CLXIV
When you have scientific rationalism, insanity takes the most wonderfully capricious of forms
If I had a ball, I’d bounce it in the morning…
Now is the time to grid our loins!
Babies are a dime a dozen, but how rare and unique the bathwater!
A sign on the highway: HEAVY MERGE FROM LEFT
At the core of the strategic shift envisioned by the Pentagon is a concept that officials call centaur warfighting. Named after the half-man and half-horse in Greek mythology, the strategy emphasizes human control and autonomous weapons as ways to augment and magnify the creativity and problem solving skills of soldiers, pilots and sailors, not replace them.
The weapons, in the Pentagon’s vision, would be less like the Terminator and more like the comic-book superhero Iron Man, Mr. Work said in an interview.
“There’s so much fear out there about killer robots and Skynet,” the murderous artificial intelligence network of the “Terminator” movies, Mr. [Robert O.] Work [deputy defense secretary] said. “That’s not the way we envision it at all.”
When it comes to decisions over life and death, “there will always be a man in the loop,” he said.
…Unlike the technologies and material needed for nuclear weapons or guided missiles, artificial intelligence as powerful as what the Pentagon seeks to harness is already deeply woven into everyday life. Military technology is often years behind what can be picked up at Best Buy.
“Let’s be honest, American defense contractors can be really cutting edge on some things and really behind the curve on others,” said Maj. Brian Healy, 38, an F-35 pilot. The F-35, America’s newest and most technologically advanced fighter jet, is equipped with a voice command system that is good for changing channels on the radio, and not much else.
“It would be great to get Apple or Google on board with some of the software development,” he added. [Matthew Rosenberg and John Markoff, “Pentagon developing robots that kill on their own,” New York Times Service in The Daily Gazette, 10/26/16, A5:1]
Let’s be honest…
Those falcons do not heed
Those centaurs do not hold
their liquor well
as any casual student of the Centauromachy knows
I sing of parms and the chicken
the eggplant
the veal…
And when the local Eyetalian restaurant draws down metal door, and hangs up the Going Out of Business sign: Farewell to Parms
Some of us don’t want to separate out
Some of us just want to be in the mix
A silver gray flatbed truck passes the café: Classic Towing & Recovery.
Washington Square Park, a.m., gray and hail and the fountain still on. Leaves that would blow from here to there except they’re plastered down by rain. Part of the pavement. And you feel all around you the presence of a thousand ghost realities – realities that in their moment seemed so urgent, so definitive, so authentic, so exclusive of all others; realities so sure of themselves that for and instant you felt sure of them; realities so apparently load-bearing – like Tiepolo clouds – they offered a place to stand.
“Unclaimed Bodies Endured A Grim Detour Before Burial.” [Headline, NYT, 10/28/16, A1:1]
Who knew dead bodies could “endure”?
“In the Islamic State’s Wake.”
Who knew they were Catholic?
I was a strange enchanted boy for the FBI
A great deal of what we call “work” is a payoff scheme in which people receive a fixed amount of money in exchange for agreeing not to do anything socially productive or personally satisfying with their time and energy.
Marilyn, Marilyn, Marilyn
Life is Buddha’s meme
She knew that once she put on the explosive belt, there would be no turning back. She knew it would rip her limb from limb, reducing her to a bloody pulp. [Peter Baker and Rami Nazzal, “A Would-Be Suicide Bomber Becomes a Fighter for Peace,” The New York Times, 10/20/16, A1: 6]
Is there a point beyond which arresting prose should be subject to arrest? Perhaps detention, at least preventative. But preventative of what? Certainly interrogation – one would not rule out “harshly.” Should prose stand trial? If so, what would constitute due process? Habeas corpus? Justice? How might Shifa al-Qudsi, the subject of the Times article, have described what she “knew” as distinct from the telling of Messrs. Baker and Nazzal?
She knew it would leave her only daughter an orphan.
But she also knew this: It would kill Israelis. With luck, a lot of them… [ibid.]
