Gregarious Chanters

Hey Ponderous Lady:

I scent you a bunches of rose-petal dew. Did you get it?

Regards,
F’clfyce Jomms

—

Hey Jomms,

Got em! They’re nice. So are you. I appreciate it.

—Ponderosah

—

Ponderous Lady:

Your note came just as I was shaving the beard off a honeydew melon. I think I’ll eat the whole thing. No; I’ll save the southern hemisphere for after I’ve completed my chapbook. I’ve been working on it two days and I’m quite pleased. It’s called Gregarious Chanters. Can’t wait to see you at the Fisk Pavillion March 18th 10:00 p.m. seats A42-A45 with Pete and Jenni!!

A dubious hug,

Jomjom

–

Jomms,

I have clamidia. Just kidding, but I still can’t make it to the Frunck concert at the Fisk. I’m sorry. I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or something. I smoked a bunch of pot before composing this letter to you, and it’s making my handwriting weird. Look how loopy my l’s are! Anyway, let’s just [redacted]

Ponderosah

–

Lady:

I understand, and understand nothing. You’ve cleaved my heart with your scythe of dicks. I’m a fucking sunder. What gives? All that hip hop shrubbery you’re smoking? Does that give you the courage you need to diddle in my heart’s cavity? I’m seriously a shuttered and blighted city block that used to have a Whole Foods market on it after your note.

Which, strangely, also managed to turn me on.

Let’s connect in person soon.

Peace,

Jommy

P.S. Pseudoneema just wished me “Gut Shabbos” and I (guiltily) thought she said “Good Jobbbbbbus”!

Bringin a tear to my eye

Awesome announcement.

lo-carb cheez-cake

I think you should be a LITTLE MORE FAMOUS before you eat that.

ok

now?

I don’t think you’re QUITE famous enough to eat that.

ok.

…

can i eat it now

no. you’re LESS famous than you were when we STARTED this conversation!

oh. shoot! I don’t know what to do!!

go on tv, start a newspaper column, I dunno, don’t ask ME!

it looks really good, though, low-carb cheesecake, wow

you’ll just have to wait

Cy Preclops

—I haven’t had a drink since Saturday.

—It’s Wednesday.

—I know

—You sound like an alcoholic.

—I know. It still feels good not to drink. I’m going to keep going with it.

—Good! That’s good.

—Every time I make a proclamation like this I immediately undermine myself, but I sort of want to become totally straight-edge: no booze, no drugs, no meat, no stimulants, no sex——

—you should allow yourself coffee. And sex.

—Maybe sex but no coffee. I am going to be 100 percent clean and talk like a stoner. I’m going increase acid and pot jokes by 112 percent.

—Why?

—I think they’re funny.

—What’s an acid joke? Or a pot joke? Pretending to be high?

—More like pretending to be the kind of guy who thinks the current situation would be “so crazy” if we were high. Which, actually—

—isn’t an imagined scenario at all. That’s actually what you’re thinking.

—Kind of. But I exaggerate it for the joke. [Paws. Pause. Prawns. Pornography under a tree in a State Park. Soft chili. Your knees. Ad nauseum. Ad mauseum. Bistro BlackBerry. My bad.] It will be hard to go to rock shows without hoisting beers.

—No way, dude. That’s the best place. There are always buttoned-up punk-rock weirdos who don’t consume anything except unrefined spelt kujaxx they dumpstered out of satan’s halo or whatever

—Right! Awesome. Then I’m all set.

[The camera zooms slowly, inexorably ("steadily") ("nervously") in on dude's breast pocket. Using "special effects," the camera penetrates the fibres of dude's flannel breast pocket, revealing a small composition notebook and a pen. Scrawled on the front of the notebook in black ink: DIARY. We don't notice that the scene has switched to animation, or that the background has fallen away, so now a cartoon composition notebook floats on a perfect black background. Awesome music. The word DIARY starts to jiggle and shiver in the way that animated but static text does (cf text in title sequences of The Simpsons, Dr. Katz). The I in DIARY tumesces like a cock or a flower, it's ambiguous. It grows up and then bends over like a stamen, dude, slowly planting itself down on the other side of the A. For a hot moment, the A is covered in an arc. An arch. Maybe it flash-embellishes itself into an arc d'triomphe. Then the original base of the I lifts off the ground, wiggles, falters, and starts detumescing back over to the right side of the I, until it's returned to its original size, and the word reads: DAIRY. The phrase should begin in black ink on a reddish background, but by the end of the metamorphosis the word is milky white, on the same reddish background. Awesome music. The notebook's cover opens of its own accord. The page is blank, but as the rich basso profundo voiceover begins, his words appear in blue ballpoint upon the lined pages. His pace is measured, if not ponderous. What the fuck!!!]

