islands long for respite of
empires unappeased until the sword
has drunk its fill of the heavens
the birthing breakers of contracting typhoons
toss skin into dervishes of chill prickled pimples
the valkyrie wind is a funeral both warm
and frigid it is the prayers of the children
low archipelago framed in mute silence
broke slowly by the walking pneumonia
rattle hid deep inside the aging
lit as a city night by the dead light
of a dome star
there on the expressionless face of the sea
are the women who are freezing who have
changed their minds on love
there are the men who have turned to loathing
their bodies shaking with cold as if with dropsy
death announces itself with a sounding of shofar
to the personal horror of the nursing mother
a landscape created from the bereft rotten shingles
of the roof of the world
here the mornings are recorded with cries of children
shaking the gums of the fathers
on every lonely island
on each beach facing east
was placed a table
of betrayal and forgiveness
of fellowship in death
there are islands on the face of the deep
I’ve got dangers inside me
absurd wandering pilgrims
like pride, eyes wild and cancerous
with warning.
My name is Tree By The River
I dance, stretch my neck and
reach towards the storehouse
of creation.
We both followed opulence
of tangled trails, feet flitting
til we were hoarse, faces flush
and panting.
“Come here”
you puff, as if to blow
a death bed’s
wished kiss.
The time had come for the wedding feast of Peleus and Thetis.
Everyone throughout the Greek Isles had clicked “attending” on the Facebook event page and their coordinated eye-clock implants were flashing their “drink a lot of water today because you’ll be hitting the bottle hard tonight!” alert.
Everyone that is except for Eris, goddess of discord, strife, and straight up assholery. She was alone in her highrise apartment looking over Ithaca and muttering to her cats between huge bong hits. (Unfortunately for so many, she did not know that indeed she had been invited but her letter had been purloined by the wily prankster King Ulysses.)
As she blew her mind on gooey Peruvian buds, time expanded and she sunk into wide hammocks between the now sluggish seconds. It was there that she concocted up a revenge to wreak upon the unwitting and undeserving Peleus and Thetis.
The party was just four hours away and in their shining castle, Ulysses and Penelope Groan gussied up for wedding. Penny: Uly, what are you wearing tonight? Uly: Oh, I dunno. I think probably my sport jacket and slacks. Penny: You don’t know yet? Uly, we’ve got to get going if we’re going to make it there on time! Uly: We’ve got plenty of time. (He scrolled through video sites in his neuro-Net uplink) Penny: Time is one thing we haven’t got. It’s got us. Uly, time is ticking. What are you wearing? Uly: We’ve got like four hours! Penny: It starts at five. We’ve got to get through blimp traffic, we’ve got to park, we’ve got to get dressed,…add all that up and we’ve got like an hour. And you haven’t shaved! You are shaving. Uly: That takes me like a minute. Penny: You’re not using your electric. Uly: Two minutes then. Look at the hourglass there. We’ve got plenty of time. Penny: I’m looking at the hourglass and you know what I see? Time slipping away. Time is one resource that devours itself. I don’t want to be the last ones there. Uly! Are you even listening to me?
And of course he wasn’t. He was thinking of the onetime universal of human mortality. Since the perfection of anti-aging and anti-degradation gene therapies and nano medicines of 2033, the perpetual extension of human life had thrown time into a wholly novel light. People could now say, “I’ll climb Mount Everest someday” and really mean it because in the course of their lives they could easily fit in multiple summit excursions of every mountain in the world. Ulysses had a hard time feeling rushed for anything now that he was facing at least a millenia of napping and snacking.
After much pacing, yelling, scrambling, and fretting, Uly and Penny finally stepped out to their blimp garage, high upon a parapet in the clouds. Pulling the lines up and readying the fan engines were two of Uly’s clones, Gene, and Splice. “We hope you two have a great time!” said Gene as they slowly pulled away from the docking station.
Uly: I’m really not looking forward to this wedding. All of Thetis and Peleus’ friends are… Penny: What? Young? Uly: Hipsters. Penny: I think they have nice friends. Uly: There’s only so many conversations I can have about roof gardening and fixie bikes, Penny.
Penny: You be on your best behavior. Better yet, be on my worst behavior.
Uly was worried that they would be arriving too late to the party. He knew the secret to arriving to a party is to arrive late but not late enough that the attention has moved away from the door and second glasses of wine could dampen welcoming applause. He ordered the DriverBot to drop some of the sandbags off the side of the blimp. Forty pounds of sandbags then crushed Prav Drashi, a nine year old working family’s son. His family, being working class made the most of their loss by using the sand to make a sandbox for their other son. “When God closes a door, He opens a window.” The late Prav’s mother whispered to herself as she combed her fingers through the sand.
