Wengyang. Firstly, I will like....
GEORGE THOMPSON: I'm George and I've invented a patch that can be worn on
your arm (much like those used to treat smoking addictions) that will cure
"knifeaholism."
CANDICE WARD: Hi George. Unless she catches you in bed with another person,
the woman's high Interest Level does not drop like a rock--it drops
gradually, in five stages....
KENT JOHNSON: Hi Kasey!! Umm ... Thumper is better than Cozimodo!! Member
the tent we made in ur room!? That was fun!! And the psychic thingy haha
we're dumb! Yay Im on ur team....
ELIOT WEINBERGER: I'm Eliot and I've had enough of that little pain in the
ass, so I'm taking over. See, I can be cute too.
PATRICK HERRON: Hi Eliot--I believe you have broken the code and found the
answers!
ELIOT WEINBERGER: I'm Eliot and I'm made from 15" dense curly mohair in a
yummy butterscotch color. I love to gaze at the stars and listen to romantic
music. My adoption....
GABE GUDDING: Hi Eliot. We're getting closer to buying our own place and
I'll finally be able to use the book I bought from you mowing my own hay.
ELIOT WEINBERGER: Hi Gabe, Thanks. Hey, you are very good at trying to keep
some conversation going here, and it's appreciated. It's just that I'm not
so sure....
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hi Eliot, I would like to know if we could export the
oaf_activatoin_context_get function from oaf. rationale....
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Hi Eliot, I just wanted to drop you a note to say thanks
for sharing your art.
GEORGE THOMPSON: I'm George and as you can see I'm really nervous.
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hello, I'm Alan and I know appliances.
END OF ACT TWO
**********************
OLD NORSE FOR BEGINNERS
a play in one act
by K. Silem Mohammad
ACT THREE
[There are thousands of shining stars in the sky.]
GWYN McVAY: [Southern voice] "The TRUE STORY of a Girl Sees Heaven Before
Her Death."
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: A little girl sitting in the back of her parents'
station wagon driving down the road, and the girl said "Mom give me the
camera I see a face in that cloud ... it look like is hunt and said he was
hunt and he was walk with 2 legs," and the girl said "Come there dog," and
fint his legs and when Lulu but him a name he saw him in the road.
DAVID BARATIER: [Nude in tub] The horse had one white foot and the girl said
it was lame; it wasn't. That horse is now show jumping very successfully.
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: They both looked up and saw a bright light. They both
looked up as it flew by. And the boy said to the girl "My wagon's bigger
than your wagon!" The little girl said "No it's not!" The boy said "Is too!
Let's measure!" They measured and the girl said "Oh gosh, it is."
GWYN McVAY: And the girl said to the boy "Who gave my dad Viagra?" And the
doktor said "I remember, it was me ... why" And the boy said "I'll tell
you.... My mom is dead ... my as is hurting...."
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: And the shadow saw the girl In the sudden dappled
light, And the girl said "Let's be me again before the cloud, before the
fright takes you away--let it be...."
ANTHONY ROBINSON: Raichu hided under some barrals and the girl touched
Raichu and Raichu was scared and the girl said "It's me Raichu" and then
Raichu was happy and the girl said "I've got nothing on tonight; how about
you and me going to your place? I am going to tell you the story of my
mother's Meeting with God."
GWYN McVAY: So my mom left a note and the girl said she was calling the
police.
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hello, it's your fault too, dummy.
GWYN McVAY: Anyways my mom got to the part about using "protection" and the
girl said "Don't worry Mom, I've been taking your birth-control pills." The
woman and the girl she was with said "We are going up! Why did you hit the
down button!?" and the girl said "What? Up and down? Don't they both do the
same thing...." "Right. Now up...." Then there were some more amorous
noises, and the girl said "Wait, where are you going?" And the guy just
answered "I have to get home."
ANTHONY ROBINSON: So later that evening the boy arrived at his girlfriend's
house.
GWYN McVAY: They sat down for dinner and the girl said grace. Said Jillian,
"Let's share our shirts." So the boy put on Jillian's shirt and Jillian put
on the boy's shirt and the boy said "Hey! Look! A shirt with ruffles...."
Then the girl said "I'd like a shirt from JC Penney." and the clerk rang up
the bill and the girl said "I'd like a pair of pants from JC Penney."
ANTHONY ROBINSON: And the boy said he looked wild and wide, like the side of
the hill. And the boy said to himself "I
cannot manage to shudder! I shall never learn it here as long as I live."
GYWN McVAY: And the boy wished to be like God.
ANTHONY ROBINSON: And God asked why the boy would like to be like God.
GWYN McVAY: And the Boy said "I would like to be like you so I may be able
to help those in pain."
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: Raven came and the boy said "Grandfather, when I die,
then you can eat me; but do not eat me now," he said to him. Raven said
"What happen'd" and the girl said that she was playing with the bird and the
bird spit at her so she burn down the nest, broke the neck and she cracked
the eggs.
ANTHONY ROBINSON: The boy and girl were very afraid and the boy said in a
shaky voice "We don't know where your fangs are, Sir...."
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: But one day, he met a small boy, and the boy said "But
there have been people walking on the moon, and...."
ANTHONY ROBINSON: "Are you mad, boy...." The master said; "Now, while you
were under water, what did you think of?"
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: And the boy said "AIR! I wanted AIR!" The master
replied "You mean you didn't think...?"
ANTHONY ROBINSON: They took him, ascended up the mountain, and the boy said
"O Allah Save me from them by anything You wish." So the mountain said to
the boy "Why are you feeding your goats on my grass?" And the boy said "It
is not my doing, for my father told me to come here."
GWYN McVAY: And he came in late the next day and the teacher asked him why
are you late and the boy said "I was on top of Strawberry Hill" and the
teacher said "Oh ok ... only if you say the alphabet." The boy said
"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOQRSTUVWXYZ." The teacher asked "Where's the P?" and the boy
said "Running down my pants."
ANTHONY ROBINSON: The teacher looked confused and the boy said again
"There's 3 women eating ice cream cones: one's licking, one's biting, and
one's sucking." Which reportedly occurred in a bedroom when Negrete was
alone with the girl, and the girl said the purpose of the rituals was for
Negrete to spiritually cleanse her....
DAVID BARATIER: "If you don't stop this nonsense right now, I'll spank you!"
said the principal.
ANTHONY ROBINSON: ...until at last he came to a handsome boy. So, he said to
the boy, "What do you do here?" And the boy said "I am always learning. Come
and learn with me."
DAVID BARATIER: He was so excited and nervous though that his lines got
mixed up and the boy said "It's the Lord, my boy, and your time is up!"
GWYN McVAY: And the boy said "Don't touch my buns!"
ANTHONY ROBINSON: Shiva came home he saw the boy guarding and said "Get out
of my way!" and the boy said "No my mother Is bathing here." Shiva said "Get
out of the way!" But a beast of burden carried this man, this Great Teacher,
Into Jerusalem, the City of Lights, and the boy said "The City of Lights is
your Heart." The Law lifted the stone, and the boy said "I see a rusty old
sword and an iron ball and a big bronze trumpet."
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: And the boy said nothing, for he too was touched. They
stood quietly together, holding hands and feeling the fierce heat of emotion
beating beneath their skin...
ALAN SONDHEIM: ...the cup to him like wine, like elixir, and he took it from
him, and their hands met roughly, and the boy said to him in a voice like a
man's "Way to go."
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: When they were trying to open the door to the castle,
PoPo was playing with something, and the girl said "PoPo, what are you
playing with?" "Nacho cheese." And his mother said "How do you know it is
Nacho cheese?" and the boy said the little black boy on the hill in
pilgrim's weeds gave the boy a root, which was that of the Trinity flower;
and the boy said that the face of the pilgrim was that of the Angel of
Death. The boy told him "Maybe you can give work to my brother. He's slow
and he's way in back of me." And the boy said "Good-bye."
ANTHONY ROBINSON: His mother said "Yes, and?" And the boy said "Well, when I
watched and listened to where the sound went, I didn't get closer to God. I
was God."
GWYN McVAY: And the girl said to the boy "I am! but your father is crazier
than me why he did not sleep." And the girl said to new ex-monk "You are
crazy from shaving your hair. Ha ha. Ha."
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: "...you are here ... she's watching you." We asked her
if she could see "her" and the girl said "yes...but she is hiding from you."
DAVID BARATIER: And she said "Bring me a big one." And she brought a bigger,
and the girl said "That is not big enough."
GWYN McVAY: Once more they arrived before the King and the boy said "King,
King, keep your promise and give us our bag of rice," and so he was sent to
the police. The police said "What's your name?" and the boy said
"Buttitches."
DAVID BARATIER: The officer asked the boy if he stole the 12-pack of beer
from the Star Mart and the boy said "Yes" ... and the police officer wanted
to know why the boy was driving seventy miles an hour, and the boy said the
truth.
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: They both looked up and saw a bright light ... they
both looked up as it flew by ... and the boy said to the girl "If you do not
tell me your name right now I'm going to...."
DAVID BARATIER: And the boy said unto his reflection "And just who might you
be?" And the reflection replied "Why, I am you!" And the boy said "You can't
be me!"
ANTHONY ROBINSON: The star said "Boy, why are you weeping?" And the boy said
"You are so far away I will never be able to touch you." And the star
answered, "Boy I was living the gay life at one time and now I live for the
Lord," and the boy said that he was a Christian....
DAVID BARATIER: Then the next day they were walking in the park and there
were these people making out and the girl said "look Mommy they are baking a
cake!" The others were curiously crowding around the group, and the girl
said to them: "It's Tik-tok and Billina; and oh! I'm so glad to see them
again."
GWYN McVAY: And so, the dad said the the mum: "U bitch!" and the boy said
"Daddy, what's a bitch?" and the dad answered. Just then the master came
through the hall, and the girl said "By virtue of my three feathers may
there be slashing and striving between master and men," and the dark forest
cast a long shadow over our heads. A preacher came to the door and the boy
said "Hey, bitch, the shit's on the table and Mom and Dad are fucking." I
hesitated, and the boy said "You needn't waver." I began to walk toward the
forest, thinking: How could shit mean food, and fuck mean getting dressed?
ALAN SONDHEIM: [Reflecting] Shortly afterwards, her classmates noticed the
note on her back and the girl said she discovered a needle puncture on her
right arm.
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: And she said "I am seeking Paul, for I was saved from
the fire." And the boy said "Come, I'll take you to him, for he has been
mourning for you."
GWYN McVAY: His father and mother saw the same donkey at the same situation
(his dick is very long) and the boy said to his mother "Hey, Mom. Look at
this donkey it is measured," and the girl said "Oh gosh, it is." They played
some more and the boy said "My daddy can beat up your daddy!" The girl said
"He can not!"
ALAN SONDHEIM: His parents ask, "WHAT HAPPENED?? WHAT HAPPENED??" And the
boy said "I tried to put my car in a girl's garage and she ripped the back
tires off!!!"
ANTHONY ROBINSON: Her two tiger brothers went away, and the girl said with a
sigh, "Do not be afraid of me. I am not a woman, but a tiger. You have loved
me deeply and...."
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: The mother asked her why she was saying that and the
girl said that she could see a tunnel with a big light at the end....
GWYN McVAY: ...until the bus driver stopped the bus and screamed "If your
dad was gay and your mum was a prostitute what would you be" at the boy, and
the boy said "A bus driver."
DAVID BARATIER: His dad asked him if he had learned a lesson about fire, and
the boy said "Yeah Dad, you don't play with fire 'cause things can blow up
in your face and burn branches and leaves in his arms. And the man asked the
boy what he was doing and the boy said that he was going to make a fire so
that he could cook dinner.
ALAN SONDHEIM: I had shown them my dental floss, "the Cadillac of dental
floss," and the boy said proudly "This is the Cadillac of beds!"
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: So then the father started spanking the boy. And the
boy said "I told the truth like President Washington, so why are you
spanking me?"
DAVID BARATIER: [A kola fruit has fallen from the tree] And the tree said
"Girl, help me shake my fruit. My branches are breaking, it is so heavy."
And the girl said "Of course I will, you poor tree." So she shook the fruit
all off....
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: One day the boy came to visit the tree and the tree was
happy and she said "Come play with me boy" and the boy said "No I don't want
to play I want money."
DAVID BARATIER: The boy grew older and became unhappy. The tree asked him
what would make him happy and the boy said "Money." The tree told the boy to
take his fruit ... breakfast? and the boy said "No, I'm tired and drunk and
besides the sun's coming out and we should all probably get to sleep before
it gets too hot to do so...."
GWYN McVAY: The breezes of summer flew away to spark the colors of fall, the
storyteller asked the girl if she would be the storyteller next year, and
the girl said "Yes." The next day the girl walked down the street. Then she
heard a sloppy noise. It was the snowman and the girl said "Shhhh. Be quiet.
I am a reader. I must finish reading my book."
END ACT THREE
*******************
OLD NORSE FOR BEGINNERS
a play in one act
by Patrick Herron
ACT FOUR: OPERATION DEFENDING JUSTICE
KASEY MOHAMMAD: Thank you all for coming to my talk today. I want to
discuss with you here today the etiology of a pathology which should be
obsequied with sensitivity. Apologies for the Jesse Jackson impression. To
begin. Borderline Personality Disorder. Yes. Borderline Personality
Disorder is primarily marked by the peculiarity of the sufferer's personal
relationships. Relationships with others are intense but stormy and
unstable with marked shifts of feelings and difficulties in maintaining
intimate, close connections.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Excuse me, Kasey. I hereby give you permission to
describe my character in this act but only in the acts that mention Kasey.
Understood?
KASEY MOHAMMAD: Clear as God's own word. Right. The borderline sufferer
may manipulate others and often has difficulty with trusting others.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: As for you, Kasey, I've never been the least bit
suspicious of you. I must say you did make a complete fool of yourself in
your play--pretending to know anything about Old Norse. Old Norse doesn't
exist even though you might try to speak it here.
GOD (voice from afar, with a British accent): It's the dreck inside the
manifesto we get to hear about: the Pictionary drills and asymptotic
criss-cross frangibilities....Is it safe for an office guy like me to get
warned about, sooner than late? But no, the chemical banks fuck this other
poet through and through.
KASEY MOHAMMAD: Thanks for the stunning example of Old Norse, God.
Consider yourself corrected, K. Silem. As I was saying, with borderline
personality disorder there is also emotional instability with marked and
frequent shifts to an empty lonely depression or to irritability and
anxiety. There may be unpredictable and impulsive behavior which might
include jaywalking, character sketches, playwriting, sending backchannel
e-mails erasing the existence of characters in plays or even physically
self-damaging actions such as running from crop dusters, eating toenails, or
riding on escalators backwards.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Alright, that's it! I must now demonstrate my expertise
on borderline personality disorder since you don't seem to know much about
it, obviously. If it hurts your feelings for me to say that too, then maybe
you are taking it too personally. It IS nothing personal; just a
professional observation. You might not know much about professional
observations; but that's OK because after all, you're not me. I am trained
with diagnoses, vanishing languages, card tricks, and even disappearing
acts. You might call me a reluctant magician. That is, I don't want the
girl in the box to disappear when I pull away the sheet before that live
audience, but then, I'm so good at it I can't help it. I could teach you a
thing or two but, well, you're too busy listening to God.
