inkwell reflections, in anti-dystopian morsels
antón petróvich d'auria
Sunday, October 27, 2002
Oya, Georgi, on the set, and I don't want to just suspend my memories 07:25 PM EST
Bad news, bears, my adorable mac has been damaged, and repair is prohibitively expensive. I'm contemplating leaving for our Moscow apartment in a few months, as well; how capricious, escapist, tantalizing![Link] [179 Comments] Sunday, September 8, 2002
Ode to Failure (Allen Ginsberg) 02:33 PM EST
Many prophets have failed, their voices silent Ghost-shouts in basements nobody heard
Dusty laughter in family attics Nor glanced them on park benches weeping with relief under empty sky Walt Whitman viva’d local losers Courage to Fat Ladies in the Freak Show! Nervous prisoners whose mustached lips dripped sweat on chow lines -- Mayakovsky cried, then die! my verse, die like the workers’ rank & file fusilladed in Petersburg! Prospero burned his Power books & plummeted his magic wand to the bottom of dragon seas Alexander the Great failed to find more worlds to conquer! O Failure I chant your terrifying name, accept me your 54 years ole Prophet epicing Eternal Flop! I join you Pantheon of mortal bards, & hasten this ode with high blood pressure rushing to the top of my skull as if I wouldn’t last another minute, like the Dying Gaul! to You, my Lord of blind Monet, deaf Beethoven, armless Venus de Milo, headless Winged Victory! I failed to sleep with every bearded rosy-cheeked boy I jacked off over My tirades destroyed no Intellectual Unions of KGB & CIA in turtlenecks & underpants, their woolen suits and tweeds I never dissolved Plutonium or dismantled the nuclear Bomb before my skull lost hair I have not yet stopped the Armies of entire Mankind in their march toward World War III I never got Heaven, Nirvana, XWhatchamacallit, I never left Earth, I never learned to die.[Link] [Karma: 17 (+/-)] [222 Comments] Sunday, September 1, 2002
Cabbage Patch Kids Storm Monsanto Office 10:04 PM EST See it live, my first post at the Pittsburgh IMC (with a few corrections here) New Cabbage Species Rebels Against Master Conspirator
Bronx, NY -- After years of underground festering, at 7PM Sept 1, the Cabbage Patch (CP) Kids of West Farms, NY stormed the Monsanto Palace in downtown Manhattan. The Monsanto Guard Weed poured the most vitriolic porridge they could find (from latest gm wheat), on the fluffy heads of the CP Kids. It appears that Monsanto's cross of cabbage with spider produced a floppy surface stronger than steel. The CP Kids employed their vigorous tentacles to penetrate the palace walls, and melted the monolithic structure with boiling web spurts. The human National Guard has been called out, but that may not be enough. The Iraqi people, with the powerful, though depleted, Uranium Dust lodged firmly in their lungs, may be the only device left to Washington against the rampaging vegetables.
[Link] [Karma: 230 (+/-)] [236 Comments] Tuesday, May 21, 2002
in a fit of self-liberation... 05:49 PM EST ... I daydream about the war-grade employment possibilities.
[Link] [Karma: 7 (+/-)] [218 Comments] Tuesday, March 26, 2002
Get Away, Tom! 10:07 AM EST
"Mais j'espere que oui," jangled the voice of a foreigner.
Alexander Ivanovich did not like to eavesdrop.
It was growing dark, dark blue.
His steps were not heard. Alexander Ivanovich crossed the threshold.
A heavy fragrance, a mixture of perfumery and medicines.
Zoya Zakharovna was endeavoring to get some foreigner to sit down.
"I hope you have formed a fine impression of Russia. What unprecedented enthusiasm, isn't it?"
"Mais j'espere..."
Zoya Fleisch turned her somewhat distracted gaze on the Frenchman, and then on Alexander Ivanovich. Her bulging eyes were protruding. She looked like a large-headed brunette of about forty. Her powder was flaking.
"Do you need to see him?" She asked unexpectedly. Hostility lurked in that quick question, and perhaps hatred. But the hatred was hidden with a smile: dirt is concealed in sticky sweet candies set out for display.
"All the same I'll wait for him."
Alexander Ivanovich reached for a pear. Zoya Zakharovna moved the fruit bowl away.
Pears were all very well and good, but they weren't what mattered.
What mattered was the voice which had begun singing from somewhere back there, horribly cracked and with an impossible accent. That was no way to sing and no one sings like that. You could imagine that the singer was a man with dark hair. He had a chest like so: sunken. And the eyes of a cockroach. Very likely a consumptive, from Odessa, or even a Bulgarian from Varna, propagandizing something, and full of hatred.
Meanwhile Zoya Fleisch:
"Yes, yes, yes, we are living through events of historic significance... vigor and youth... a historian will write..."