The blimp settled into a slipstream and gained speed. A flock of unsuspecting birds were made into downy puffs as the silent blimp’s propellers whisked the sky. One lone surviving bird, a DodoBot, landed on an open window sill where Ulysses was smoking.
“Oy, you just made mincemeat of me mates.”
“Mincemeat? That’s a Christmas thing. No thanks.”
“Shite, man. You just killed me fiance! Me family, me friends!”
“You know what they say, When God closes a door, He opens….”
“Not me man. I don’t buy that God shite. I’m no pleb!”
Ulysses realized he was dealing with a more acute mind than most Ithacans (or is it Ithacians?).
“Look, bird.”
“The name’s Chup.”
“I’m King of Ithaca…..Ulysses S. Groan. Maybe you’ve heard of me. I’m late for an important party.”
“Funny. I was on me way to an important party too. Me wedding!”
“That is funny! We’re going to a wedding too. Some friends of ours. And we’re late.”
“I get it. Sure. You have the liberty to kill anything in your way. Because you’re late.”
Ulysses, getting perturbed by this upstart said “Listen, birdbrain. You probably don’t even know what time is let alone the importance time can have to a King. My time is very valuable and I don’t have a lot of it!”
The DodoBot looked down and saw far below the tiny riverside chapel he should have been slipping the ceremonial ring around his husband’s finger and by a miracle found the patience to say:
“Yes, your time is short, King Ulysses. Because you decide it to be so. Your busyness burns time like chaff. You may think that us birds live short lives but that’s not so. A bird lives twice as long as any bio-human. You wish to know why? Because each moment counts to a bird. Even when we sleep we’re holding the preciousness of life in our hearts–knowing that any number of predators or the cold could kill us in our sleep. Why you think we sing wit’ such loud voices at the smell of dawn?…Your life will be shorter still because of your lack of wisdom, King Ulysses. You imagine yourself so keen, so wily–like a fox. Well, that will be the end of you. And a good riddence twill be. I’ll be off to mourning me fiance and loved ones and living the life I love so dear. And I’ll let you get back to your waste of time you call a life.” And with a single flap Chup was gone.
“What was that?” Penny asked as she approached from the bar, Mai Tai clinking in hand.
“Not exactly the bluebird of happiness, but something close.”
The steps to the front gate were littered with empty champagne bottles and there were street children scratching at the dirt like chickens for the chance of a dropped rock of crack cocaine. Peleus’ guards would kick an absent-minded foot at the children inbetween drags from their cheap Slavic cigarettes. The King and Queen were unrecognized by the guards and the doorman also, despite Ulysses’ throat clearing and adjustment of his crown.
“This is how Jesus must have felt! These assholes!” Ulysses thought.
“I love that I can live among my people as simply the proud citizen I am.” He said to an unfooled Penelope.
Inside the party was well underway and Ulysses swore under his breath. Penelope leaned to his ear, “I told you we were gonna be late.” Much of the partiers had moved to the kitchen and were comparing tattoos as a few hipster chemists worked furiously with a funnel pouring shots of whiskey into Red Stripe bottles. “What’s up douchebags?” Ulysses yelled into the linoleum floored kitchen. Only a few heads came up with accompanying “Yeah!”s.
Just as Ulysses was slumping into a party-ruining funk, out of the crowd came the requisite hispster party Lover.
(The Lover is noted for their choice of overly warm looking clothes, non-sexual demeanor, and lingering hugs.)
This one was named Cupid and he held Ulysses in a bearhug for eight seconds.
“And Penny! Welcome.” Another long hug. “You guys look so good. It makes me feel good just to see you two.”
“Great man. Say, are Peleus and Thetis around?”
“I think they’re in the bathroom. Peleus took some bad mushrooms and Thetis is in there helping him out.”
“Cool….I mean, bummer.” Ulysses rubbed his beard nervously as he was horrible at hipster communication and etiquette.
They were left alone when Cupid left to attend to some minor dieties whose drinks were empty. (“Let me get it! You’re drinking white and you’re red? Okay!”)
A pale looking guy in a tight turtleneck approached them. “This is the cool group over here huh.”
“Uh…” Ulysses looked to Penelope hoping she could help out.
“You guys just checkin’ things out. On the periphery.”
“No, we just got here and were just about to get something to drink. My name’s Ulysses and this is my wife Penelope.”
“Don’t sit on the couch.”
“What’s that?”
“That couch. Its super buttwarm. Diana was just sitting on it and its so hot it feels wet.”