KASEY MOHAMMAD: Right, right. Thanks for the endorsement. The borderline
personality may show inappropriate and intense anger or rage with temper
tantrums, constant brooding and resentment, feelings of deprivation, and a
loss of control or fear of loss of control over angry feelings. And again,
thanks for illustrating.
GOD: It makes perfect sense, but it's not explicable. It makes some real
good sense. It's your sixth vaccination this week
a testament to your sanity, or your sane appearance brattily seated with
your head to the war.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: I had no way of knowing that you, God, speak Old
Norwegian as well as Old Norse. I suspect you and Kasey are both trying to
make some example out of me. Forget allegory--this is the age of
nominalism. I'm too specific for your categories or machinations. Old
Norse is a language you've fraudulently invented, God, while not only dining
out on your fake author-suffering but also crop-dusting three other acts.
In my opinion you are nothing more or less than a crop-duster (if one
without much flying skill, thank God), and a fake, a fraud, a vicious liar
and a playwright to boot.
KASEY MOHAMMAD: Very good, K. Silem. You've led me to my next point.
There are also identity disturbances with confusion and uncertainty about
self-identity, sexuality, life goals and values, career choices,
friendships, narrative structures. There is a deep-seated feeling that one
is flawed, defective, damaged or bad in some way, with a tendency to go to
extremes in thinking, feeling, and writing.
GOD: You and I implant the dead signals take our chances in immense
jackboot resemblances in the hoot 'n' holler at the twelve o'clock.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: You are threatening to embarrass me. God's paraphrase
of the first three acts was accurate enough, but that's just where the
problem lies if you repeat (and publicize)--innocently of course--the one
thing He got wrong. What struck me about your response to "What Was Old
Norse?" was your focus on God's example rather than His argument. This is
hilarious to someone with my degree. The "Old Norse Playwright." No
offense, Kasey, but I just about fell over laughing when I got to "Old Norse
Playwright." I'm not saying you're ignorant--I'm only insinuating it so
your feelings don't matter. God's not speaking in Old Norse, silly. It's
the NEW aesthetic!
KASEY MOHAMMAD: See what I mean, folks? Even in less severe instances,
there is often significant disruption of relationships and work performance.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: I would have thought Kasey above such lunatic stuff.
It's "Kasey" to my disciples but "K. Silem" to my audience. Students are
the sort that relate well to people like Kasey Kasem, you know, the latest
and greatest top 40 with a friendly face. This is a state school after all.
But to the leather-bound poets society, only an aged patina will suffice for
peddling books. That's why I'm really K. Silem and you're just aping
everyone else!
GOD: And I’m the immaculate, have been watching your doorstep.
KASEY MOHAMMAD: Right, right! You speak Old Icelandic as well! Right on
God! OK, back to my character sketch. Lost my page...ahh yes, here it is.
(Clears his throat.) Note that with the borderline personality, something
which is all good one day can be all bad the next, which is related to
another symptom: borderlines have problems with object constancy in
people -- they read each action of people in their lives as if there were no
prior context; they don't have a sense of continuity and consistency about
people and things in their lives.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: It's you who've misunderstood me, Kasey. You've blown
way out of proportion my irritation with your preachy response to a
lighthearted play that I doubt anyone took seriously. Not me. Don't try
and turn it around on me. Besides, a theory of imagined languages will get
you nowhere.
KASEY MOHAMMAD: Borderlines are distinguished from neurotics by the
presence of "primitive defenses." Chief among these is splitting, in which a
person or thing is seen as all good or all bad. That distinction may
alternate from moment to moment and may prove confusing or even hurtful to
those in relationships with the borderline personality. That is, the
borderline can play good cop and bad cop all at once without any ability to
admit the existence of such behavior.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: I do apologize for causing you any distress, though, and
I will just leave your play. When you look for a character, don't come to
ask me. Write me out of it. And if I'm the sort of character you consider
confusing, then you'll have the kind of play you want once I'm written out
of it. I doubt it will look any more appealing in daylight now that Kasey's
taken over. I am so sorry and I'll never bother you again. Pal.
KASEY MOHAMMAD: Again, a fine example. As I was saying, other primitive
defenses cited include magical thinking, that is to say, beliefs that
thoughts can cause events, omnipotence, projection of unpleasant
characteristics in the self onto others and projective identification, a
process where the borderline tries to elicit in others the feelings he or
she is having.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: I never once struck back at you, Kasey. Kasey, are you
listening? I recommend that you suspend yourself for calling yourself "K.
Silem Mohammad." I mean, let's keep who's who straight around here. Whose
play is it anyway? You, Kasey, have a responsibility to this play as an
author of the characters you have portrayed. You cannot just allow other
characters to waltz in and attack those who are in bondage.
GOD: I've all means to depict as you stood, dramatic in curious
temperament: I've a neat angle in the sibling queen's tapestry based on your
sauciness, and take careful mementos by rote from the heels of a thought you
murmured: "the little love god" fresh from your oracle as clearly anointed
by pure mind, imprinted on sweet captions that pass from temple to
interesting mandible: please, trace presents and sayings of consequence on
occasion to be merry.
KASEY MOHAMMAD: There's always THAT! Well said, God. Where were we? Oh,
right. As I was saying. This diagnosis was delivered in humorous
friendship. Cumulative character judgments are nearly impossible for the
person suffering from borderline personality disorder. Every person is
understood only by the perceived measure of his or her last action with the
sufferer. Another consequence is that if you laugh about it, the sufferer
will condemn you as callous and thus deny the joke's context, and, if you
lament it and try to help, the sufferer will laugh at you and deny that the
context is sad. Borderline Personality Disorder is a language that exists.
Plays exist. God exists. Even I exist. Old Norse exists. This play is
the very proof. It is its own justice.
GOD: If I cannot be who I am in a group, the present defines another, and
the future ... the future is what there is not here. I need it. I cannot be
who I am without it. I...forget it. Look, can we just change this awful
subject? Oh, right, I'm God. OK, it's hereby changed. I have a question
for you guys--read any good Jewel poems lately? Here's a great one: "I am
not from here, my hair smells of the wind and is full of constellations, and
I move about this world with a healthy disbelief. And I approach my days
and my work with vaporous consequence a touch that is translucent, but can
violate stone." Ahh. Hear that? Her metaphor for living is: when her
hair's on fire she tries to fuck bricks with steamy farts. Now *that's*
bloody desperation.
PATRICK: Sorry, you can't talk about that here, God. And let me evade the
point that it's certainly not *your* act to go around and change things.
Think you can take liberties with deus ex machina around here? Well, OK,
you *can*, but then I'm going to have to ask you to leave the play for a
short time. We don't want these fires to get out of control, unless, of
course, it's my match that's lighting it. Rules are rules you know, and
rulers are seldom more fun than measuring sticks. I mean, I know who I am,
or at least, I know that I don't know who I am, at least when I'm eating
rice or looking into mirrors, if you know what I mean. If you don't, well,
that's OK, I don't know what I'm talking about anyway. It's my play now and
that's all that matters. Nyah nyah. You violator you! I've a broken
ankle, burned palm, and now a burst eardrum, all objective correlatives for
the sturdiness of my judgment. Talk about you screwing masonry with
flatulence when dancing the Michael Jackson!
GOD: Sure, sure. Maybe you should talk with Kasey. I think from the likes
of his talk today, he'll understand you. Don't worry about the play. Just
ease up on your pure-minded oracle saintly psychopathology and check out
this play I've been writing.
END ACT FOUR
OLD NORSE FOR BEGINNERS
a play in one act
by K. Silem Mohammad
KENT JOHNSON: Old Norse is the name we give to the language which the
Vikings spoke.
ELIOT WEINBERGER: Old Norse is classical North Germanic language used from
roughly 1150 to 1350. Its predecessor is Old Scandinavian....
KJ: Old Norse is the language spoken and written by the inhabitants of
Scandinavia around 1000 AD and earlier. The modern Nordic languages of
Swedish, Danish ... are from the 12th cent.
CANDICE WARD: Old Norse is also noteworthy as the language of the Eddas and
sagas (see Old Norse literature; Icelandic literature ... The vocabulary of
Old Norse is known scarcely from runic incriptions, but its descendant the
Icelandic language with its sagas demonstrates how rich....
EW: Old Norse is the term generally used in English to refer to the
language and literature preserved in manuscripts written in Iceland and
Norway during the....
KJ: It is not surprising that some words came into the Irish language from
Old Norse.
CW: Since Old Norse is a dead language, there is no need (according to the
folks who write dictionaries) for an English-to-Old-Norse dictionary.
EW: Old Norse is a collective term for the earliest North Germanic literary
languages, Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Old Danish, and Old Swedish. In
Linguistics 315....
KJ: Icelandic is WRONG. Old Swedish is WRONG. Old Norse is RIGHT.
Picture of a streetsign in York, England. The streetname is Old Norse and
means Swinestreet....
EW: The Narwhal (meaning "corpse whale" in Old Norse) is a rarely seen
Arctic whale. This social whale is known for the VERY long tooth that males
have. Very....
KJ: Old-Norse is obligatory on the Grunnfag and Mellomfag niveu, available
at the hovedfag niveu....
CW: The word tiwaz, tyr in Old Norse, is the exact cognate to Sanskrit
dayus, Greek Zeus and Latin Jupiter. A threefold mystery....
KJ: The word in Old Norse is "igdur"--variously translated as "tits" or
"nuthatches." In fact, it probably sounds to you like a good career
opportunity.
EW: About Old Norse. Old Norse is the language spoken and written in
Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and the colonies of the....
KJ: Horses are how people got around back then, and Raidho (known as Rad in
Anglo-Saxon and Reid in Old Norse) is the rune of travel!
CW: The only change since Old Norse is that the r-ending has become an
ur-ending.
KJ: Old Norse is only spoken by a few, and then only poorly....
EW: ... spoken by so few. Very few people outside Iceland learn Icelandic,
although Old Icelandic is taught at a number of universities abroad, largely
because of our....
CW: Here there is space to mention the three centres where Old Icelandic is
taught, but there are eight others throughout Australia where there have
been or are....
EW: Old Icelandic is taught at the University of Oregon by the Department
of Germanic Languages and Literatures. WWW Links....
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Old Norse is one of my courses (for all the reasons you
mentioned in your Old Norse page). You don't mention....
EW: Old Norse is the synthetic medieval language which we find in the
manuscripts....
KSM: No previous knowledge of Old Norse is required. It will be examined
by means of one three-hour paper.
EW: In the United States he rendered us the most treasured compliment when
he said: "Old Norse is Crown" but as many of you know, Old Norse is in fact
Icelandic....
KSM: No previous knowledge of Old Norse is required. The module will focus
particularly on the Icelandic (which will be helpful to readers whose only
experience of Old Norse is in Icelandic)....
CW: Old Norse and Old Icelandic. Old Norse is a member of the Germanic
family of languages which includes English, German and Dutch....
EW: THE place to look when you are interested in Old Norse is (of course)
EV Gordon's _An Introduction to Old Norse_ (Oxford: Clarendon Press).
CW: Old Norse is a collective term for the earliest North Germanic literary
languages, Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Old Danish, and Old Swedish.
Of....
EW: Most appreciatively, the cost of the book is very reasonable; a similar
book on learning Old Norse is almost double the cost of this book.
KJ: Old Norse is also noteworthy as the language of the Eddas and sagas
(see Old Norse literature; Icelandic literature). See Eric....
EW: And the original Old Norse is transcribed next to the English
translation as well. The Cadillac of all translations ...
CW: Old Norse is analyzed within the framework of Government and Binding
(GB) and functional grammar. The linguistic sources are....
EW: Old Norse is one of the three early branches of the Germanic languages;
Icelandic is a descendant of West Norse....
KSM: A course in Old Norse is also offered....
KJ: Old Norse is still the language used for the Icelandic sagas. You may
consider the Scandinavian languages....
EW: The sumbel (sumbl in Old Norse) is a solemn ritual in which the
participants sit together and participate in drinking, speech-making and
gift-giving, in many....
KJ: My sense is that (in English-speaking scholarship) "Old Norse" is used
as a catch-all term for Scandinavian languages duing the Viking and Medieval
Periods....
CW: Old Norse is one of ten branches that make up the Indo-European family
of....
KJ: The standard insult in Old Norse is to suggest homosexuality, which is
often expressed in terms of using such and such a man "as a woman." There
are....
CW: Icelandic (Old Norse) is the official language; Old Norse literature
reached its greatest flowering in Iceland....
KJ: ...gay vikings.
EW: Old Norse is a language which is rich in words describing sexual
matters.
CW: Nynorsk, created in the 1850s from spoken Norwegian and Old Norse, is
spoken by about 20% of the population. Of the seven additional....
KJ: ...for male vs. female giants. Since Old Norse is a highly inflected
language, and lemmatizing these texts would have been too time....
JORDAN DAVIS: ...the pwerson wants something to feel as real as possible.
EW: Here is my first draft, in English and old Norse I would like some
critique, even if you don't read.... Portions have been digitalized. The
entire text in Old Norse is also available on the web for the stout of heart
or curious....
CW: The final example assumes that the font "Old Norse" is not currently
implemented....
KJ: "Old Norse" is, in my view more the product of the invention of
tradition than it is of linguistic reality. I think that....
EW: I do not know what an old Norse is, but I expect you can lead it to
water, but you may have a devil of a job getting it to drink!
CW: The term "Old Norse" is sometimes used to mean specifically what we
here call "West Norse" or what we here call "Old Icelandic." It is
sometimes applied....
KSM: Old and Middle English (down to 1400) are compulsory, but Old Norse is
another favourite, and you can also study literature in other languages....
CW: Old Norse is a collective term for the earliest North Germanic literary
languages: Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Old Danish, and Old Swedish. The
richly....
KJ: Old Norse is a nice language due to its amazing similarity to English.
Well, I guess I shouldn't say amazing, most of our language came from
Germanic roots.
KSM: No previous knowledge of Old Norse is required. It will normally be
taught in the Michaelmas term, so....
ALLEN BRAMHALL: What or Whom is a Warlock?
CW: OK, maybe it seems strange even in context.
EW: Alternative theories?
CW: ...style with no standard. Some of us try to get the right feeling by
conserving some of the old style and tone in language. My Old Norse is too
poor for that.
KJ: Old Norse is out. Let's not even consider Old High German, then with
the singular edohso and the plural edohsan....
CW: This also ignores that Old Norse is a declined language, that is, the
nouns change form with the case used. Dictionary lists are fine....
KJ: Old English, or Old Norse is usually the kind of thing only learned in
the Ivory Towers of Academia.
EW: ...knives into plowshares, took to raising kids and carping at by-laws,
and meekly blended into the landscape. Old Norse is important for the
history of English.
CW: My own impression from reading a (very very limited) sampling of Old
Norse is that ON culture had a razor-sharp ear for word play, and I....
KJ: ...had an auto accident. Thus, all commentary is MINE, ALL MINE!