If you can indict a ham sandwich, can you not also convict one?
What Shifa Knew
Pace, Maisie
Boys, I can’t say for sure. But I yam smelling a Pulitzer heading your way…
Fighting for peace.
Fucking for chastity.
Wrote Nicanor Parra, oncet
Perhaps one could enforce a policy whereby specious prose would have to wear orange, i.e., the type would be colored like the boiler suits of the detainees in Guantanamo…
Thereby giving birth to Orange Journalism
And the writers – black-hearted wordsmiths of empurpled prose who tear meaning limb from limb, reducing language to a blood-orangey pulp – what of them?
Extry, extry – ham sandwich acquitted by a jury of its peers!
And the Port Authority, convicted at last, by a jury of its piers
And the Nobel prize for physics goes to: The New York Times – for its pioneering work in discovering and describing a parallel universe, so much like our own, yet so, so…
This morning, post standing, you are not so much tree as a limestone rock, rooted in the streambed, your many holes channels for the cooing wind to blow through.
Such is the nature of your scholarship.
Condition universelle du jour: SOY: Stressed Out Young
Klassiks ‘supdated:
Kall me fishmeal
Goodbye moon
Goodbye starz
Goodbye texts and
Topless barz
Goodbye status
Goodbye planz
Goodbye woomenz
Goodbye manz
Goodbye doggies
Goodbye kats
Goodbye baseball
Goodbye batz…
I don’t know why you say goodbye I say hello
Goodbye goosies
Goodbye ganders
Goodbye molls
Goodbye flanders
Goodbye mallow
Goodbye mars
Goodbye texts and
Topless barz
Goodbye kites
Goodbye dredges
Goodbye waltzes
Goodbye edges
Goodbye Columbus
Goodbye cloudz
Goodbye loneliness of
Crowdz
Goodbye Bingley
Goodbye Darcy
Goodbye Flatbush and
Canarsie
Goodbye swallows
Goodbye gulps
Goodbye bloody
Goodbye pulps
Goodbye memes and
Goodbye mimes
Goodbye Time and
Goodbye Times
Goodbye barks and
Brigantines
Goodbye limbs and
Goodbye limes
Shalom Israel-Palestine
Goodbye temples
Goodbye mosques
Goodbye pax and goodbye
Pox
Goodbye olives
Goodbye branches
Goodbye mortgages and
Tranches
Goodbye wenches
Goodbye wrenches
Goodbye starshellz
Goodbye trenches
Goodbye gambitz and
Defenses
Goodbye neighbors goodbye
Fences
Goodbye this and goodbye
That
Hello Kitty,
Hello Kat
Hello ‘copterz
Hello robberz
Hello you and hello
Yourz
Hello rowboat
Hello oarz
Hello rivers
Hello deep
Moon so bright
Sun fast asleep
Hey, hey, LBJ
How many likes did you get today?
A sign behind the windshield of a hearse parked in front of the funeral home on Bleecker Street:
EMERGENCY
FUNERAL
Stupid because scared
Scared because angry
Angry because…
Extry! Extry! Dog-headed boy killed in freak accident…
At which point it comes down to who can be most fearful, who can be most angry, who can be most stupid…
EMERGENCY – FUNERAL
Damn right – better get him in the ground quick
Before he starts getting ideas…
Before he starts thinking: Who says I gotta…?
Deny the common
Assert the uniform
Reap aberration
Must be getting early
Clocks are running late
Paint by number morning sky
Looks so phony
Dawn is breaking everywhere
Light a candle curse the glare
Draw the curtains I don’t care
’cause it’s alright…
I see you’ve got your fist out
Say your piece and git out
Yes I get the gist of it
But it’s alright
Sorry that you feel that way
The only thing there is to say
Every silver lining’s got a
Touch of grey
I will get by
I will get by
I will get by
I will survive
It’s a lesson to me
The ables and the bakers and the Cs
The ABCs we all must face
To try to keep a little grace…
[J. Garcia et al, “Touch of Gray”]