"Pardon, madame, monsieur viendra-t-il bientot?"
Alexander Ivanovich almost tripped over a Saint Bernard gnawing on a bone.
The cottage windows looked out on the sea: dark blue.
And the eyes of a lighthouse began blinking, "one-two-three," and went out. The dark cloak of a passerby. The waves curled in crests. Lights on the shore were scattered in tiny grains. The many-eyed seashore bristled with reeds. A siren wailed.
"Here's an ashtray."
But Alexander Ivanovich was easily offended, so he ground out his cigarette butt in a flower vase.
"Who's that singing there?"
"What? You don't know? You might as well know, it's Shishnarfiev. That's what comes from being a lone wolf. He's wonderfully artistic."
He merely asked:
"A Bulgarian?"
"Oh, no, not at all."
"A Persian?"
"From Shemakha. He was almost killed in the massacre at Isfahan."
"Ah..."
And Zoya Zakharovna turned to the Frenchman.
Alexander Ivanovich was thinking that the features of Fleisch's face had been taken from several beautiful women: the nose from one, the mouth from another, the ears from a third beauty.
But brought all together they were irritating.
The Frenchman put her in her place.
"Excusez, dans certains cas je prefere parler personnellement..."
The waves could be seen foaming. A vessel was rocking, crepuscular, dark blue. It cut through the gloom with sharp-winged sails. Bluish night was slowly thickening on the sails.
A cab drew up to the little garden, and the body of a fat bulky man, suffering from shortness of breath, leisurely tumbled out, burdened with half a dozen parcels. One hadnd seemed to be fiddling with a leather purse. From under an arm a bag fell toward a mud puddle; the paper tore and Antonov apples rolled in the mud.
A sinister head covered by a cap with ear-flaps was settled on the chest. The deep-set little eyes did not dart, but wearily fixed on the window panes.
And Alexander Ivanovich managed to detect (just imagine!) joy, the animal joy of having supper after travails endured. Thus a beast, upon returning to its lair, seems meek, and displays the benignity of which it is capable. It amiably sniffs at its mate and licks its cubs.
And this is the person?
Yes, this is the person."Lippancheknko!"
"Hello."
The dog jumped up, its paws falling on the person's chest.
"Get away, Tom!"
The person put up a desperate defense of his purchases. A mixture of humor and helpless malice left an imprint on his square face.
"He's slobbered over everything again!"
But the dog's tongue gave the tip of the nose a lick. The person gave a helpless shout:
"For heaven's sake, Tommy!"
He stopped laughing and snapped, without the slightest courtesy:
"I'll be with you in a minute. I just have to..."
His drooping lip quivered, and written all over the lip was:
"They won't let me alone even here."
The person was stamping about in the corner: his overshoes would not come off. He stood in the corner, taking his time about removing his shabby overcoat and rummaging in his pockets. His hand slid out of his pocket with a toy, a tumble-up doll.
"Here's something for Akulina's little Manka."
He turned to the Frenchman:
"This way... please..."
And he flung at Dudkin:
"You'll have to wait."[Link] [Karma: 3 (+/-)] [147 Comments] Monday, March 25, 2002
From U.S., the ABC's of Jihad 10:29 PM EST In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation. The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code.
As Afghan schools reopen today, the United States is back in the business of providing schoolbooks. But now it is wrestling with the unintended consequences of its successful strategy of stirring Islamic fervor to fight communism. What seemed like a good idea in the context of the Cold War is being criticized by humanitarian workers as a crude tool that steeped a generation in violence.
continued at washingtonpost.com
[Link] [Karma: 136 (+/-)] [131 Comments]
Luchino Visconti's "Death in Venice" sweeps me out of the Hunt Library basement... 01:56 PM EST
...and into the dressing room, for an affectionate synthesis of the visceral & abstract.[Link] [Karma: -9 (+/-)] [136 Comments] Wednesday, March 6, 2002
uncovered photos from 2001 10:13 PM EST click for the entire image
[Link] [Karma: -1 (+/-)] [181 Comments] Tuesday, February 19, 2002
Now previewing... Inside Burma: Land of Fear 03:17 AM EST
Award winning filmmakers John Pilger and David Munro provide a unique and chilling look at Burma today, where a brutal military regime has forced more than a million people from their homes, and subjected untold thousands to torture, slavery or death. Winner of several awards, including the International Award for Risk Journalism. [Link] [Karma: 7 (+/-)] [243 Comments] Saturday, February 16, 2002
why are you failing me... 03:02 PM EST 
...you tyrants of the pragmatic
[Link] [Karma: 7 (+/-)] [231 Comments]
what is the price of a super-sized empire? 05:37 AM EST Globally, 1.2 billion people are estimated by the World Health Organization to be overweight and malnourished, about the same number whose living conditions and access to food cause them to be underweight and malnourished.