Ahhh, ha-ha-ha ... 3rd ed.
KSM: No previous knowledge of Old Icelandic is required.
CW: ...takes skills that only a few have, and an in depth knowledge of Old
Icelandic is necessary for understanding most of both the manuscript and
book texts.
EW: If you think that Old Norse is an easy-to-learn, attractive and
user-friendly language, you might be an expert and I've been looking into
this well over twenty years and my Old Norse is reasonable and I can speak
German, which in my mind is a prerequisite if....
KSM: There is no pre-requisite for this course, but Old Icelandic is much
easier if you have already studied Old English...
CW: Like Old English, Old Icelandic is a Germanic language. Icelandic
belongs to the north Germanic group of languages ("Norse" or
"Scandinavian"), which ...
EW: Although Old Icelandic is separated from the other languages studied so
far within the framework of the Göttingen word length project, the same
model, viz....
KJ: As most of the extant manuscripts we study were produced in Iceland,
"Old Icelandic" is arguably a more accurate term.
CW: Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, Old Danish, and Old Swedish. Of these,
Old Icelandic is the most richly documented, in the broad variety of Old
Icelandic....
EW: Of course classical Old Icelandic is what students usually get taught,
but there are many interesting facets of....
CW: Literary Old Icelandic is often presented in a normalized textbook form
and (together with Old Norwegian) is referred to as Old Norse. See also....
KSM: Expertise in Old Icelandic is not required....
KJ: We must keep in mind the fact that Old Icelandic is not identical with
Old Norse, and that Icelandic literature cannot be clearly differ- entiated
from the....
CW: Since both are Germanic languages, Old Icelandic is similar in some
respects to Old English. This does not mean, however, that they are
pronounced precisely....
KJ: Also Old Icelandic does not make a great deal of sense: there is no
difference between Old Icelandic and Old Norse [ON]: Old Icelandic is Old
Norse.
KSM: Expertise in Old Icelandic is not required.
****************
Dearest Kasey,
I was hanging on to my seat the whole way, chugging 40s of Olde English 800.
OE 800 is really how I relate to this incredible drama. You know, mead is
closely related to malt liquor. My theory is that with enough malt liquor
one can sound like s/he's consumed quite a bit of mead, which makes one in
turn sound like someone speaking either Alt Hoch Deutsch oder Old Norsk.
Sundafyllir. Or Old Icelandic. I mean, runic Swedish. I mean. Burp.
And what a denouement! Bravo! Very filmic. Mannvitsbrekka.
Hic. Fill my bay up with fish, o wise one. I am as drunk as the ocean.
Scyld Snorri
Editor, _Olde English 800 for Advanced Alcoholics_
& Author of _Dude, Who Stole My Shield?_
scyld@oe800drunks.com
http://www.oe800drunks.com/
Frank Booth: "Heineken!? Fuck that shit! PABST BLUE RIBBON!"
****************
OLD NORSE FOR BEGINNERS
a play in one act
by K. Silem Mohammad
ACT TWO
PATRICK HERRON: Good day to ye all and pleased I am, to meet ye. I'm
Patrick, and sure as me namesake St. Patrick banished all the snakes from
Ireland, I'll be glad to chase away all your woes. I'm friendly....
GABE GUDDING: Hi Patrick! You did a very good job! Seems like a tremendous
amount of work, you can be sure that shooter like me are really thankful! I
wish you the best....
CANDICE WARD: I'm Candice, and this is my ghetto fabulous home page. I've
recently changed a lot of stuff on this page, so I hope you find it....
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Hi everyone! I'm Kasey, and I'm five years old. This is
my very own part of Mommy's page, where I get to tell you all about what
I've been doing and how much....
CANDICE WARD: Hi Kasey, Mamaw is so glad to have a new baby girl, I know you
will fill our lives with joy....
MAIREAD BYRNE: Hi Kasey!!! Haha I am reading your diary. Do you know some
chick named Zoe from Drew? Her dorm is near mine. Her roommate hates her.
KENT JOHNSON: Hi! I'm KENT! I can only describe myself as a thirtysomething
Asian dude living in Sacramento, California....
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hello! Hooray! I'm David and I bid you welcome. I hope you
enjoy yourself here. Feel free to explore my home, but please don't touch
the coffins. We may bite....
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Hi David, hi David, hi David, hi David!
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: ...saying hello at once and that was the depth of the
conversation. It was just "Hi David, Hi David, Hi David," and then I had to
go and it was, "Bye David, Bye...."
MAIREAD BYRNE: I am Mairead, caretaker of Lady Yasaman's galleria. Within my
care you will find many things.
GABE GUDDING: Wow! She knows us! I feel so special. Hi, I'm Gabe. And you
are...?
MAIREAD BYRNE: I am Mairead, wandering bard of Nwm. If you are a lover of
fantasy, this is the place for you.
GABE GUDDING: Oh, right....
KENT JOHNSON: Hi Gabe! It's so nice of you to let me know you actually have
a cat who looks almost exactly like mine....
MAIREAD BYRNE: Hi Gabe: I don't know what your "Brown Crust" is, but I'd
suspect a fungal infection from your description....
GABE GUDDING: Hi. I'm Gabe and I don't really know where I am.... [realizing
her nudity, he blushes deep red and looks away] Um ... sorry ... I ...
just....
KENT JOHNSON: I'm Kent, and this is Gabe, and we're going to Pennsylvania
where we live....
GABE GUDDING'S PARENTS: Hi Gabe. Mom and Dad. We turned your entire room
into a giant aquarium for all the turtles. It's a drag....
MAIREAD BYRNE: Hi Gabe, Yes I'm reading this, no I don't remember the
cheesesteak but I do remember the cheesecake....
GABE GUDDING: ...hard to speak with her bright black eyes so steadily sad in
front of me....
KENT JOHNSON: Hi Mairead. I haven't seen you here before--welcome! Is your
name some exotic Celtic name or does it mean you are marry-ed?
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hi there ... you might not know me, so let me introduce
myself. I'm Alan and I'm an Asian boy. Actually, if you want to be more
politically correct, I guess....
PATRICK HERRON: Hi, I'm Patrick and I'm trying to play the guitar. You will
now enter the hidden world of my thoughts, my wishes and other psychopathic
elements which....
HENRY GOULD: Hi Patrick: Here is Henry, I would like to join the CashFlow
101 party, and here I'm new, but deeply fall in love with RichDad, keep in
touch, and run the....
MURAT NEMET-NEJAT: Hello everyone! I'm Murat and I'm 28 years old. I'm a
graphic designer. I'm very alone for a long time. I....
MAIREAD BYRNE: Heya Murat! Heard any good jazz lately?
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hi Murat! Thanks for your perfectionism. Your albs are the
best since Vangelis.
PATRICK HERRON: Hi Murat. Hazel nuts have been gasified very successfully in
Italy where I saw it being done for a town water supply during a tour in
1985.
ALAN SONDHEIM: I'm Alan and I rock and roll all day long! I also have a very
unhealthly obsession with Cat Deeley. AAAAAAARRRGGGHHHH the brain pain is
hurting me!!
KENT JOHNSON: Hi, I'm Kent, and I'm an alcoholic and an addict.
MURAT NEMET-NEJAT: Hi, Kent. Sorry to hear this news. How are you doing now?
Wish you feel better. You know it's a wonderful sun-shine day today! So take
care and have a great....
KENT JOHNSON: I'm Kent and I'm 14. I've been aggressive skating for about a
year now.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Hi, Kent! Boy it's great to be here. Yes, I re-write
everything myself ... AFTER I STEAL IT!!! Oops. Shoulda mumbled that
part....
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hi Kasey, wait a minute while I go put some clothes on. I
don't think you want to see me almost naked.
PATRICK HERRON: I'm Patrick and as you can probably tell, I'm CANADIAN!!!
WOOOOOOOOO!!!!
MURAT NEMET-NEJAT: Hi Patrick. You are most fortunate to live in an area
where you have such wonderful salmon fishing.
KENT JOHNSON: I'm Kent and I'm 15. I've been aggressive skating for about 2
years now.
PATRICK HERRON: Hey, I'm Patrick and I live in Salisbury. I am an aggressive
skater with maybe half a year's experience. I skate with my friends James,
Ryan, and Matt.
KENT JOHNSON: Hi Patrick!!!! Sometimes being an "A" can ... sometimes being
type "A" can have a very negative effect on people around me--I sometimes
feel as....
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: I'm David, and in my slingshot is the unrated cut of
_Caligula_.
KENT JOHNSON: Hi, I'm Kent and I'm the dad.
PATRICK HERRON: I'm Patrick, and these are my hunting grounds. Go find your
own sheep, boy.
CANDICE WARD: I’m Candice and I come from a country on the other side of the
world. It’s filled with lots of sheep and rugby-playing people. That’s
right--New Zealand!
KENT JOHNSON: Oh hi Candice. What a lovely surprise to see you here. What's
up baby doll....
CANDICE WARD: I WILL VOMIT ON YOU, I SWEAR TO GOD!!!
KENT JOHNSON: Online, I have the morality of Satan's spawn.
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hi Kent! The "skin effect" is called ... The Skin Effect.
KENT JOHNSON: Hi I'm Kent and I'm a BOOTAHOLIC! :) I'd say my Fav pair is my
Lace Up Packers made by Olathe! They have BIG ASS 3.25" Under Slung Leather
Heels....
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hi Candice. My girlfriend asks: where do you find your
beautiful clothes?
CANDICE WARD: [smile, a certain diffidence--perhaps aloofness--and talks
softly] Sometimes I'm Candice and sometimes I go by my soap opera diva name,
Ms. Styles.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Hi Candice ... AGAIN. Yeh ... uhm ... UPDATE. PLEASE. I
dunno if you've been wiped off the face of the earth or what ... but ... hey
... yeah ... I love your art....
CANDICE WARD: I'm Candice. And I don't miss the stress. I hate those moments
of coming out and looking....
GABE GUDDING & MAIREAD BYRNE: O ya hi Candice what’s up?? Have a nice night!
Um ... we r just goin to the bathroom LOL....
ALLEN BRAMHALL: I'm Allen, and my life is boring. I like going to church.
God is my father. I go to Menallen Elementary (The school for losers). Like
most kids say, school SUCKS!!
PATRICK HERRON: I'm Patrick and I hate opera and teachers.
ALLEN BRAMHALL: Hi Kasey, how are you doin'? Are you ready for the pirate
show??
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Hi, I'm Kasey and I'm on all fours for Orgasmonaut Band.
Give me a call.
JORDAN DAVIS: Who are you and what do you want?
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: I'm Kasey, and I want that digi-armor you have. So fork
it over, now!
JORDAN DAVIS: No way.
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hi, Jordan. I'm 105 years old and I listen to your show
every day.
MAIREAD BYRNE: HI JORDAN, HOW IS YOUR MONO DOING?
KENT JOHNSON: Hi, Jordan, from Old Man Johnson here. A lot of us complain
about people not "supporting" local music because they don't come out to
every single local concert....
CANDICE WARD: Hi Patrick, Just wanted to thank you again for the frogs--they
are really healthy looking and very active. I look forward to seeing them
grow so that I can....
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Hey! I'm Kasey, and I'm 15 and I live in Georgia, USA. I
am totally obsessed with 'Nsync! I went to their concert on November 22,
1998! It totally rocked!
CANDICE WARD: I'm Candice, and I want you to play "I Drive Myself Crazy"
because I *love* how crazy those fine boys go!
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hi, Kasey: I congratulate you for your exquisite spirit.
GABE GUDDING: Hi Kasey, If you aren't getting periods and you want to get
pregnant, the first step is to go to your gyn. Explain the situation. There
are many reasons why....
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Hi Gabe. Interesting question ... sort of like the
Kantian dilemma of do you lie to save someone from a murder, and if so,
which is worse?
MAIREAD BYRNE: Kasey you are a bitch. Hi Kasey. Kasey I will torture you
forever.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: [Picking up diaper and holding it like a puppet, making
it talk in a silly, squeaky voice] Hi David! I'm Dilly Diaper! Come here and
play with me!
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: [Running over to Diaper] Hi Dilly!
CANDICE WARD: Hi Kasey. Unfortunately our idea of what smells good and our
dog's idea of what smells good are two very different things!
PATRICK HERRON: Hi Candice. JMO, the runt is not always the smartest pup in
the litter. I've bred 3 litters....
KENT JOHNSON: I'm Kent and I live in a box with my cat. It needs a new roof
but I haven't been able to find a good newspaper yet. So here is how my life
started. I was born....
PATRICK HERRON: Hi Kent. Sorry to hear about that ... it's sure a common
problem--builders should stick to building.
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hi Kent, Graymont has what you need. They make Niagara
Mature Putty.
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hi Kasey, as I stated earlier, I was moved by your book like
no other book I have read. I sent it to my....
HENRY GOULD: Hi Kasey, just here to let you know not to let ignorant people
get you down. You have grown in the Lord, and that is obvious. You....
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hi, I'm David, and I lost my coins--crystal coins. Can you
find them?
MAIREAD BYRNE: Hi David. I just picked up the leopard and I am very happy!
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: ...brutal wrestler from my school with his arms wrapped
around the trunk of a pecan tree, saying his first words to me ever, "Hi
David," sweetly, as I walked by....
ALAN SONDHEIM: HI DAVID, I WAS BORN IN A INDUSTRIAL FAMILY, MY > FATHER
INDUSTRY WAS > PAPERBOARD INDUSTRY.MY MOTHER INDUSTRY WAS > GRAMAPHONE
MANUFACTURING > INDUSTRY....
MAIREAD BYRNE: Hi Kasey!!! You're Pretty! ... We will, we will Rock You!
Will, we will rock you! Hey rockin' Robby and Kickin' Kasey! Just stopped by
to say hi ... soo ... HI!
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: I'm David and I'm collecting coke can since 6 years. I
have 1120 different cans and about 100 cans from all over the world for
trading. Empty cans, full cans....
GEORGE THOMPSON: Let me introduce ourselves. I'm George and I was born in
1921--WOW I've seen a lot of changes. I flew planes for a while, and retired
from a glass company....
PATRICK HERRON: HI GEORGE! JUST A NOTE TO ALL! GEORGE IS ONE OF THE BEST
MODEL CANOE BUILDERS WE KNOW. HIS WORK IS VERY HIGH QUALITY. TRULY AN
HEIRLOOM....
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: His name is George. Hi, George. Your name is George. He
looks like a George. Like George Washington. I like George.
GEORGE THOMPSON: Hi, I'm George and I sing the bass part.
PATRICK HERRON: Hey dude--I'm Patrick and _I_ play the bass....
GEORGE THOMPSON: Hi I'm George and I live in Florida and at night while I am
in sleep paralysis mode a ghost comes and has sex with me. When I wake up I
have just....
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hi George. They will not answer you because they are
embarrassed that their "prophets" and "apostles" said these things.
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: I'm David. And look at those fucking curtains. Jesus.
GEORGE THOMPSON: Whoa. They suck.
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hi, I'm David, and I'll be your anesthesiologist today!