“She’s a Goddess, man.” Ulysses said with still a friendliness in his voice.
“Yeah, and I’ve got hemrrhoids that are sensitive to extreme degrees of buttheat. So fucking what?”
Penelope stepped forward a step, “My name is Penelope, Queen of Ithaca and this is Ithaca’s King Ulysses.”
“Yeah, I heard him the first time.”
“I don’t know if we’ve met before, friend.” Ulysses said icily.
“Yeah. We have like three years ago at a party Hades had at his cabin.”
“I’m not sure I remember you actually. Maybe you didn’t make a big impression.” Said Ulysses, chest inflating.
“That’s too fucking bad for you, friend, because I’m the Earth-Shaker. Hades’ brother…Poseidon. God of the Sea. Nice crown, asshat. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
Ulysses ran to the bathroom, pushed the vomiting Peleus and the attending Thetis aside and threw up in and around the toilet.
Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” single handedly brought me through two semesters of college. It was my refuge from the academic drudgery and rigorous study others call ‘napping’ and ‘playing Grand Theft Auto III’.
Because my copy is a hard bound and ornately decorated printing, I carried it with a sick satisfaction because it looked much like a grandmother’s Bible. Little did people know that I was reading about a sick and twisted old man seeking to send an animal who was only following its instinct and nature to hell and not about a sick and twisted old man in the sky seeking to send millions of humans who are only doing their best to hell.
Melville writes with beautiful prose that edges on poetry throughout. I have actually steered some people away from reading the book because of its lack of narrative. It is the poetic musings of life, especially the lost life of whaling industry or a life at sea in general that is gone to the ages. In its own way, it is a scripture. Filled with Christian allusion and mythic image, Melville puts his own stamp on the nouminous and charts a challenging path for any seeker of spiritual truth to follow. His characters bend like images on the water, dancing in a dream space where they appear so alive unto themselves and yet again swallowed into the bygone collective imaginings of Neptune’s home.
If you have not yet read “Moby Dick” and these selected passages stir an interest in you, I may suggest that you pick up an abridged version and/or read pages at random. Just flip open a page and read a paragraph (some are pages long!) like a poem. Release the need for a story ‘going anywhere’. Lose your expectations and allow Melville to delight you with his humor and wit, his insight into the human condition, challenge your spiritual identity, and dazzle you with literally hundreds of ways to fill pages on end describing waves.
All passages cited from
Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” published by Peebles Press International New York and Distributed by Walden Books as part of the Peebles Classic Library.
“Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thining that thick water the thinnest of air.” p. 31
“Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these dead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.” p. 31
“And if we obey God, we must disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves wherein the hardness of obeying God consists.” p. 35
“So soon as I hear that such or such a man gives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the dyspeptic old woman, he must have ‘broken his disgester’.” p. 43
“I’ll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy.” p. 43
“…he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that man’s religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another.” p. 63
“For what are the comprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and wonders of God!” p. 90
“Damn me, but all things are queer come to think of ‘em.” p. 106
“For we are all killers, on land and on sea; Bonapartes and Sharks included.” p. 118
“Oh, thou big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on this small black boy down here…” p. 148
“So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.” p. 173
“But what it was that inscutable Ahab said to that tiger-yellow crew of his–these were words best omitted here; for you live under the blessed light of the evangelical land. Only the infidel sharks in the audacious seas may give ear to such words, when, with tornado brow, and eyes of red murder, and foam-glued lips, Ahab leaped after his prey.” p. 189
“And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye.” p. 318
“And some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher except to sell by the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass in the Milky Way.” p. 366
“Is heaven a murderer when its lightning strikes a would-be murderer in his bed, tindering sheets and skin together?” p. 436
“Ahab is for ever Ahab, man. This whole act’s immutably decreed. ‘Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled.” p. 476
We all want the best for our beloved pets. Check out this video clip of culinary expert The Dogfood Whisperer (also seen on Duluth and Esko Public Access Channels).
How to choose the right dogfood:
1) Consider your dog’s nutrition needs. Does it have a gluten allergy? Is it hypoglycemic?
2) Look into your dog’s eyes when it eats. Judge for yourself: is there joy in its eyes while it eats or it is merely going through the motions?
3) Personally raise and slaughter the animals you will grind up and put into your dog’s meals. This is the only way to assure that the meat is quality and if your dog is kashrut, Kosher.
I wish I could say I was underwhelmed. I was in fact de-whelmed.
A dreary, tired and tiring waste that will leave you wanting to watch that 1985 made-for-TV version of ‘Alice’ to wash it’s taste out of your mouth. If previous Alice incarnations have had the flavor of LSD, this is a double dose of Kaopectate and Nytol.