PROFUNDO NARRATOR: I read the news. Every week. It enriches me. I love to be informed.  But I read it [to be continued...]

personal pan pizza

—Quit drinking coffee, day 4, still feel a little moony, a little spacey, but pretty much out of the woods

—Blog, internet, writing, friends, harmful, peaceful occlusions. Dog just realized “Mystery Science Theater 3000″ is a brilliant name for a (brilliant) TV show. Couldn’t get enough of the photographs accompanying this NYT article about The Onion, which is the same as every article ever published about The Onion apart from the photos (they have an office dog with its own cubicle!) and the Wells Tower quote.

"Dummy, the office dog, has her own cubicle."

Harper’s article about the twilight of the newspaper industry is really all about San Francisco and the Chronicle. Haven’t finished it yet. It’s one of those full-spaces-between-every-paragraph ominous/spooky/arty/artful/impressionistic/imperious thought-essays. I like reading about San Francisco.

Still haven’t read Gideon Lewis-Kraus on Matthew Crawford. Semi-randomly picked up Anna Karenina at the blazingly awesome McNally Jackson bookstore when I was in New York. I’ve never read a “great” Russian novel, had just read Pnin and enjoyed the two professors’ conversation about Tolstoy, figured AK was a good place to start. I’m enjoying it a lot, but since then realized I probably should have read four Dostoyevsky novels first. It’s cool. There’s time. That’s next. Also looking forward to following up AK with Elif Batuman’s great-sounding The Possessed: Adventures With Russian Books and the People Who Read Them.

I think something is happening here at noon on Saturday.

What else.

When I drank coffee, I was hot salsa. Now I am mild.

Manivah Thai makes really good Thai food for you, if you ask them to

Violent and original dreams

Will Self on JG Ballard in Granta 107:

Ballard, the most outlandish of fictional imaginers, had always dug out his wellspring by the hearth, and remained the perfect exemplar of Magritte’s dictum: a bourgeois in his life, a revolutionary in his dreams.

Another maxim, expressing a similar sentiment, is attributed to Flaubert. From his entry on “Wikiquote”:

Soyez réglé dans votre vie et ordinaire comme un bourgeois, afin d’être violent et original dans vos œuvres.

Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

[Letter to Gertrude Tennant (December 25, 1876)]

My boring 12:38 a.m. EST questions: was Magritte alluding to Flaubert? Was he improving on Flaubert, changing “oeuvres” to “dreams”, and “violent/original” to “revolutionary”?

Should Self have quoted Flaubert, and not Magritte? Or do the revolutionary dreams that emerged from JG Ballard’s bourgeois life have more to do with the painter than the novelist?

Sensacao Do Principio

Let’s say you snort a line’ve old fashioned mescaline off the ass of PK Dick; the euphoria is immediately transportable to an oozing discotheque shimmering in the glitter of C-Beams. Watch as Precog’s bubble & melt. Who needs them anyway? It’s the 21st Century, so no smoking! Besides, everyone’s telling their cigarettes to shut up nowadays, I mean, IN THE FUTURE. Perky Pat Layouts might promise eternal life, but they’re gonna need a soundtrack to sell it. What could be more suitable than ‘Sensacao Do Principio’?

***

When Abraham entering Egypt says, “I know that my wife is beautiful to behold,” the image of the heavy-set and coarse-featured Sarah may make us think twice about the accuracy of this judgment, though of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I would guess that the graphic image might actually correspond to the artist’s feminine ideal.

Robert Alter reviews R. Crumb’s The Book of Genesis in the New Republic

Woke up at 5:30 a.m. for no reason. Fourth consecutive night of sub-sub-optimal sleep. Wearing the moist turban of work-panic and poor self-care. Walking through the dark this morning, I encountered the phrase PANIC AT THE 1970s GRILL. Doesn’t mean anything. Means I’m stressed and don’t feel entitled to the self-pity I half-feel. Sam Lipsyte’s The Ask is supernaturally funny and brilliant.

Permanent Teardrop.

Hey Cancer

How’s “the darkness

Fine

Not as dark as you make it sound

Black beans and codfish

Shapeshifter rsvp’d.

Self-Zine?

Got fired Friday, can’t make it

Dog wearing lipstick?