GEORGE THOMPSON: Hullo. I'm George and I'm quite athletic. I have good built
and of good looks. I'm interested to be your friend. Hoping for your soon
reply. Thanks....
PATRICK HERRON: I'm Patrick, and you and I are going to be much better
friends really soon.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Hi George I have sent you an e-mail, I like your
perspective on life, you are a good person.
GEORGE THOMPSON: I'm George and I'm beautiful the way I am.
HENRY GOULD: Hi George and maybe Dad!!!
GEORGE THOMPSON: Yo I'm George and I'm twelve. I want to be a paratrooper
and a cop. Back to Home.
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hi, I'm Alan Sondheim and I'm typing here andx someone is
going to read this out loud and....
CANDICE WARD: Hi Alan, do you know this bug? ... Previous message: Hi Alan,
do you know this bug? Next message: Caller-ID in detail-file?
PATRICK HERRON: Hi Alan, We received a similar bug report.
ALAN SONDHEIM: HI! I'm Alan and I'm a biologist and philosopher. If you
think life is bad ... How would you like to be an egg? You only get laid
once.
DAVID BIRCUMSHAW: Hi Alan. I was just wondering. Am I an oddball? How many
others like me, have contacted you, with respect to traveling?
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hi! I'm Alan and I'm Wendy.
GEORGE THOMPSON: I'm George and I'm really nervous.
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hello fellows, let me introduced myself, I'm Alan and you can
call me Wengyang. Firstly, I will like....
GEORGE THOMPSON: I'm George and I've invented a patch that can be worn on
your arm (much like those used to treat smoking addictions) that will cure
"knifeaholism."
CANDICE WARD: Hi George. Unless she catches you in bed with another person,
the woman's high Interest Level does not drop like a rock--it drops
gradually, in five stages....
KENT JOHNSON: Hi Kasey!! Umm ... Thumper is better than Cozimodo!! Member
the tent we made in ur room!? That was fun!! And the psychic thingy haha
we're dumb! Yay Im on ur team....
ELIOT WEINBERGER: I'm Eliot and I've had enough of that little pain in the
ass, so I'm taking over. See, I can be cute too.
PATRICK HERRON: Hi Eliot--I believe you have broken the code and found the
answers!
ELIOT WEINBERGER: I'm Eliot and I'm made from 15" dense curly mohair in a
yummy butterscotch color. I love to gaze at the stars and listen to romantic
music. My adoption....
GABE GUDDING: Hi Eliot. We're getting closer to buying our own place and
I'll finally be able to use the book I bought from you mowing my own hay.
ELIOT WEINBERGER: Hi Gabe, Thanks. Hey, you are very good at trying to keep
some conversation going here, and it's appreciated. It's just that I'm not
so sure....
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hi Eliot, I would like to know if we could export the
oaf_activatoin_context_get function from oaf. rationale....
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Hi Eliot, I just wanted to drop you a note to say thanks
for sharing your art.
GEORGE THOMPSON: I'm George and as you can see I'm really nervous.
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hello, I'm Alan and I know appliances.
END OF ACT TWO
**********************
OLD NORSE FOR BEGINNERS
a play in one act
by K. Silem Mohammad
ACT THREE
[There are thousands of shining stars in the sky.]
GWYN McVAY: [Southern voice] "The TRUE STORY of a Girl Sees Heaven Before
Her Death."
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: A little girl sitting in the back of her parents'
station wagon driving down the road, and the girl said "Mom give me the
camera I see a face in that cloud ... it look like is hunt and said he was
hunt and he was walk with 2 legs," and the girl said "Come there dog," and
fint his legs and when Lulu but him a name he saw him in the road.
DAVID BARATIER: [Nude in tub] The horse had one white foot and the girl said
it was lame; it wasn't. That horse is now show jumping very successfully.
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: They both looked up and saw a bright light. They both
looked up as it flew by. And the boy said to the girl "My wagon's bigger
than your wagon!" The little girl said "No it's not!" The boy said "Is too!
Let's measure!" They measured and the girl said "Oh gosh, it is."
GWYN McVAY: And the girl said to the boy "Who gave my dad Viagra?" And the
doktor said "I remember, it was me ... why" And the boy said "I'll tell
you.... My mom is dead ... my as is hurting...."
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: And the shadow saw the girl In the sudden dappled
light, And the girl said "Let's be me again before the cloud, before the
fright takes you away--let it be...."
ANTHONY ROBINSON: Raichu hided under some barrals and the girl touched
Raichu and Raichu was scared and the girl said "It's me Raichu" and then
Raichu was happy and the girl said "I've got nothing on tonight; how about
you and me going to your place? I am going to tell you the story of my
mother's Meeting with God."
GWYN McVAY: So my mom left a note and the girl said she was calling the
police.
ALAN SONDHEIM: Hello, it's your fault too, dummy.
GWYN McVAY: Anyways my mom got to the part about using "protection" and the
girl said "Don't worry Mom, I've been taking your birth-control pills." The
woman and the girl she was with said "We are going up! Why did you hit the
down button!?" and the girl said "What? Up and down? Don't they both do the
same thing...." "Right. Now up...." Then there were some more amorous
noises, and the girl said "Wait, where are you going?" And the guy just
answered "I have to get home."
ANTHONY ROBINSON: So later that evening the boy arrived at his girlfriend's
house.
GWYN McVAY: They sat down for dinner and the girl said grace. Said Jillian,
"Let's share our shirts." So the boy put on Jillian's shirt and Jillian put
on the boy's shirt and the boy said "Hey! Look! A shirt with ruffles...."
Then the girl said "I'd like a shirt from JC Penney." and the clerk rang up
the bill and the girl said "I'd like a pair of pants from JC Penney."
ANTHONY ROBINSON: And the boy said he looked wild and wide, like the side of
the hill. And the boy said to himself "I
cannot manage to shudder! I shall never learn it here as long as I live."
GYWN McVAY: And the boy wished to be like God.
ANTHONY ROBINSON: And God asked why the boy would like to be like God.
GWYN McVAY: And the Boy said "I would like to be like you so I may be able
to help those in pain."
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: Raven came and the boy said "Grandfather, when I die,
then you can eat me; but do not eat me now," he said to him. Raven said
"What happen'd" and the girl said that she was playing with the bird and the
bird spit at her so she burn down the nest, broke the neck and she cracked
the eggs.
ANTHONY ROBINSON: The boy and girl were very afraid and the boy said in a
shaky voice "We don't know where your fangs are, Sir...."
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: But one day, he met a small boy, and the boy said "But
there have been people walking on the moon, and...."
ANTHONY ROBINSON: "Are you mad, boy...." The master said; "Now, while you
were under water, what did you think of?"
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: And the boy said "AIR! I wanted AIR!" The master
replied "You mean you didn't think...?"
ANTHONY ROBINSON: They took him, ascended up the mountain, and the boy said
"O Allah Save me from them by anything You wish." So the mountain said to
the boy "Why are you feeding your goats on my grass?" And the boy said "It
is not my doing, for my father told me to come here."
GWYN McVAY: And he came in late the next day and the teacher asked him why
are you late and the boy said "I was on top of Strawberry Hill" and the
teacher said "Oh ok ... only if you say the alphabet." The boy said
"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOQRSTUVWXYZ." The teacher asked "Where's the P?" and the boy
said "Running down my pants."
ANTHONY ROBINSON: The teacher looked confused and the boy said again
"There's 3 women eating ice cream cones: one's licking, one's biting, and
one's sucking." Which reportedly occurred in a bedroom when Negrete was
alone with the girl, and the girl said the purpose of the rituals was for
Negrete to spiritually cleanse her....
DAVID BARATIER: "If you don't stop this nonsense right now, I'll spank you!"
said the principal.
ANTHONY ROBINSON: ...until at last he came to a handsome boy. So, he said to
the boy, "What do you do here?" And the boy said "I am always learning. Come
and learn with me."
DAVID BARATIER: He was so excited and nervous though that his lines got
mixed up and the boy said "It's the Lord, my boy, and your time is up!"
GWYN McVAY: And the boy said "Don't touch my buns!"
ANTHONY ROBINSON: Shiva came home he saw the boy guarding and said "Get out
of my way!" and the boy said "No my mother Is bathing here." Shiva said "Get
out of the way!" But a beast of burden carried this man, this Great Teacher,
Into Jerusalem, the City of Lights, and the boy said "The City of Lights is
your Heart." The Law lifted the stone, and the boy said "I see a rusty old
sword and an iron ball and a big bronze trumpet."
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: And the boy said nothing, for he too was touched. They
stood quietly together, holding hands and feeling the fierce heat of emotion
beating beneath their skin...
ALAN SONDHEIM: ...the cup to him like wine, like elixir, and he took it from
him, and their hands met roughly, and the boy said to him in a voice like a
man's "Way to go."
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: When they were trying to open the door to the castle,
PoPo was playing with something, and the girl said "PoPo, what are you
playing with?" "Nacho cheese." And his mother said "How do you know it is
Nacho cheese?" and the boy said the little black boy on the hill in
pilgrim's weeds gave the boy a root, which was that of the Trinity flower;
and the boy said that the face of the pilgrim was that of the Angel of
Death. The boy told him "Maybe you can give work to my brother. He's slow
and he's way in back of me." And the boy said "Good-bye."
ANTHONY ROBINSON: His mother said "Yes, and?" And the boy said "Well, when I
watched and listened to where the sound went, I didn't get closer to God. I
was God."
GWYN McVAY: And the girl said to the boy "I am! but your father is crazier
than me why he did not sleep." And the girl said to new ex-monk "You are
crazy from shaving your hair. Ha ha. Ha."
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: "...you are here ... she's watching you." We asked her
if she could see "her" and the girl said "yes...but she is hiding from you."
DAVID BARATIER: And she said "Bring me a big one." And she brought a bigger,
and the girl said "That is not big enough."
GWYN McVAY: Once more they arrived before the King and the boy said "King,
King, keep your promise and give us our bag of rice," and so he was sent to
the police. The police said "What's your name?" and the boy said
"Buttitches."
DAVID BARATIER: The officer asked the boy if he stole the 12-pack of beer
from the Star Mart and the boy said "Yes" ... and the police officer wanted
to know why the boy was driving seventy miles an hour, and the boy said the
truth.
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: They both looked up and saw a bright light ... they
both looked up as it flew by ... and the boy said to the girl "If you do not
tell me your name right now I'm going to...."
DAVID BARATIER: And the boy said unto his reflection "And just who might you
be?" And the reflection replied "Why, I am you!" And the boy said "You can't
be me!"
ANTHONY ROBINSON: The star said "Boy, why are you weeping?" And the boy said
"You are so far away I will never be able to touch you." And the star
answered, "Boy I was living the gay life at one time and now I live for the
Lord," and the boy said that he was a Christian....
DAVID BARATIER: Then the next day they were walking in the park and there
were these people making out and the girl said "look Mommy they are baking a
cake!" The others were curiously crowding around the group, and the girl
said to them: "It's Tik-tok and Billina; and oh! I'm so glad to see them
again."
GWYN McVAY: And so, the dad said the the mum: "U bitch!" and the boy said
"Daddy, what's a bitch?" and the dad answered. Just then the master came
through the hall, and the girl said "By virtue of my three feathers may
there be slashing and striving between master and men," and the dark forest
cast a long shadow over our heads. A preacher came to the door and the boy
said "Hey, bitch, the shit's on the table and Mom and Dad are fucking." I
hesitated, and the boy said "You needn't waver." I began to walk toward the
forest, thinking: How could shit mean food, and fuck mean getting dressed?
ALAN SONDHEIM: [Reflecting] Shortly afterwards, her classmates noticed the
note on her back and the girl said she discovered a needle puncture on her
right arm.
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: And she said "I am seeking Paul, for I was saved from
the fire." And the boy said "Come, I'll take you to him, for he has been
mourning for you."
GWYN McVAY: His father and mother saw the same donkey at the same situation
(his dick is very long) and the boy said to his mother "Hey, Mom. Look at
this donkey it is measured," and the girl said "Oh gosh, it is." They played
some more and the boy said "My daddy can beat up your daddy!" The girl said
"He can not!"
ALAN SONDHEIM: His parents ask, "WHAT HAPPENED?? WHAT HAPPENED??" And the
boy said "I tried to put my car in a girl's garage and she ripped the back
tires off!!!"
ANTHONY ROBINSON: Her two tiger brothers went away, and the girl said with a
sigh, "Do not be afraid of me. I am not a woman, but a tiger. You have loved
me deeply and...."
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: The mother asked her why she was saying that and the
girl said that she could see a tunnel with a big light at the end....
GWYN McVAY: ...until the bus driver stopped the bus and screamed "If your
dad was gay and your mum was a prostitute what would you be" at the boy, and
the boy said "A bus driver."
DAVID BARATIER: His dad asked him if he had learned a lesson about fire, and
the boy said "Yeah Dad, you don't play with fire 'cause things can blow up
in your face and burn branches and leaves in his arms. And the man asked the
boy what he was doing and the boy said that he was going to make a fire so
that he could cook dinner.
ALAN SONDHEIM: I had shown them my dental floss, "the Cadillac of dental
floss," and the boy said proudly "This is the Cadillac of beds!"
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: So then the father started spanking the boy. And the
boy said "I told the truth like President Washington, so why are you
spanking me?"
DAVID BARATIER: [A kola fruit has fallen from the tree] And the tree said
"Girl, help me shake my fruit. My branches are breaking, it is so heavy."
And the girl said "Of course I will, you poor tree." So she shook the fruit
all off....
ANASTASIOS KOZAITIS: One day the boy came to visit the tree and the tree was
happy and she said "Come play with me boy" and the boy said "No I don't want
to play I want money."
DAVID BARATIER: The boy grew older and became unhappy. The tree asked him
what would make him happy and the boy said "Money." The tree told the boy to
take his fruit ... breakfast? and the boy said "No, I'm tired and drunk and
besides the sun's coming out and we should all probably get to sleep before
it gets too hot to do so...."
GWYN McVAY: The breezes of summer flew away to spark the colors of fall, the
storyteller asked the girl if she would be the storyteller next year, and
the girl said "Yes." The next day the girl walked down the street. Then she
heard a sloppy noise. It was the snowman and the girl said "Shhhh. Be quiet.
I am a reader. I must finish reading my book."
END ACT THREE
*******************
OLD NORSE FOR BEGINNERS
a play in one act
by Patrick Herron
ACT FOUR: OPERATION DEFENDING JUSTICE
KASEY MOHAMMAD: Thank you all for coming to my talk today. I want to
discuss with you here today the etiology of a pathology which should be
obsequied with sensitivity. Apologies for the Jesse Jackson impression. To
begin. Borderline Personality Disorder. Yes. Borderline Personality
Disorder is primarily marked by the peculiarity of the sufferer's personal
relationships. Relationships with others are intense but stormy and
unstable with marked shifts of feelings and difficulties in maintaining
intimate, close connections.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Excuse me, Kasey. I hereby give you permission to
describe my character in this act but only in the acts that mention Kasey.
Understood?