To squeeze all the fun, youthful adventure, intelligence, and bizarre characterizations from Wonderland would seem difficult to do, but Tim Burton makes it look easy in this muddy film that is like a hamster spinning on its wheel or Dirk Diggler trying in vain to awaken his unit.
Some Words To Tim Burton:
If you’re going to take us back to Wonderland, you’d better have a hook. Why are we going into this well-trod territory? Give us a new spin, a new fresh perspective! Shrek and even The Brothers Grimm (though a bad movie) brought a newness to old stories that made the a valid reason to back there. Your idea of ‘freshness’ is to make Alice a teenager who is revisiting Wonderland continually. That kinda defeats the purpose. Look: It’s become a repetitive and tired dream to her. It feels that way to us too.
You don’t allow any interesting characters to shine. There’s so much muddled mess going on with a Bandersnatch, an old hound dog, and some long-legged Crispin Glover doing nonsense there’s no time to enjoy the characters. There is no interesting vignettes that anyone will be able to recall. The Red Queen interrogating frogs? Nope. Muddy chase scenes? Muddy battle scenes? Screaming unintelligible things at animals that you don’t care about? Nope.
On this topic: you’ve got Crispin Glover, a certified nutball, Helena Bonham Carter, Hollywood’s Bride of Frankenstein, and Crowned Prince of Insanity Johnny Depp. Who of them gets to do anything remotely interesting? You’ve got them so distorted that their performances are lost. Depp does so much with his face that it can be engaging to just watch him at repose. But here you’ve got him so muddled up that watching him is like trying to connect to a kid in a cereal commercial who’s going Cucoo for Cocoa Puffs.
Case in point: You’ve set up that the Mad Hatter does a cool dance and we’re looking forward to seeing Depp do an awesome dance at the end. And what do you do? You CGI some wacky Superbowl Dancing Baby bullshit where his head spins to horrible Danny Elfman breakdance music. I just about shit my pants, scooped my hands through my befouled pants, and joyfully ate my waste at that instant. Do you not realize that Johnny Depp could do any improvised dance at that scene and it would be a hundred times better than that hokey crap?
Lewis Carroll was a brilliant wordsmith and storyteller. His use of language, puzzles, irony, and parody knocked the cultured elites of his time off their high horses. This film has erased any sense of that and been pulled down to prat falls and weak sitcom half-hearted attempts at ‘silliness’. There is no heart nor head in this film.
The story has no arc, meaning, drive, or interest in it. It views like the Level Ending Videos on a bad video game. Seriously, many video games have better characterization and story than this film does. What are we doing here? There is just a back and forth “run around aimlessly” feel. Are we rescuing the Mad Hatter? Getting the sword? Delivering the sword? Killing the Jabberwocky? Who cares? Alice herself hardly cares and this brings us to the next point.
Put some exclamation points in your goddam movie. Alice isn’t convinced that Wonderland is real. She doesn’t buy it and we don’t either. Alice and everybody else isn’t sure she’s the “real Alice”…just people shrugging at each other and that’s how we feel too. Just a big “meh.” In writing and improvisational theatre a rule of thumb is to have some buy-in. A reason to care. People making big decisions and people caring about what they’re doing…Putting exclamation points on the story.
And is this supposed to be a “girl empowerment” movie? You can’t tack on a tacky Avril Levigne song and expect us to believe that there is a message of Girlz Rool, Boyz Drool! It’s pretty condescending to women in almost all respects and any “feminist” message it does have may have been relevant in 1950.
Why do I say that? Because the ‘challenge’ Alice has to conquer in the ‘real’ world is to decide for herself who to marry and not succumb to an arranged marriage. How many 15 year old girls do you know that are having to deal with Arranged Marriage Stress?
I wanted to walk out of this movie. It was a joyless voyage in a murky, uninspired depiction of a land that has been done better a thousand times before.
And why make us look at Anne Hathaway? Her grotesque features made for the most garish face in the film. I would do well to never have to see her grace the silver screen again.
And what a yawn of an “end battle”! We have seen more rousing end climaxes in episodes of Duck Tales!
What a waste. A waste of time, talent, and promise. I can’t imagine who this was trying to appeal to. Teens? Kids? In ten years time, more kids will be watching Time Bandits, Labyrinth, The Sand Lot, Spy Kids, Goonies, and the vastly superior 1951 Disney cartoon Alice in Wonderland.
Do not see this movie at anytime in any venue for any reason.
A review from Stanford says it is becoming clearer that human activities are causing climate change and the elimination of solid waste from the colon can result in pleasurable feelings.