Dunno,  she’s in heat, maybe spayed,  upset

really?

aye

listen

Fear-monger

canceled too. it’s just gonna be me you and self-zine

shapeshifter

And li’l caesar

The pizza guy

used to work for Men’s Wearhouse.

Hey whoww ofenn does your zine come out?

—Every other fortnight

does it pay

No but the internet makes the printing free, minus electricity and rent

***

paper mewl is here

PAPER MEWL: I’m so fed up with the ass in this city

TEAM: where’s your girlfriend?

PAPER MEWL: Out with her friend gary

TEAM: you didn’t invite her?

PM: She doesn’t need to come to everything, i don’t think her and gary are anything more than friends

TEAM: Whe—

PM: To a reggae/dub/skiffle/punk/lord show. at the Beenurry

T: In Troeptown?

PM: Near there. Clobo Village.

T: That’s a gay neighborhood

PM: …so?

T: Nothing, i’m just bean helpful with regard to you know travel… guide

PM: So are we gonna DO THESE DRUGS, OR WHAT?

T: cool your jets, hang on, here [hands drugs]

PM: I wanna do drugs carefully, not just in a big blast

T: Well, that’s your call not mine, be as careful as 7ou want

PM: I can’t be careful unless you are too. your sloppiness infects  MY UNIVERSE

t: look we’ve been friends for almost twenty years, you know how careful iamb, which is not that careful, but you know my style, my styles not changing, i’m learned but i’m not a PEDANT, so take the drugs and be the peace or go eat a pizza be well but let’s not talk about it

PM: I’m the Prime Mule. Announcement time.

TEAM: Our favorite game

pM: I’m the prime Mewler. Minister Muenster. Papa Gyyno ["Geeno"].

TEAM: Cannibullingus! Classic. “Framingham Farms”

PM: Sodabeer Sobadeer! HarmHock Tavern! I’m lickin the back of a pretty heart

TEAM: Lick that back of pretty hearts.  great stuff.

PM: There are some drugs left. …. May I?

tTEAM: you’re still my guests—be our guest. my guessts is as good as ours

PM: Pull yourself together——the last thing I meantioned about “careful”

TEAM GOGOLBERRYS: Careful did as carefully was— you know that expression

PM: That’s not the expression—————it’s “a careful home gets bigger as my gorgeous daughters get older”—-pita read sadder for older

PM: Listen listen your zine is good but you need to delete more of it

TM: You mean “edit”?

PM: Nah, edit or delete,? Same thing. just pick huge arbitrary/celebrity swaths that aren’t singing and click #delete

TM: What do you mean “Sign” i mean “sing

PM: Same root as “swing”. swing flue. sign flu. the nonjazzy parts.

TM: Punk-jazz?

PM: Jazz isn’t the same as it was in the 1970s: be troppa deuce and so on. swinging jazz has to come from a lamer emotion in today’s age  to really get the big dicks swinging. punk rock is fine-ground avenue.  is working construction—

TM:  I need to work construction to make parts sing?

PM: Deleting unsinging parts is more important but doing big jobs in construction is fine.

I started out as Party Mule, but went backwards in time with the aid of drugs and now have a confusing relationship with  Trawldad, with Party Mule, with Picaba and D. the Skiier and the wreast of my Team; Team was the other guy. Multiple dudes with a single voice that choruses  sweetly & softly ( then, horny, gets meaner with more “skronk”——[jazz term]). After a meal the quietest parts go deaf and drown in the gay roar of a metabolism overwhelmed by an excess (or, contra-pace Gander, a “sudden access”) of satiety. All that remains is the basic four-four  pattern native to pop: “It’s A Gas,” “Onlycake Fountain,” e.g.

Math-rock, “Intelligent Dance Music,” Polynesian polyrhythms—all of them sad, wishful thinkings of a freeboned drug-depression found in culture. A cake is a metaphor you can eat; a shower’s only as hot as its horniest teardropped teabag; pastiche is not flavor; and so on.

RAE ARMANTROUT, TROY JOLLIMORE, & JOSHUA CLOVER perform language TONIGHT at the LATIN-AMERICAN CLUB of San Francisco, 3286 22nd St, 8:30 p.m. Arrive early, call venue for parking. More information is available here.

Wacky Mode

“We have wacky mode,” Powell remembers Barthelme saying to his class, a writing workshop Powell was taking. “What must wacky mode do?” The students, clueless, stayed quiet. Barthelme said, “Break their hearts.”

Dan Halpern on Padgett Powell in the NYT