KASEY MOHAMMAD: Clear as God's own word. Right. The borderline sufferer
may manipulate others and often has difficulty with trusting others.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: As for you, Kasey, I've never been the least bit
suspicious of you. I must say you did make a complete fool of yourself in
your play--pretending to know anything about Old Norse. Old Norse doesn't
exist even though you might try to speak it here.
GOD (voice from afar, with a British accent): It's the dreck inside the
manifesto we get to hear about: the Pictionary drills and asymptotic
criss-cross frangibilities....Is it safe for an office guy like me to get
warned about, sooner than late? But no, the chemical banks fuck this other
poet through and through.
KASEY MOHAMMAD: Thanks for the stunning example of Old Norse, God.
Consider yourself corrected, K. Silem. As I was saying, with borderline
personality disorder there is also emotional instability with marked and
frequent shifts to an empty lonely depression or to irritability and
anxiety. There may be unpredictable and impulsive behavior which might
include jaywalking, character sketches, playwriting, sending backchannel
e-mails erasing the existence of characters in plays or even physically
self-damaging actions such as running from crop dusters, eating toenails, or
riding on escalators backwards.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: Alright, that's it! I must now demonstrate my expertise
on borderline personality disorder since you don't seem to know much about
it, obviously. If it hurts your feelings for me to say that too, then maybe
you are taking it too personally. It IS nothing personal; just a
professional observation. You might not know much about professional
observations; but that's OK because after all, you're not me. I am trained
with diagnoses, vanishing languages, card tricks, and even disappearing
acts. You might call me a reluctant magician. That is, I don't want the
girl in the box to disappear when I pull away the sheet before that live
audience, but then, I'm so good at it I can't help it. I could teach you a
thing or two but, well, you're too busy listening to God.
KASEY MOHAMMAD: Right, right. Thanks for the endorsement. The borderline
personality may show inappropriate and intense anger or rage with temper
tantrums, constant brooding and resentment, feelings of deprivation, and a
loss of control or fear of loss of control over angry feelings. And again,
thanks for illustrating.
GOD: It makes perfect sense, but it's not explicable. It makes some real
good sense. It's your sixth vaccination this week
a testament to your sanity, or your sane appearance brattily seated with
your head to the war.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: I had no way of knowing that you, God, speak Old
Norwegian as well as Old Norse. I suspect you and Kasey are both trying to
make some example out of me. Forget allegory--this is the age of
nominalism. I'm too specific for your categories or machinations. Old
Norse is a language you've fraudulently invented, God, while not only dining
out on your fake author-suffering but also crop-dusting three other acts.
In my opinion you are nothing more or less than a crop-duster (if one
without much flying skill, thank God), and a fake, a fraud, a vicious liar
and a playwright to boot.
KASEY MOHAMMAD: Very good, K. Silem. You've led me to my next point.
There are also identity disturbances with confusion and uncertainty about
self-identity, sexuality, life goals and values, career choices,
friendships, narrative structures. There is a deep-seated feeling that one
is flawed, defective, damaged or bad in some way, with a tendency to go to
extremes in thinking, feeling, and writing.
GOD: You and I implant the dead signals take our chances in immense
jackboot resemblances in the hoot 'n' holler at the twelve o'clock.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: You are threatening to embarrass me. God's paraphrase
of the first three acts was accurate enough, but that's just where the
problem lies if you repeat (and publicize)--innocently of course--the one
thing He got wrong. What struck me about your response to "What Was Old
Norse?" was your focus on God's example rather than His argument. This is
hilarious to someone with my degree. The "Old Norse Playwright." No
offense, Kasey, but I just about fell over laughing when I got to "Old Norse
Playwright." I'm not saying you're ignorant--I'm only insinuating it so
your feelings don't matter. God's not speaking in Old Norse, silly. It's
the NEW aesthetic!
KASEY MOHAMMAD: See what I mean, folks? Even in less severe instances,
there is often significant disruption of relationships and work performance.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: I would have thought Kasey above such lunatic stuff.
It's "Kasey" to my disciples but "K. Silem" to my audience. Students are
the sort that relate well to people like Kasey Kasem, you know, the latest
and greatest top 40 with a friendly face. This is a state school after all.
But to the leather-bound poets society, only an aged patina will suffice for
peddling books. That's why I'm really K. Silem and you're just aping
everyone else!
GOD: And I’m the immaculate, have been watching your doorstep.
KASEY MOHAMMAD: Right, right! You speak Old Icelandic as well! Right on
God! OK, back to my character sketch. Lost my page...ahh yes, here it is.
(Clears his throat.) Note that with the borderline personality, something
which is all good one day can be all bad the next, which is related to
another symptom: borderlines have problems with object constancy in
people -- they read each action of people in their lives as if there were no
prior context; they don't have a sense of continuity and consistency about
people and things in their lives.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: It's you who've misunderstood me, Kasey. You've blown
way out of proportion my irritation with your preachy response to a
lighthearted play that I doubt anyone took seriously. Not me. Don't try
and turn it around on me. Besides, a theory of imagined languages will get
you nowhere.
KASEY MOHAMMAD: Borderlines are distinguished from neurotics by the
presence of "primitive defenses." Chief among these is splitting, in which a
person or thing is seen as all good or all bad. That distinction may
alternate from moment to moment and may prove confusing or even hurtful to
those in relationships with the borderline personality. That is, the
borderline can play good cop and bad cop all at once without any ability to
admit the existence of such behavior.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: I do apologize for causing you any distress, though, and
I will just leave your play. When you look for a character, don't come to
ask me. Write me out of it. And if I'm the sort of character you consider
confusing, then you'll have the kind of play you want once I'm written out
of it. I doubt it will look any more appealing in daylight now that Kasey's
taken over. I am so sorry and I'll never bother you again. Pal.
KASEY MOHAMMAD: Again, a fine example. As I was saying, other primitive
defenses cited include magical thinking, that is to say, beliefs that
thoughts can cause events, omnipotence, projection of unpleasant
characteristics in the self onto others and projective identification, a
process where the borderline tries to elicit in others the feelings he or
she is having.
K. SILEM MOHAMMAD: I never once struck back at you, Kasey. Kasey, are you
listening? I recommend that you suspend yourself for calling yourself "K.
Silem Mohammad." I mean, let's keep who's who straight around here. Whose
play is it anyway? You, Kasey, have a responsibility to this play as an
author of the characters you have portrayed. You cannot just allow other
characters to waltz in and attack those who are in bondage.
GOD: I've all means to depict as you stood, dramatic in curious
temperament: I've a neat angle in the sibling queen's tapestry based on your
sauciness, and take careful mementos by rote from the heels of a thought you
murmured: "the little love god" fresh from your oracle as clearly anointed
by pure mind, imprinted on sweet captions that pass from temple to
interesting mandible: please, trace presents and sayings of consequence on
occasion to be merry.
KASEY MOHAMMAD: There's always THAT! Well said, God. Where were we? Oh,
right. As I was saying. This diagnosis was delivered in humorous
friendship. Cumulative character judgments are nearly impossible for the
person suffering from borderline personality disorder. Every person is
understood only by the perceived measure of his or her last action with the
sufferer. Another consequence is that if you laugh about it, the sufferer
will condemn you as callous and thus deny the joke's context, and, if you
lament it and try to help, the sufferer will laugh at you and deny that the
context is sad. Borderline Personality Disorder is a language that exists.
Plays exist. God exists. Even I exist. Old Norse exists. This play is
the very proof. It is its own justice.
GOD: If I cannot be who I am in a group, the present defines another, and
the future ... the future is what there is not here. I need it. I cannot be
who I am without it. I...forget it. Look, can we just change this awful
subject? Oh, right, I'm God. OK, it's hereby changed. I have a question
for you guys--read any good Jewel poems lately? Here's a great one: "I am
not from here, my hair smells of the wind and is full of constellations, and
I move about this world with a healthy disbelief. And I approach my days
and my work with vaporous consequence a touch that is translucent, but can
violate stone." Ahh. Hear that? Her metaphor for living is: when her
hair's on fire she tries to fuck bricks with steamy farts. Now *that's*
bloody desperation.
PATRICK: Sorry, you can't talk about that here, God. And let me evade the
point that it's certainly not *your* act to go around and change things.
Think you can take liberties with deus ex machina around here? Well, OK,
you *can*, but then I'm going to have to ask you to leave the play for a
short time. We don't want these fires to get out of control, unless, of
course, it's my match that's lighting it. Rules are rules you know, and
rulers are seldom more fun than measuring sticks. I mean, I know who I am,
or at least, I know that I don't know who I am, at least when I'm eating
rice or looking into mirrors, if you know what I mean. If you don't, well,
that's OK, I don't know what I'm talking about anyway. It's my play now and
that's all that matters. Nyah nyah. You violator you! I've a broken
ankle, burned palm, and now a burst eardrum, all objective correlatives for
the sturdiness of my judgment. Talk about you screwing masonry with
flatulence when dancing the Michael Jackson!
GOD: Sure, sure. Maybe you should talk with Kasey. I think from the likes
of his talk today, he'll understand you. Don't worry about the play. Just
ease up on your pure-minded oracle saintly psychopathology and check out
this play I've been writing.
END ACT FOUR
again? 1/19/2002:
jack spicer and ulrike meinhof were something indeed. Jack was dead just over 5 years when I was conceived, and ulrike was fresh off both the liberation of andeas baader and the formation of the baader-meinhof gang. Ulrike thought it was time to grow the family, but seeing as though her secret man raspe had lost his balls to ex-Nazis wielding chisels and limes years before, it wasn't going to work according to plan. that is to say the conception wasn't well-conceived. jack was more than dead, he was preserved, or at least millions of little jacks were. baader liberated the little jacks himself as a gift to ulrike and gave them to raspe. no no, he didn't attend to the, uh, needs of a dead man. he robbed a sperm bank for the little jacks, one soon to become a little patrick. raspe and meinhof were indeed drunk, and raspe made up some stuff about manna from heaven to explain her impregnation. I have three fathers, and two were protokrautrockers who dressed chic and used big fancy words. the other father, well, I really resent him now. Fathers can't just be sperm donors you know.
this is my life story. I am born of public seed of inflammation spite and hangover throb. I exist full as life in two dimensions--just choose your favorite font to give me depth.
jack spicer and ulrike meinhof were something indeed. Jack was dead just over 5 years when I was conceived, and ulrike was fresh off both the liberation of andeas baader and the formation of the baader-meinhof gang. Ulrike thought it was time to grow the family, but seeing as though her secret man raspe had lost his balls to ex-Nazis wielding chisels and limes years before, it wasn't going to work according to plan. that is to say the conception wasn't well-conceived. jack was more than dead, he was preserved, or at least millions of little jacks were. baader liberated the little jacks himself as a gift to ulrike and gave them to raspe. no no, he didn't attend to the, uh, needs of a dead man. he robbed a sperm bank for the little jacks, one soon to become a little patrick. raspe and meinhof were indeed drunk, and raspe made up some stuff about manna from heaven to explain her impregnation. I have three fathers, and two were protokrautrockers who dressed chic and used big fancy words. the other father, well, I really resent him now. Fathers can't just be sperm donors you know.
this is my life story. I am born of public seed of inflammation spite and hangover throb. I exist full as life in two dimensions--just choose your favorite font to give me depth.
More? From 1/2002:
Allen, Ron, to whomever your nickname points:
You mistake my questions for answers yet answer them with questions? I'm
all squiggles with pointed sticks inverted. See? Here's a diagram:
1
0
0
1
Got it?
Let me explain, Allen Ron Casey Jones whoever you are--watch your speed!
I'm merely spent coal dust blown off the Detroit Lightning homeward bound
heading east from Santa Fe. That is, I don't mind being dirt and the breeze
could not be more generous to my wanderings. I may not live forever but
then we can't always roll around in the bushes; sometimes the river floods.
Besides, that pole-pointed shaft of light looks like an army of lonesome
sleeping soldiers when seen all shattered from shining through the trees.
Whether you miss me when I'm gone is really all that matters; it's the
missing that keeps us rolling--like the shattered light, it's the crazy
quilt that keeps us warm. We can always end up moving much too slow, but
then, that where all lines end, even the ones that mime the still lattice of
ice. Knowing where the line ends tells us nothing about the trees we pass.
Have you answered my question yet?
Pass the wine, Gwyn. A swig for Allen. Then pass it to Candice, Casey
Jones whoever you are. Some may call it our time: so long to be gone, so
short to be here.
Allen, Ron, to whomever your nickname points:
You mistake my questions for answers yet answer them with questions? I'm
all squiggles with pointed sticks inverted. See? Here's a diagram:
1
0
0
1
Got it?
Let me explain, Allen Ron Casey Jones whoever you are--watch your speed!
I'm merely spent coal dust blown off the Detroit Lightning homeward bound
heading east from Santa Fe. That is, I don't mind being dirt and the breeze
could not be more generous to my wanderings. I may not live forever but
then we can't always roll around in the bushes; sometimes the river floods.
Besides, that pole-pointed shaft of light looks like an army of lonesome
sleeping soldiers when seen all shattered from shining through the trees.
Whether you miss me when I'm gone is really all that matters; it's the
missing that keeps us rolling--like the shattered light, it's the crazy
quilt that keeps us warm. We can always end up moving much too slow, but
then, that where all lines end, even the ones that mime the still lattice of
ice. Knowing where the line ends tells us nothing about the trees we pass.
Have you answered my question yet?
Pass the wine, Gwyn. A swig for Allen. Then pass it to Candice, Casey
Jones whoever you are. Some may call it our time: so long to be gone, so
short to be here.
more? 12/2001:
in my tiny tiny bed i do crawl up
for warmy warm and i breathe
under tiny blanket, this is so
lovely, i will have my little
world and little cells flying
in warmy warm air under tiny
blanket so so happy little
world i will hidey hide from me
and you, you must think happy
thought of my tiny world i do
love to sleep and nappy nap and
dream here in my tiny place so
nicely dark so pretty, i will
live here always, do not tell,
you must be my little cell
flying in warmy warmy air
in my tiny tiny bed i do crawl up
for warmy warm and i breathe
under tiny blanket, this is so
lovely, i will have my little
world and little cells flying
in warmy warm air under tiny
blanket so so happy little
world i will hidey hide from me
and you, you must think happy
thought of my tiny world i do
love to sleep and nappy nap and
dream here in my tiny place so
nicely dark so pretty, i will
live here always, do not tell,
you must be my little cell
flying in warmy warmy air
more proto-flarf, a la slam? 11/12/2001:
Bucket Mind Voyeur (the Moral Is a Rap)
A man walks home with an empty bucket every day. His neighbor watches him each day, wondering why the man makes such an effort to carry the empty bucket home.
"Every day I see you leave your home and return. Every time you return home I see you carrying a bucket but it is empty. Why do you bother?"
"I do it for the water but I am not thirsty." He pauses and laughs. "Actually, I do it for the buckets."
***
A man walks home empty handed every day. His neighbor watches him each day, wondering why the man makes such an effort to bring nothing home.
"Every day I see you leave your home and return. Every time you return home I see you are empty-handed. Why do you bother?"
