CLXIII
‘most traceless
And what is the relation
Between blowback
And projection?
“Cloud-based human capital management…”
This phrase slips effortlessly from the lips of an NPR announcer thanking the corporate sponsors of “Marketplace.”
Really, seriously: http://www.infor.com/solutions/hcm
The dwarfs people the buildings is not the obverse of the buildings dwarf the people
Tiepolo’s paintings, many of them at any rate, could be described as cloud-based. But curiously, few seem to involve human capital management. At least not in an obvious way…
The revolution will not be cloud-based.
But the zombie apotheosis, well, possibly…
Who’d have thought a trio of Indian Summer days? Washington Square pear leaves going gold and orange amidst the dominant still-green, the harshness of the fall sun angle mitigated by the unforced warmth. And still the spray. Fountain, azimuth on.
From the little rise where you practice ba gua, this hour is the hour of the rainbow.
And yes, now, with ass firmly on the bench and feet flat to the hex tiles, you can feel the turning.
If g*d gives you gyres, get out your gyroscope
If g*d gives you gyros, pour on the tzatziki
My kind of gyre
Rafting Medusa
Rafting Medusa
You’ll come a-rafting
Medusa, with me…
Single point distortion
Faces and Masks
Putting the cara back on the mask
Putting the vag back in Caravaggio
Putting the sword back in the sheath
Christopher Robin and the Hundred Acre Stare
Attempts to impose uniformity evoke evermore reckless and unpredictable diversifications
Two Tales of a City
Globalization, mon amour
Imagine, a whole culture swept along on tides of aggression
The grand convergence: fear, contempt, shame. Who would deny them their apotheosis? After we’ve worked so hard to cultivate them all these centuries!
Show me the border between self and other
Show me where exhalation ends and inhalation begins
Show me the state where the sacrifice-demanding gods have been dethroned
Show me what is so deep inside that it can only appear out there
McKim, Mead, Black, White and Living Color
Nomad’s Land
What do you import?
What do you export?
What is the import of your deportment?
I’m Minerva’s wreck
Voregasm
I was a Vitruvian Man for the FBI
Whence comes the sunset of Vitruvian Mensch, that mythical creature
“Pull over to the right! Pull over to the right.” That’s what the cops always yell over their bullhorn when they come up from behind to bust a driver. And somehow it translated into a merciless, unstoppable political tendency.
We dreamed an impossible freedom
That granted us nothing but rage, the ultimate slavery
The wind blew off the figleaves and we thought, ah, now we’ll see what’s True.
But before we could focus our gaze, the statu(t)es crumbled.
Clinton and Trump, battle of the brands
The fastest growing demographic out there, drawing members from the most improbably diverse backgrounds, and requiring no apps or downloads: Furious Victims of Modernity. United in a common enmity. Entirely self-selected.
Sous les pavés, la plage!
And the missing word in the campaign slogan, I’m With Her, could not be said. But for all that, it was more keenly felt: Stuck.
Lede on MacFudd!
Or, when we can no longer think, our language, even unto our play of symbols, will think – and speak – for us: “In 130 of Worst Shootings, Vision of Porous Gun Laws.” [NYT, 10/22/16, A1:5]
“And the threats [to the internet] will continue long after Election Day for a nation that increasingly keeps its data in the cloud and has oftimes kept its head in the sand.” [“When Crib Monitors Double as Web Weaponry,” NYT, 10/23/16, A1:1]
“Trump’s Threat to Reject Election Outcome Alarms Scholars.” [ibid. A22:1]
Though if one is a scholar and wishes to be alarmed, there are so many possible excursions, such as “Trained to Shoot,” a front page Daily News story on the NYPD’s killing of civilians:
“Former NYPD cop turned John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor Eugene O’Donnel said cops are trained to see baseball bats as deadly weapons.
“’You have to tell cops that are immersed in worrying about guns that you are just as dead and just as comatose if you are hit in the head with a baseball bat,” said O’Donnell. ‘It’s almost malpractice for a cop to go into a room and not say to themselves, “What can be used as a weapon here?’”
“The question of how to handle people with baseball bats is often brought up at the academy, another source said.
“’It’s often on tests, especially use of force tests,’ the source said. ‘You are always allowed to use a force higher than the one being used against you. If someone is using their fists, you can use your mace or a baton. If someone is using a knife or a bat, you can use your gun.”
Oftimes
And then, a few pages on in the same paper, the “entertainment” section opens with a full page shot of a very furious-looking man wielding a barbed-wire-covered baseball bat as three kneeling people cower before him. This, apparently, is the cliff-hanging moment from last season’s final episode of The Walking Dead, which left viewers wondering “who will survive the bloody premiere?”
Speculation abounds, “and New York Comic Con… just released a clip of Rick threatening Negan… for bashing the beloved mystery character’s brains out.”
Its head in the cloud, and its brains, oftimes, in the sand…
Poissant: a Viennoiserie genetically modified to taste like fish, or like carp in the case of a Viennchinoiserie.
Hey sailor, what ship?
What Port?
What Authority?
I’m so drunk I don’t know whether I’m from the Bremerhaven out of Rotterdam or the Rotterdam out of Bremerhaven…
“Father of firefighter killed in 2007 Deutsche Bank building fire pens blistering indictment of negligent politicians, corrupt contractors.” [Downtown Express, Vol. 29, No. 21, Oct. 20 – Nov. 2, 2016, p. 3]
Really, only “blistering”? One would have thought, given the nature of their crimes they’d be subject to an indictment more searing than the second degree.
Summer journeys to Niag’ra
And to other places aggra-
vate all our cares.
We’ll save our fares;
I’ve a cozy little flat in
What is known as old Manhattan,
We’ll settle down
Right here in town.
We’ll have Manhattan,
The Bronx and Staten
Island too.
It’s lovely going through the Zoo.
It’s very fancy
On old Delancey
Street you know.
The subway charms us so,
When balmy breezes blow
To and fro.
And tell me what street
Compares with Mott Street
In July?
Sweet pushcarts gently gliding by.
The great big city’s a wondrous toy
Just made for a girl and boy –
We’ll turn Manhattan
Into an isle of joy.
We’ll go to Greenwich,
Where modern men itch
To be free,
And Bowling Green you’ll see with me.
We’ll bathe at Brighton,
The fish you’ll frighten
When you’re in,
Your bathing suit so thin
Will make the shellfish grin,
Fin to fin.
I’d like to take a
Sail on Jamaica
Bay with you,
And fair Canarsie’s Lakes we’ll view.
The city’s bustle cannot destroy
The dreams of a girl and boy –
We’ll turn Manhattan
Into an isle of joy.
We’ll go to Yonkers,
Where true love conquers
In the wilds
And starve together, dear, in Childs’.
We’ll go to Coney
And eat bologny
On a roll,
In Central Park we’ll stroll
Where our first kiss we stole,
Soul to soul.
And South Pacific
Is a terrific
Show they say,
We both may see it close some day.
The city’s clamour can never spoil
The dreams of a boy and goil –
We’ll turn Manhattan
Into an isle of joy.
We’ll have Manhattan,
The Bronx and Staten
Island too,
We’ll try to cross Fifth Avenue.
As black as onyx
We’ll find the Bronix
Park Express,
Our Flatbush flat, I guess,
Will be a great success,
More or less.
A short vacation
On Inspiration
Point we’ll spend,
And in the station house we’ll end.
But Civic Virtue cannot destroy
The dreams of a girl and boy –
We’ll turn Manhattan
Into an isle of joy!
[Originally written in 1925 by Lorenz Hart, this the updated Ella Fitzgerald version ca. mid-‘50s]