It says the evidence is stronger than ever if one takes into account the lakes of mercury and burning fields of devastated old growth forests. This report also includes anecdotal evidence gathered after a night of spicy curry dishes and too much lager.
Officials from Stanford claim that this new evidence will sway even the most hardened know-nothings like the congregation of Woodbury Baptist Church in Topeka Kansas who has been holding in their sprawling parking lot a “coal bonfire” since 2005. Said congregant Niles Jornath “This here fire represents to us the love of God. And hell.”
The analysis, written in the secular and ungodly environment of a university is being met with criticism from climate change and shit experts from many Evangelical churches throughout America’s heartland.
“I ain’t gonna listen to nunna them Westcoast liberals. Nuh uh.” Said Richard Karlsen, pastor of Colorado Springs megachurch The River. Karlsen lifted his shirt to reveal a colostomy bag. “Pooping is a lifestyle choice that is unacceptable in the eyes of God.”
The Stanford report says the Earth is changing rapidly, probably because of greenhouse gases created by fossil fuels and fog machines used at Hellhouses during fundamentalist Christian “harvest festivals”.
In 2007 the entirety of sane scientists concluded that there was “unequivocal” evidence that the Earth was warming and it was likely that it was due to burning of fossil fuels.
2007 was also the first year of a recorded instance of someone reporting on their Facebook ‘status’ that they had “taken a ginormous duece” and it was “like giving birth to a corn kernely God.” The author of that post, Dave Stupak, has since dropped out of high school and joined a Pentecostal church. He now considers himself a poop denialist.
“Yes, I wrote that. But I also used to believe that the earth was 4.54 billion years old. I even thought that one could receive the Holy Spirit and NOT speak in tongues. I was young. I was confused. Pooping feels horrible. If you think otherwise, you’re deceived.”
The Stanford study comes at a time when some have questioned the entire basis of climate science following recent controversies over the handling of research findings by the IPCC and the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia from their church basements and bomb shelters.
Dr Osgood denies that the study has been published as part of a fight back by the climate research community.
“We started writing the climate part of this paper a year ago. The ‘pooping feels good’ part was written at about 4 o’clock this morning after a couple of drinks.”
The study brings together other research from a range of disciplines. Tellingly, not one fundamentalist theologian was asked to take part of the study.
It’s important to communicate to people what science is showing
Dr Rita Osgood
“We hadn’t [until now] looked in detail at the billowing clouds of noxious gases that were catching low flying birds on fire. Nor had we asked our roommates if it felt good to pinch a loaf until last night when we were drunk.” says Dr Osgood.
“[Our paper looks at] not just the jets of atmosphere-deteriorating chemicals shooting into rivers and children’s parks, or the reducing Arctic sea ice, or changing rainfall patterns, or the fact that the atmosphere is getting more humid, but also that as far as our roomies and their Couch Surfer friend Brownie are concerned, a bowel movement can be enjoyable. This is news to us.” Osgood said while showing slides of filled toilets and thousands of dead species.
The Stanford study said that this project stunned many in the scientific community. Many leading thinkers are comparing this study to last year’s paradigm shattering finding that Doritos are really really good with Dr. Pepper and burning fossil fuels in an infant’s nursery could cause health issues in the infant.
According to the report: “While we are finding hard evidence that climate change is directly linked to human activity, primarily caused by using carbon based energy sources and confirming the satisfaction of hauling off a huge shit. While this conflicts with the Christian Fundamentalist worldview, it does not necessarily detract from the core tenets of the Christian faith.”
Said Pastor Karlsen, “There’s a place in hell reserved for science.” His full colostomy bag then exploded.
Roy, you’ve hurt us in the past.
You’ve voted against Harvey Milk Day,
Against recognition of out of state same sex marriages, and
Against expanding discrimination laws.
But we’re willing to put all that behind us.
Because you’re now going to be our ally and stand alongside us in our march towards freedom, liberty, privacy, and equality.
We’re happy to have you in our communities. We know the timing wasn’t of your choosing, but we know that you will stand in courage and integrity by owning your wholeness. And we know that part of that integrity will be taking up our cause…your cause for equality of all Americans.
We love you Senator Roy Ashburn. We are willing to forgive you for misusing your political power to enshrine idols of hate and bigotry in our state of California. Because we know that you’re going to use this moment to shine. To stand against the tyranny of religious extremists and those who would have us…including you…be second class citizens.
We’re excited to see you blossom into the person you were meant to be.
Contact Roy Ashburn:
(916) 651-4018
http://cssrc.us/web/18/contact_us.aspx