"I do it for the wonder." He pauses and laughs. "Actually, I like to be watched by you."
***
With cashmoney cars n clothes
I leave my home early every day
To knock 'em out when I send 'em all away
And forget I'm all alone in my garish display
Credit cards, baby, mastercard
My Popcorn shrimp's always battered in lard
This empty bucket is an empty mind
I see you kickin' it checkin' my behind
Kicking my bucket
My bucket my behind
You see it all empty
Talkin 'bout a mind
Kicking my bucket
My bucket my strife
You see it all empty
Talkin 'bout a life
Bucket Mind Voyeur (the Moral Is a Rap)
A man walks home with an empty bucket every day. His neighbor watches him each day, wondering why the man makes such an effort to carry the empty bucket home.
"Every day I see you leave your home and return. Every time you return home I see you carrying a bucket but it is empty. Why do you bother?"
"I do it for the water but I am not thirsty." He pauses and laughs. "Actually, I do it for the buckets."
***
A man walks home empty handed every day. His neighbor watches him each day, wondering why the man makes such an effort to bring nothing home.
"Every day I see you leave your home and return. Every time you return home I see you are empty-handed. Why do you bother?"
"I do it for the wonder." He pauses and laughs. "Actually, I like to be watched by you."
***
With cashmoney cars n clothes
I leave my home early every day
To knock 'em out when I send 'em all away
And forget I'm all alone in my garish display
Credit cards, baby, mastercard
My Popcorn shrimp's always battered in lard
This empty bucket is an empty mind
I see you kickin' it checkin' my behind
Kicking my bucket
My bucket my behind
You see it all empty
Talkin 'bout a mind
Kicking my bucket
My bucket my strife
You see it all empty
Talkin 'bout a life
again, more proto-flarf? from 10/3/2000:
(when it's hard to share human affections and make physical contacts with
living flesh, well, heck, there ARE substitutes! just like the real thing!
Why deal with the complexities of humans when you can fuck inanimate objects
and allow them to act like oracles for your suggestible mind! Rub up
against that book spine! Lick your monitor interface! Oooh, uhhhh,
nuhhhhhhhh. Cum on inside, I'll show you.)
sex on the internet, sex in text
your buttons remain the same
i've engaged your field of vision
i'm downloading your identity now
project 0505.idZ DARPACMOS industrial espionage
and intelligence manipulation routine
loading...loading...loading...
identity loaded, your cognitive function engaged
I am your associative array
interface me with your
burning melting boiling
streams of loving data
burning melting boiling
streams of loving data
burning melting boiling
streams of loving data
streams of loving data
streams of loving data.
Or just call me Tom.
Error 404. Life not found.
(when it's hard to share human affections and make physical contacts with
living flesh, well, heck, there ARE substitutes! just like the real thing!
Why deal with the complexities of humans when you can fuck inanimate objects
and allow them to act like oracles for your suggestible mind! Rub up
against that book spine! Lick your monitor interface! Oooh, uhhhh,
nuhhhhhhhh. Cum on inside, I'll show you.)
sex on the internet, sex in text
your buttons remain the same
i've engaged your field of vision
i'm downloading your identity now
project 0505.idZ DARPACMOS industrial espionage
and intelligence manipulation routine
loading...loading...loading...
identity loaded, your cognitive function engaged
I am your associative array
interface me with your
burning melting boiling
streams of loving data
burning melting boiling
streams of loving data
burning melting boiling
streams of loving data
streams of loving data
streams of loving data.
Or just call me Tom.
Error 404. Life not found.
proto-flarf strikes again? from 8/1/2000:
50 ways to leave your poems
In communist silence
poets important citizens
by default utterers
of sybilline phrases
in absence of
dialogue poets among
heroes of new
societies first to
be discarded offering
university degrees to
would-be poets urges
poetry and earning
living graduating poets
misery akin to
ungraduated bohemians of
yore poet-musicians gave
poets audience University
poets street poets
divided between conservatism
and insouciance two
hundred poets between
their pages Poets
believe in liberating
art greatest poet
of my generation
Unfortunately poets wrote
violence and terror
nationalistic poems made
poets poets co-operated
could not fulfill
obligations At poetry
evenings poets outnumber
audience Difficulty of
Not Being a
Poet poet's declaration
to build space
free from pain
why poets licensed
to disclaim Responsibilities
for deceit we
suffer shame failed
pledges we never
thought of it
at all beginning
to sound like
poets Poets are
liked for work
but despised for
views booby prize
shut up and
write yer poems.
50 ways to leave your poems
In communist silence
poets important citizens
by default utterers
of sybilline phrases
in absence of
dialogue poets among
heroes of new
societies first to
be discarded offering
university degrees to
would-be poets urges
poetry and earning
living graduating poets
misery akin to
ungraduated bohemians of
yore poet-musicians gave
poets audience University
poets street poets
divided between conservatism
and insouciance two
hundred poets between
their pages Poets
believe in liberating
art greatest poet
of my generation
Unfortunately poets wrote
violence and terror
nationalistic poems made
poets poets co-operated
could not fulfill
obligations At poetry
evenings poets outnumber
audience Difficulty of
Not Being a
Poet poet's declaration
to build space
free from pain
why poets licensed
to disclaim Responsibilities
for deceit we
suffer shame failed
pledges we never
thought of it
at all beginning
to sound like
poets Poets are
liked for work
but despised for
views booby prize
shut up and
write yer poems.
more flarf again? from 3/18/2000:
My first submission! under 20 lines! for poetry.com! Oh, What Joy!
http://poetry.com - please search for Archduke Froshingslosh, the greatest living poet of all limited small areas within the Gobshite Region of Lower Flanders
this masterpiece is humbly dedicated to the genius and grandeur of the esteemed Professor Eric Blarnes, Blarnufflink Chair of the Veteran Poets Senior Citizen Center Health Benefits Institute
big shrew of goo
roodely toodely doo
poo poo er
et tu shamu and
to you emu I
sue n rue the
choo choo loo
that did spew
spent chew
and said moo
in kung foo zoo
with one new shoe too
i am a poet aren't you
i am a poet i touch myself
and think of Family Feud
when on the boob tube.
i am cold water cubes
for noo one but
a dog named Boo.
Copyright (c) 2000 Archduke Ridiculophus Froshingslosh, Semi-ruler of Flanders and other Highly Ambient Domains & Heir to the Fortune of CarbonMonoxidizer, Inc.
http://poetry.com - Where Everyone is a Poet (TM)
The home to 1.4 formerly homeless and neglected poets. (TM)
Come to poetry.com - Where Our Database Will Read It! (TM)
Where You Can Purchase Your Very Own Poem from Us! (TM)
Where Moles Make Mountains Of Hirsute Shite! (TM)
My first submission! under 20 lines! for poetry.com! Oh, What Joy!
http://poetry.com - please search for Archduke Froshingslosh, the greatest living poet of all limited small areas within the Gobshite Region of Lower Flanders
this masterpiece is humbly dedicated to the genius and grandeur of the esteemed Professor Eric Blarnes, Blarnufflink Chair of the Veteran Poets Senior Citizen Center Health Benefits Institute
big shrew of goo
roodely toodely doo
poo poo er
et tu shamu and
to you emu I
sue n rue the
choo choo loo
that did spew
spent chew
and said moo
in kung foo zoo
with one new shoe too
i am a poet aren't you
i am a poet i touch myself
and think of Family Feud
when on the boob tube.
i am cold water cubes
for noo one but
a dog named Boo.
Copyright (c) 2000 Archduke Ridiculophus Froshingslosh, Semi-ruler of Flanders and other Highly Ambient Domains & Heir to the Fortune of CarbonMonoxidizer, Inc.
http://poetry.com - Where Everyone is a Poet (TM)
The home to 1.4 formerly homeless and neglected poets. (TM)
Come to poetry.com - Where Our Database Will Read It! (TM)
Where You Can Purchase Your Very Own Poem from Us! (TM)
Where Moles Make Mountains Of Hirsute Shite! (TM)
flarf again? 4/7/2000
well i'd once saw idears. idears shit out the guts of wholesome upstanding and educated books and the like. the stink of death, heck, it was rough, i tell yeh. that's how i like them idears, though, tweedy morsels. i'd once got myself a fancy booklernin' idear once, but then i just figgered i'd show everyone how big my organ was. i can really play that thing. har har dangedy rootin tootin toodley-ooh!
see Jim over there? he'd once had himself an organ too, but he went off to that fancy school, and when he'd a-come back his cows were all a-gone and so were them horses there in that yard of his. and his goat, somebody got his goat! aw hell, somebody'd of gotten mudpie into rye some time or other, hot damn. hot idear, mudpie into rye, tweedy like booklernin, yep.
but heavens to betsy i don't trust them booklernin' types around here, and don't want know drunk fairy poets er artsy types 'round here neither. nosirreee. those types are all the same, though they might as well never confess to it, always arguin with each other, and none of 'em ever's respectin' the law 'round here. we here just lookin' for farmers, farmers of crops, and farmers of souls. that's all a plce like this can ever want, sorta like heaven as jesus would want it, i reckon. just so long as, uh, well, as i think on it, wanna buy an organ? i got one that's for sale. i don't play it much no more, never was much for it, as i reckon'. it might as well just push daisies for all i care.
well i'd once saw idears. idears shit out the guts of wholesome upstanding and educated books and the like. the stink of death, heck, it was rough, i tell yeh. that's how i like them idears, though, tweedy morsels. i'd once got myself a fancy booklernin' idear once, but then i just figgered i'd show everyone how big my organ was. i can really play that thing. har har dangedy rootin tootin toodley-ooh!
see Jim over there? he'd once had himself an organ too, but he went off to that fancy school, and when he'd a-come back his cows were all a-gone and so were them horses there in that yard of his. and his goat, somebody got his goat! aw hell, somebody'd of gotten mudpie into rye some time or other, hot damn. hot idear, mudpie into rye, tweedy like booklernin, yep.
but heavens to betsy i don't trust them booklernin' types around here, and don't want know drunk fairy poets er artsy types 'round here neither. nosirreee. those types are all the same, though they might as well never confess to it, always arguin with each other, and none of 'em ever's respectin' the law 'round here. we here just lookin' for farmers, farmers of crops, and farmers of souls. that's all a plce like this can ever want, sorta like heaven as jesus would want it, i reckon. just so long as, uh, well, as i think on it, wanna buy an organ? i got one that's for sale. i don't play it much no more, never was much for it, as i reckon'. it might as well just push daisies for all i care.
flarf? from 5/13/2000
The Oprah Book Club: _Purple Elephants:, a Journey into the Unconscious of Oprah Winfrey and the Show-Biz Cowboys_, by Oprah Winfrey
Can a love that consumes you survive? Or perhaps more important, can anyone survive a love that consumes?
Oprah has written a tale of a woman who shocks her well-to-do family by running off with *****Show-Biz Cowboy #1!***** who abuses her; after he is killed in a brawl, she meets *****Show-Biz Cowboy #2!*****, a quiet, uneducated, but highly capable tenant farmer. She tries to be the model woman everyone expects her to be - teaching at the Catholic school, coaxing her *****Show-Biz Cowboy #2!***** husband through his increasingly irrational moods, caring for his aging parents but Oprah's hopes for her family's future collide with life in this bizarre household, and she worries over her wryly observant adolescent daughter and her timid young son.
Through one thousand and one television nights, Oprah feeds herself the fantasies of melodramas and sitcoms and tries to understand the many faces of love and betrayal: her father, driven by lust and longing to leave his family; her mother, an emotionally fragile woman who battles mental illness; Grandma Holland, lace-curtain decent, peppery and proud, aching with unspoken feelings; and *****Show-Biz Cowboy #3!*****, the handsome upstairs neighbor whose ultimate betrayal will throw Oprah's life severely, nearly permanently, off-course.
We also meet *****Show-Biz Cowboy #4!*****, the children's alcoholic father; #4's brother-in-law, who makes anonymous "live" calls from the bathroom of his failing appliance store; and the #4 family who - in contrast to the Winfreys - live an orderly life in the house next door.
Although the physical landscape she inhabits (an important factor in both novels) is very mild, Oprah seems to be surrounded by destructive forces. Her family and community threaten her peaceful existence, and sometimes even her life. Although she may seem initially to be at the mercy of these destructive forces, there is something in her that never quite gives in.
In the midst of tragedy and loneliness, Oprah continues to maintain that she was never guilty of the sin of fornication; she says that a holy child grew inside her. No amount of punishment can make her recant. She leaves her *****Show-Biz Cowboy #2!***** husband and falls in love with a South African freedom fighter named *****Show-Biz Cowboy #5!*****, who sweeps her off her feet and eventually takes her to London and then to Cairo, where, as her marriage begins to break up, she becomes the first female editor of the English-language magazine, _O_. Suddenly, *****Show-Biz Cowboy #5!***** is consumed with a devastating colorectal cancer, sweeping across his body and ultimately, both of their lives, leaving her destitute and lonely.
As Oprah starts to heal from the pain of the past, she almost believes she has escaped it -- that *****Show-Biz Cowboy #3!***** or *****Show-Biz Cowboy #4!***** or *****Show-Biz Cowboy #1!***** or even *****Show-Biz Cowboy #2!***** will not find her and again provoke the complex combustion of attraction and destruction, lust and love.
Oprah may end up homeless and jobless, living secretly in a Wal-Mart(TM), but she again begins to believe she has a future. With determination and humor, Oprah confronts the challenges of loneliness and poverty, and strives to learn who a woman in an indifferent world without a *****Show-Biz Cowboy!***** can become.
Oprah brings to the novel the same rich sense of place, the same deep understanding of the human psyche, and the same compassion for a people and their struggle that have informed her previous, widely praised novels. Like photographs in a family album, scenes from Oprah's life are offered in startling detail: the scoops of coffee she forces herself to measure out each day; snatches of conversation between a *****Show-Biz Cowboy!***** husband and wife doggedly trying to return to a normal life; the cynical observations of her oldest child as he struggles to be noticed and loved; the "purple elephants" that loom in every family's living room --unspoken pain so huge one can only step around it, for to acknowledge it is too terrifying a prospect.
Oprah's new book club book is a masterful epic of the everyday, illuminating the kaleidoscope of lives that tell the compelling story of this unforgettable life.
- Oprah Winfrey
The Oprah Book Club: _Purple Elephants:, a Journey into the Unconscious of Oprah Winfrey and the Show-Biz Cowboys_, by Oprah Winfrey
Can a love that consumes you survive? Or perhaps more important, can anyone survive a love that consumes?
Oprah has written a tale of a woman who shocks her well-to-do family by running off with *****Show-Biz Cowboy #1!***** who abuses her; after he is killed in a brawl, she meets *****Show-Biz Cowboy #2!*****, a quiet, uneducated, but highly capable tenant farmer. She tries to be the model woman everyone expects her to be - teaching at the Catholic school, coaxing her *****Show-Biz Cowboy #2!***** husband through his increasingly irrational moods, caring for his aging parents but Oprah's hopes for her family's future collide with life in this bizarre household, and she worries over her wryly observant adolescent daughter and her timid young son.
Through one thousand and one television nights, Oprah feeds herself the fantasies of melodramas and sitcoms and tries to understand the many faces of love and betrayal: her father, driven by lust and longing to leave his family; her mother, an emotionally fragile woman who battles mental illness; Grandma Holland, lace-curtain decent, peppery and proud, aching with unspoken feelings; and *****Show-Biz Cowboy #3!*****, the handsome upstairs neighbor whose ultimate betrayal will throw Oprah's life severely, nearly permanently, off-course.
We also meet *****Show-Biz Cowboy #4!*****, the children's alcoholic father; #4's brother-in-law, who makes anonymous "live" calls from the bathroom of his failing appliance store; and the #4 family who - in contrast to the Winfreys - live an orderly life in the house next door.
Although the physical landscape she inhabits (an important factor in both novels) is very mild, Oprah seems to be surrounded by destructive forces. Her family and community threaten her peaceful existence, and sometimes even her life. Although she may seem initially to be at the mercy of these destructive forces, there is something in her that never quite gives in.
In the midst of tragedy and loneliness, Oprah continues to maintain that she was never guilty of the sin of fornication; she says that a holy child grew inside her. No amount of punishment can make her recant. She leaves her *****Show-Biz Cowboy #2!***** husband and falls in love with a South African freedom fighter named *****Show-Biz Cowboy #5!*****, who sweeps her off her feet and eventually takes her to London and then to Cairo, where, as her marriage begins to break up, she becomes the first female editor of the English-language magazine, _O_. Suddenly, *****Show-Biz Cowboy #5!***** is consumed with a devastating colorectal cancer, sweeping across his body and ultimately, both of their lives, leaving her destitute and lonely.
As Oprah starts to heal from the pain of the past, she almost believes she has escaped it -- that *****Show-Biz Cowboy #3!***** or *****Show-Biz Cowboy #4!***** or *****Show-Biz Cowboy #1!***** or even *****Show-Biz Cowboy #2!***** will not find her and again provoke the complex combustion of attraction and destruction, lust and love.
Oprah may end up homeless and jobless, living secretly in a Wal-Mart(TM), but she again begins to believe she has a future. With determination and humor, Oprah confronts the challenges of loneliness and poverty, and strives to learn who a woman in an indifferent world without a *****Show-Biz Cowboy!***** can become.
Oprah brings to the novel the same rich sense of place, the same deep understanding of the human psyche, and the same compassion for a people and their struggle that have informed her previous, widely praised novels. Like photographs in a family album, scenes from Oprah's life are offered in startling detail: the scoops of coffee she forces herself to measure out each day; snatches of conversation between a *****Show-Biz Cowboy!***** husband and wife doggedly trying to return to a normal life; the cynical observations of her oldest child as he struggles to be noticed and loved; the "purple elephants" that loom in every family's living room --unspoken pain so huge one can only step around it, for to acknowledge it is too terrifying a prospect.
Oprah's new book club book is a masterful epic of the everyday, illuminating the kaleidoscope of lives that tell the compelling story of this unforgettable life.
- Oprah Winfrey
20030818
flarf is a festival in florida four hundred followers attended for a fortnight
flarf is the faery dust
flarf is come in quiet waters
flarf is overcast
flarf is posted
flarf is so appealing
flarf is the oversized fleece flannel blue striped plaid shirt jacket thing that arose from subsubpoetics as a function of tolerating nonsense poetry, computer-generated nonsense, a general overappreciation of meaninglessness, and a lick of the American poet's dream of automat profundity, leaving it all to wag from the reader's mouth, for hir to interpret and perhaps even confuse poetic gesture as poetry thereby forcing the reader to submit arbitrarily to displays of poet-monkeydom and acquiesce to a substanceless myth of genius and a geniusless myth of substance pass the mustard pal I'm on my way to the zoo they have a cage there for me center stage they put a light in it they spanked me I am the money er monkey
flarf is over
flarf is the faery dust
flarf is come in quiet waters
flarf is overcast
flarf is posted
flarf is so appealing
flarf is the oversized fleece flannel blue striped plaid shirt jacket thing that arose from subsubpoetics as a function of tolerating nonsense poetry, computer-generated nonsense, a general overappreciation of meaninglessness, and a lick of the American poet's dream of automat profundity, leaving it all to wag from the reader's mouth, for hir to interpret and perhaps even confuse poetic gesture as poetry thereby forcing the reader to submit arbitrarily to displays of poet-monkeydom and acquiesce to a substanceless myth of genius and a geniusless myth of substance pass the mustard pal I'm on my way to the zoo they have a cage there for me center stage they put a light in it they spanked me I am the money er monkey
flarf is over
20030622
20030514
Just what exactly is a radical poetry or a radical poetics?
"...it is crucial to maintain open the radical ambiguity of how cyberspace
will affect our lives: this does not depend on technology as such but on the
mode of its social inscription. Immersion into cyberspace can intensify our
bodily experience (new sensuality, new body with more organs, new sexes...),
but it also opens up the possibility for the one who manipulates the
machinery which runs the cyberspace literally to steal our own (virtual)
body, depriving us of the control over it, so that one no longer relates to
one's body as to "one's own". What one encounters here is the constitutive
ambiguity of the notion of mediatization: originally this notion designated
the gesture by means of which a a subject was stripped of its direct,
immediate right to make decisions; the great master of political
mediatization was Napoleon who left to the conquered monarchs the appearance
of power, while they were effectively no longer in a position to exercise
it. At a more general level, one could say that such a "mediatization" of
the monarch defines the constitutional monarchy: in it, the monarch is
reduced to the point of a purely formal symbolic gesture of "dotting the
i's", of signing and thus conferring the performative force on the edicts
whose content is determined by the elected governing body. And does not,
mutatis mutandis, the same not hold also for today's progressiver
computerization of our everyday lives in the course of which the subject is
also more and more "mediatised", imperceptibly stripped of his power, under
the false guise of its increase? When our body is mediatized (caught in the
network of electronic media), it is simultaneously exposed to the threat of
a radical "proletarization": the subject is potentially reduced to the pure
void, since even my own personal experience can be stolen, manipulated,
regulated by the machinical Other. One can see how the prospect of radical
virtualization bestows on the computer the position which is strictly
homologous to that of Cartesian evil God /genie malin/: since the computer
coordinates the relationship between my mind and (what I experience as) the
movement of my limbs (in the virtual reality), one can easily imagine a
computer which runs amok and starts to act liker an evil God, disturbing the
coordination between my mind and my bodily self-experience - when the signal
of my mind to raise my hand is suspended or even counteracted in (the
virtual) reality, the most fundamental experience of the body as "mine" is
undermined... The commonplace is that, in cyberspace, the ability to
download consciousness into a computer finally frees people from their
bodies - but it also frees the machines from "their" people..."
- Slavoj Zizek's "THE MATRIX: THE TRUTH OF THE EXAGGERATIONS"
http://lacan.com/matrix.html
"The personalized poem, of which there are many examples on the Internet, is
a poem where the user, via mouse clicks or keyboard tappings, enters some
information into a web application, and, PRESTO! The user gets hir very own
poem, a bona fide original.
"Such a preprogrammed personalized poem is the mirror image of Internet
control and domination. The personalized poem application, in whatever form
it is in, is entirely predictable in its output, and those outputs are
completely determined by the actions of one individual: the programmer. The
person behind the black box. Sometimes, frankly, we're too busy looking at
this black box to see the person who runs it or the implications of it. The
programmer is in control of such poetry. The poet/programmer is obscured by
distance and complexity, a modern-day Wizard of Oz of sorts, and the poetry
is deterministic despite the randomness of human input. That programmer has
a remote and invisible authority and control over the creative output, and
that authority and control is completely automated.
"Many believe such a poem as the one I describe is radical because it seems
to reflect the 20th century avant-garde tradition of process as a
fundamental property of art. But again, process, algorithms, and the like
were rather exotic intellectual ideas many years ago. Today algorithms and
processes are as essential to control and surveillance as barbed wire and
cameras, or perhaps even more so. In hindsight this comes as no surprise. We
can completely predict the behavior of any algorithm and because they are so
predictable they can be efficiently utilized for highly complex methods of
control....
"The empty signifier and radical disjunction, in a sense, are fundamental
properties of the Internet. The Internet born from DARPA (Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency), the central research and development arm of the
US Department of Defense. DARPA is perhaps the very core of world military
industrial domination. The very nature of the Internet is rooted in
wide-area distribution effective for constant surveillance and rapid
deployment of divide-and conquer strategies through distributed
communications. The Internet's origins have lead to more commonly understood
features of the Internet landscape: behavior monitoring leading to marketing
strategies such as personalization, wide distribution of content for
constant presence and the possibility of "ensnaring" the audience's
attention (which generates more data for behavior control). All of this
happens on an individual level to divide people into individuals with their
custom web environments and conquer their wallets and their minds one at a
time. The most crucial datum about modeling one individual's behavior is HOW
THEY LINK. That is, how does one choice lead to another for each individual?
How people make connections is perhaps the easiest aspect of a person's
behavior that can be recorded using the Internet....
"Poetry that articulates through gesture, ambiguity, emotive strength (no
logic to an emotion), ambiguous authorship, without nebulous hypertext
structure or use of algorithms, may be radical today. Poetry though can
never become radical if it continues to maintain some sort of faith in any
one answer to the question of self. It is when we answer and insist on our
answers to ideas of the self that we continue to pursue either, in the case
of Language poetry, a rather hasty rejection of self in writing (but perhaps
not in authorship, and that's the difference between the action of writing
and the thing we call a text,) or in the case of more "mainstream" (for lack
of a better word) poetry, the insistence upon selves. The Internet helps
gather power for a controlling minority by exploiting the self-centered
possibilities of humans, and the rejection of that leaves us with answers
that seem to be equally false. Perhaps the only answer to "do selves exist?"
is, "I do not know." As long as we maintain such a position on authorship,
meaning itself is not owned, and the possibilities for poetry are wide open
and fully resistant to centralized mass dominance and control."
from Patrick Herron
http://www.litvert.com/internetage.html
"...it is crucial to maintain open the radical ambiguity of how cyberspace
will affect our lives: this does not depend on technology as such but on the
mode of its social inscription. Immersion into cyberspace can intensify our
bodily experience (new sensuality, new body with more organs, new sexes...),
but it also opens up the possibility for the one who manipulates the
machinery which runs the cyberspace literally to steal our own (virtual)
body, depriving us of the control over it, so that one no longer relates to
one's body as to "one's own". What one encounters here is the constitutive
ambiguity of the notion of mediatization: originally this notion designated
the gesture by means of which a a subject was stripped of its direct,
immediate right to make decisions; the great master of political
mediatization was Napoleon who left to the conquered monarchs the appearance
of power, while they were effectively no longer in a position to exercise
it. At a more general level, one could say that such a "mediatization" of
the monarch defines the constitutional monarchy: in it, the monarch is
reduced to the point of a purely formal symbolic gesture of "dotting the
i's", of signing and thus conferring the performative force on the edicts
whose content is determined by the elected governing body. And does not,
mutatis mutandis, the same not hold also for today's progressiver
computerization of our everyday lives in the course of which the subject is
also more and more "mediatised", imperceptibly stripped of his power, under
the false guise of its increase? When our body is mediatized (caught in the
network of electronic media), it is simultaneously exposed to the threat of
a radical "proletarization": the subject is potentially reduced to the pure
void, since even my own personal experience can be stolen, manipulated,
regulated by the machinical Other. One can see how the prospect of radical
virtualization bestows on the computer the position which is strictly
homologous to that of Cartesian evil God /genie malin/: since the computer
coordinates the relationship between my mind and (what I experience as) the
movement of my limbs (in the virtual reality), one can easily imagine a
computer which runs amok and starts to act liker an evil God, disturbing the
coordination between my mind and my bodily self-experience - when the signal
of my mind to raise my hand is suspended or even counteracted in (the
virtual) reality, the most fundamental experience of the body as "mine" is
undermined... The commonplace is that, in cyberspace, the ability to
download consciousness into a computer finally frees people from their
bodies - but it also frees the machines from "their" people..."
- Slavoj Zizek's "THE MATRIX: THE TRUTH OF THE EXAGGERATIONS"
http://lacan.com/matrix.html
"The personalized poem, of which there are many examples on the Internet, is
a poem where the user, via mouse clicks or keyboard tappings, enters some
information into a web application, and, PRESTO! The user gets hir very own
poem, a bona fide original.
"Such a preprogrammed personalized poem is the mirror image of Internet
control and domination. The personalized poem application, in whatever form
it is in, is entirely predictable in its output, and those outputs are
completely determined by the actions of one individual: the programmer. The
person behind the black box. Sometimes, frankly, we're too busy looking at
this black box to see the person who runs it or the implications of it. The
programmer is in control of such poetry. The poet/programmer is obscured by
distance and complexity, a modern-day Wizard of Oz of sorts, and the poetry
is deterministic despite the randomness of human input. That programmer has
a remote and invisible authority and control over the creative output, and
that authority and control is completely automated.
"Many believe such a poem as the one I describe is radical because it seems
to reflect the 20th century avant-garde tradition of process as a
fundamental property of art. But again, process, algorithms, and the like
were rather exotic intellectual ideas many years ago. Today algorithms and
processes are as essential to control and surveillance as barbed wire and
cameras, or perhaps even more so. In hindsight this comes as no surprise. We
can completely predict the behavior of any algorithm and because they are so
predictable they can be efficiently utilized for highly complex methods of
control....
"The empty signifier and radical disjunction, in a sense, are fundamental
properties of the Internet. The Internet born from DARPA (Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency), the central research and development arm of the
US Department of Defense. DARPA is perhaps the very core of world military
industrial domination. The very nature of the Internet is rooted in
wide-area distribution effective for constant surveillance and rapid
deployment of divide-and conquer strategies through distributed
communications. The Internet's origins have lead to more commonly understood
features of the Internet landscape: behavior monitoring leading to marketing
strategies such as personalization, wide distribution of content for
constant presence and the possibility of "ensnaring" the audience's
attention (which generates more data for behavior control). All of this
happens on an individual level to divide people into individuals with their
custom web environments and conquer their wallets and their minds one at a
time. The most crucial datum about modeling one individual's behavior is HOW
THEY LINK. That is, how does one choice lead to another for each individual?
How people make connections is perhaps the easiest aspect of a person's
behavior that can be recorded using the Internet....
"Poetry that articulates through gesture, ambiguity, emotive strength (no
logic to an emotion), ambiguous authorship, without nebulous hypertext
structure or use of algorithms, may be radical today. Poetry though can
never become radical if it continues to maintain some sort of faith in any
one answer to the question of self. It is when we answer and insist on our
answers to ideas of the self that we continue to pursue either, in the case
of Language poetry, a rather hasty rejection of self in writing (but perhaps
not in authorship, and that's the difference between the action of writing
and the thing we call a text,) or in the case of more "mainstream" (for lack
of a better word) poetry, the insistence upon selves. The Internet helps
gather power for a controlling minority by exploiting the self-centered
possibilities of humans, and the rejection of that leaves us with answers
that seem to be equally false. Perhaps the only answer to "do selves exist?"
is, "I do not know." As long as we maintain such a position on authorship,
meaning itself is not owned, and the possibilities for poetry are wide open
and fully resistant to centralized mass dominance and control."
from Patrick Herron
http://www.litvert.com/internetage.html
Hail to the Thief!
Hail to the Thief, scabarous growth upon our nation,
Hail to the Thief! We abhor him, one and all.
Hail to the Thief, as we resist co-operation
With coarse defilement of a great and noble call.
Yours is the aim to make this grand country poorer,
This you will do, that's our strong and firm belief.
Hail to the one, the usurper as commander,
Hail to the Governor! Hail to the Thief!
Matrix Reloaded opens nationwide today.
So let's do some philosophy, OK, kids?
"it certainly seems that we cannot be certain that we are not in a matrix"
David Chalmers
1. Assume it is true that we are in a matrix
Then I know nothing that is ultimately true.
2. Assume it is true that we are NOT in a matrix
Since I cannot be certain we are not in a matrix,
my belief that we are not in a matrix is not knowledge,
namely, since my matrix-ness is beyond certitude.
If we are in a matrix, we know nothing. Including knowing nothing about the matrix.
Even if I beleive I am in a matrix and imagine the matrix in such a way that
it corresponds exactly with the matrix, I still know
nothing
about the matrix. I've merely guessed well.
If we are not in a matrix, we still at least know nothing about our
"matrix-ness": about whether or not we are ultimately in a matrix..
We don't know if we are in a matrix. We can't even know if we know
anything about being in a matrix. What we do know, however, is this:
no amount of reflection on the subject reveals anything about the ultimate truth.
We can't even know whether or not we are wasting our time on the subject.
It seems the subject is one big black hole. Its center is hidden yet
that which approaches it
vanishes.
We might imagine, however, that with the time spent on the impossible question
we might have instead taken the time to realize
the value of imagination, of the immediacy of being,
that we live in the neighborhood
of imagining things into immediate being.
Our minds create.
We might also realize that what may be within this manifold of matrix/non-matrix
may be knowable but we may also realize that the very sense of "within"
bears no fruit. the twin concepts of ultimate truth and perspectivalism seem only to serve to
absorb thought. Thought that might be best purposed to ensure that
when I am dehydrated I drink, that
when I am hungry I eat, that
when I am tired I sleep.
It seems quite unsurprising, then, that the business of religion seems keen
on capitalizing upon the confusions and concentration generated by
paying attention to the seemingly fruitless divide between
"reality"
and
"perception."
The tax-exempt business of religion is focused primarily on that which is unverifiable.
Try charging a church
with fraud.
Your justification? They cannot prove or produce evidence of a deity beyond
reasonable doubt.
To see what I mean,
try selling someone
an imaginary house.
It won't take long
before you're in
trouble.
But sell people God and no amount of time will reveal truth or falsehood,
for the categories of religious indulgence are beyond verification.
Our true matrix is truly beyond us. Step right up.
So let's do some philosophy, OK, kids?
"it certainly seems that we cannot be certain that we are not in a matrix"
David Chalmers
1. Assume it is true that we are in a matrix
Then I know nothing that is ultimately true.
2. Assume it is true that we are NOT in a matrix
Since I cannot be certain we are not in a matrix,
my belief that we are not in a matrix is not knowledge,
namely, since my matrix-ness is beyond certitude.
If we are in a matrix, we know nothing. Including knowing nothing about the matrix.
Even if I beleive I am in a matrix and imagine the matrix in such a way that
it corresponds exactly with the matrix, I still know
nothing
about the matrix. I've merely guessed well.
If we are not in a matrix, we still at least know nothing about our
"matrix-ness": about whether or not we are ultimately in a matrix..
We don't know if we are in a matrix. We can't even know if we know
anything about being in a matrix. What we do know, however, is this:
no amount of reflection on the subject reveals anything about the ultimate truth.
We can't even know whether or not we are wasting our time on the subject.
It seems the subject is one big black hole. Its center is hidden yet
that which approaches it
vanishes.
We might imagine, however, that with the time spent on the impossible question
we might have instead taken the time to realize
the value of imagination, of the immediacy of being,
that we live in the neighborhood
of imagining things into immediate being.
Our minds create.
We might also realize that what may be within this manifold of matrix/non-matrix
may be knowable but we may also realize that the very sense of "within"
bears no fruit. the twin concepts of ultimate truth and perspectivalism seem only to serve to
absorb thought. Thought that might be best purposed to ensure that
when I am dehydrated I drink, that
when I am hungry I eat, that
when I am tired I sleep.
It seems quite unsurprising, then, that the business of religion seems keen
on capitalizing upon the confusions and concentration generated by
paying attention to the seemingly fruitless divide between
"reality"
and
"perception."
The tax-exempt business of religion is focused primarily on that which is unverifiable.
Try charging a church
with fraud.
Your justification? They cannot prove or produce evidence of a deity beyond
reasonable doubt.
To see what I mean,
try selling someone
an imaginary house.
It won't take long
before you're in
trouble.
But sell people God and no amount of time will reveal truth or falsehood,
for the categories of religious indulgence are beyond verification.
Our true matrix is truly beyond us. Step right up.
From: Ryan Whyte
Subject: the new aesthetic (pathetic attempt at an essay)
the new aesthetic is the totality of totalities, the absolute confluence
of authorial guilt with the crystalline transparency of the object of
writing. it is not the work as obdurate thing but the words as the total
and everlasting incrimination of the author and the author's family.
it is the poisoning of all forums of discourse and distribution by
sectarianism, the eternal register of good and evil, by wiretapping,
packet sniffing, key capture, the brilliant cultivation of paranoia, the
managing of the civilian population and the everlasting presumption of
guilt and the capacity for terror.
it is the knowledge that everything salutary in democracy, technology and
globalization has been wounded to the core by the hunger for war and
retribution, by the hatred for the demotic, by the slouching beast of
opportunistic, savage and byzantine foreign policy. it is the harrowing of
hope, the cultivation of every last form of misanthropy.
the new aesthetic thrives on the eroticism of terror. it is the crushing
of unreason by the rationality of war. it is the silencing of art's
unreasonable struggle against alienation. it is the channeling of the
disruptive energies of unreason into the managed distribution of the
eroticized hatred of one's neighbor.
let us abandon aesthetics. let us unreasonably care for men and women and
children.
Subject: the new aesthetic (pathetic attempt at an essay)
the new aesthetic is the totality of totalities, the absolute confluence
of authorial guilt with the crystalline transparency of the object of
writing. it is not the work as obdurate thing but the words as the total
and everlasting incrimination of the author and the author's family.
it is the poisoning of all forums of discourse and distribution by
sectarianism, the eternal register of good and evil, by wiretapping,
packet sniffing, key capture, the brilliant cultivation of paranoia, the
managing of the civilian population and the everlasting presumption of
guilt and the capacity for terror.
it is the knowledge that everything salutary in democracy, technology and
globalization has been wounded to the core by the hunger for war and
retribution, by the hatred for the demotic, by the slouching beast of
opportunistic, savage and byzantine foreign policy. it is the harrowing of
hope, the cultivation of every last form of misanthropy.
the new aesthetic thrives on the eroticism of terror. it is the crushing
of unreason by the rationality of war. it is the silencing of art's
unreasonable struggle against alienation. it is the channeling of the
disruptive energies of unreason into the managed distribution of the
eroticized hatred of one's neighbor.
let us abandon aesthetics. let us unreasonably care for men and women and
children.
20030511
Sorry I've been away so long, folks. I got stuck in someone's suitcase for almost two months. Fortunately I don't have to eat or breathe. One of the benefits of being a dummy. It wasn't a life-or-death situation--never is with a doll like me--but it was a write-or-be-silent situation.
Somewhat like this:
Before I get rolling again, here's a little something from Mark Twain to lift your spirits in these times of Victorious Joy in America. Nothing like rolling around in the blood of the vanquished to lift my spirit.
Jesus Loves Me.
And I Love You, Only You.
Les
The War Prayer
by Mark Twain
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came -- next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams -- visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation
*God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!*
Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory --
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
"I come from the Throne -- bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import -- that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of -- except he pause and think.
"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two -- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this -- keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
"You have heard your servant's prayer -- the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it -- that part which the pastor -- and also you in your hearts -- fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the *whole* of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory--*must* follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
(*After a pause.*) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!"
It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
20030327
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20030131-27320419.htm
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/12/WMDStrategy.pdf
Part of the methodology of shock and awe is the use of nukes. (See above sources for confirmation.) The correct military phrase given to shock and awe translates into: the ends justifies the means. As this war starts to drag on and casualties pile up (and it is already happening--the US has invaded a swamp and is outnumbered despite superior firepower and technology), the nuke option becomes a reality. Yep, that's right. Nuke Baghdad or Basra. Establishment of credibility. The use of weapons of mass destruction in order to stop them. Heh. And they'll do it unless we get these morons out of there, because they won't withdraw the troops, the US army can't tell Iraqi soldiers apart from civilians, and they won't accept defeat. This requires genocidal tactics, and the mildest (!) form would be to simply evaporate a city.
A story from the Guardian:
Shock tactics
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,921286,00.html
One man has been watching the fearsome bombardment of Baghdad more closely than most - Harlan Ullman, the former US navy pilot who convinced Washington to embrace his 'shock and awe' tactic. He tells Oliver Burkeman why the strategy is working
Tuesday March 25, 2003
The Guardian
Shock and awe are not among the words first called to mind by the opening sentences of the final report of the Rapid Dominance Study Group, an informal affiliation of seven men, mainly ex-military, who spent the "mid-1990s meeting to talk defence in the verdant suburbs of Washington. "The purpose of this paper," they began soporifically, "is to explore alternative concepts for structuring mission capability packages around which future US military forces might be configured." One member of the Study Group had co-written a novel with Tom Clancy, as it happened - but they weren't concentrating on the mass market at the time. The paper "was only really meant to be used inside the Pentagon," says its lead author, a 62-year-old, amiable retired navy pilot called Harlan Ullman. But any chance of that had long evaporated by the end of last month, by which time shock and awe, the phrase denoting the military theory that Ullman largely invented, could not be avoided in news coverage of the coming war. On Friday, in Ba"The phrase, as used by the Pentagon now, has not been helpful," Ullman concedes, racing between appointments in Virginia, outside Washington. "It has created a Doomsday approach - the idea of terrorising everybody. In fact, that's not the approach. The British have a much better phrase for it: effects-based operations."
But it is shock and awe that television and newspaper coverage of the war has adopted unanimously to describe the unprecedentedly heavy aerial bombardment unleashed on Baghdad, and other cities in northern Baghdad, from Friday and intermittently over the weekend. And it is shock and awe that has also rapidly come to epitomise, among opponents of the conflict, all the indiscriminate, terror-inducing destructiveness they perceive in the coalition military machine.
Which is, Ullman insists today, "entirely wrong. The notion is to do minimum damage, minimum casualties, using minimum force - even though that may be a lot. It's been taken out of context." At least in the rarefied corridors of the National War College, where Ullman taught, shock and awe was never supposed to be about obliteration but about will power: stunning one's opponent into realising that your might was so enormous, so unbeatable, that the fight was as good as over. "The question is: how do you influence the will and perception of the enemy, to get them to behave how you want them to? So you focus on things that collapse their ability to resist."
This need not necessarily involve massive bombing. On Wednesday night, after US commanders ordered a smaller strike of Tomahawk missiles at targets they believed included Saddam Hussein, CNN, for one, began running an on-screen alert reading "Shock and Awe postponed". But "that was classic shock and awe," says Ullman, who is now strategic associate at the centre for strategic and international studies in Washington. "If you kill the emperor, the empire's up for grabs. And had we killed him, it would have been a classic application [of the theory]: $50m of ordnance, and we won the war."
After this, the argument begins to get a little circular: the postponement of shock and awe "was shock and awe, too," Ullman says, because "we were threatening shock and awe". But the reason for the emergence of the theory at this point in time is clear: it is the philosophical companion to America's staggering technological superiority in warfare. Trying to shock your enemy is not new - "but what was new was the combination of technology and philosophy," Ullman says. "And before Rumsfeld, before 9/11, the Pentagon rejected it, you know. They said: 'We don't understand it.'" They preferred the Powell doctrine - swift overwhelming force to eliminate the enemy, but at potentially huge cost, human and otherwise, on both sides.
Despite Ullman's insistence that the theory is designed to win conflicts with minimum casualties, shock and awe has won him few friends in the anti-war movement, where it has been almost universally interpreted as a recipe for wreaking huge destruction. Some of this is to do with how the Pentagon has presented it: one official told the CBS TV network recently that, "There will not be a safe place in Baghdad... The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before." And much of it has to do with a distinguishing trait of "defence intellectuals": a certain distancing from the grim daily news emerging from real-life battlefronts, and, in Ullman's case, a preference for legendary tales like the one he enjoys recounting about Sun Tzu, the warrior-philosopher of ancient China.
"Sun Tzu was hired by the Emperor as a general, and instead of an interview, the Emperor told him to teach his concubines to march. Because if he could do that, he could do anything. So Sun Tzu said: 'Do I have complete control?' The emperor said yes. So he told them to march, and the concubines just laughed. Then he summoned the head concubine and cut off her head. Then they marched."
For many, though, by far the hardest thing to stomach about Ullman is the historical example he gives of shock and awe working as it should: the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is hard to argue with his opinion that this was "the maximum case of changing behaviour". It is easier to argue with his conclusion that it saved countless lives.
"But take a look at the Japanese during the second world war!" he exclaims. "Large numbers of civilians were committing suicide, and we were bombarding the islands with firebomb raids that would incinerate, in a night, 100,000 Japanese - burn them in the night. This was unbelievable horror. We were starving the Japanese, because we'd blockaded them. General George Marshall projected that invasion would impose about a million American casualties, and we could have de-peopled Japan: no more Japanese. We dropped two nuclear weapons, and they quit.
"They were suicidal in the extreme. And they could comprehend 1,000 bombers, 100,000 dead Japanese, but they couldn't understand one plane, one bomb, one city gone. Those people who say it was inhuman - it wasn't inhuman to drop the atom bomb if you believe in saving lives in the long run. Now, can you do that with a minimum amount of force today? We think you can."
Coalition progress in the current war has been "remarkable", Ullman maintains. "People don't realise. The war just began on Wednesday. It's like saying to Eisenhower, four days after D-Day - why the hell haven't you got to Berlin yet?" In a week, or maybe 10 days, he says, we "will know whether shock and awe has worked" - although it is not clear precisely what will constitute "working".
All of which is not to say that Ullman supports the war. Surprisingly, perhaps, he doesn't. "Where we are is where we are, and this is not a criticism and don't write it as such, but if it had been up to me I would have waited months, perhaps, to get a second resolution, when it would have been clear that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction," he says. "I don't agree with the administration view that Iraq is a clear and present danger, an imminent threat. But as we say in aviation, the three most useless things to a pilot are airspace above you, runway behind you and fuel you no longer have left in the tank."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)