Except for smoking, obesity is now the number one preventable cause of death in the US. Three hundred thousand people die of obesity every year (C. Everett Koop, the former U.S. Surgeon General).
Thirty-five percent of adults, 12 percent of adolescents and 14 percent of children in the United States are overweight, according to Dr. Nestle's "Food Politics" (University of California Press).
The following is excerpted from Le Monde Diplomatique
UN: Still to bed hungry, by Jean Ziegler
We are all familiar with the statistics: 36m people died of hunger or its immediate consequences (deficiency diseases, kwashiorkor) last year. Yet world agriculture is easily capable of feeding 12bn people and we are only half that. It easily means everybody gets 2,700 calories of food daily.So death by hunger is not inevitable - it is genocide. Fifty years ago Josu de Castro wrote: "Those who have money eat. Those who have not die or become invalids" (1). For every victim, there is a murderer. But the United Nations, NGOs and civilised nations are responding differently to these silent deaths. There are two opposed positions.
The World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993 proclaimed economic, social and cultural rights. Equal in status and universal, they were additional to the civil rights proclaimed in 1948. The right to food is first among the new rights, which have been accepted by every country except the United States, and it says: "The right to adequate food is realised when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement. It implies the availability of food in a quantity and quality sufficient to satisfy the dietary needs of individuals and acceptable within a culture. It is indivisibly linked to the inherent dignity of the human person" (2).
Endorsed by the World Food Summit organised by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in 1996, the right to food was a novel thought. Before that, production, distribution and transport of food was left entirely to the market, and a sack of rice, a litre of milk, or a quintal of wheat were considered commodities like any other, the preserve of the capitalist free market. The Chicago Commodity Stock Exchange has set the prices of the principal foodstuffs every working day. Six transcontinental agro-industrial and financial corporations dominate that stock exchange and, usually, its daily prices are the outcome of complex speculation involving forward contracts and pyramids of derivatives. Read More...
[Link] [Karma: -8 (+/-)] [179 Comments] Wednesday, February 13, 2002
In the decor of the spectacle, the eye meets only things and their prices. 08:00 PM EST
One pleasure has the bourgeoise, that of degrading all pleasures
Reorienting on the The New Rulers of the World...[Link] [Karma: 1 (+/-)] [267 Comments] Tuesday, February 12, 2002
To late-comers, we offer a few randomly chosen words 01:14 AM EST France is the land which gave the planet Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, Gérard Depardieu, the Musketeers, Madame Bovary and Cyrano de Bergerac, Brigitte Bardot and Joan of Arc, claret and the cinema, the Cancan, denim and champagne, the theory of deconstruction and Édith Piaf, the modern revolution, liposuction and the vegetable mixer, the sardine can, striped bathing costumes, Poussin and De la Tour through Corot and Cézanne to the Impressionists and on to Matisse and Braque, disposable razors and babies' feeding bottles, writers as Rabelais, Moličre, Corneille, Racine, Stendhal, Flaubert, Balzac, Hugo, Zola, Baudelaire, Proust and Dumas pčre and fils? Feydeau set the template for farce and, even if his creator originated from across the border in Belgium, Commissaire Maigret was quintessentially French. Henri Cartier-Bresson may be the century's greatest photographer, and the whole world knows the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the horrors of Bluebeard, the adventure of Around the World in Eighty Days, the Cannes film festival and the Paris fashion shows. France ranks ahead of Britain, Germany, Japan and the USA in the proportion of its gross national product devoted to overseas aid, and has produced a truly great humanitarian organisation in Médecins Sans Frontičres. French women have the longest life-expectancy in Europe. France has the world's largest opera house, one of Europe's most extensive and least crowded road networks, and as big a railway system as Britain and Italy put together. Only the United States house more nuclear power stations. The French go to the cinema more than other mainland Europeans, and their film industry produces the most full-length features on the continent. They eat high levels of butter and eggs while maintaining a low rate of heart disease and — until recently at least — an obesity level one-fifth of that of Americans. A Europe-wide investigation reported that their children were the most healthy on the continent. France was home to Picasso and Modigliani, and a last refuge for Oscar Wilde and Marlene Dietrich. Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald sized up their penises in a Left Bank café lavatory. France has given the world the first men's underpants with a horizontal fly; a toilet which keeps users locked inside until they have washed their hands; and lavatory paper printed with short articles on culture, geography and the European Union. A Paris publisher was the first to print Joyce and Nabokov. French companies are world leaders in tires, cosmetics and yogurts.
[Link] [Karma: 16 (+/-)] [134 Comments] Sunday, February 10, 2002
«Une vraie minute de silence peut durer une éternité.» Jean-Luc Godard, Bande ŕ Part 01:35 AM EST 
I'm sorry I missed your performance... as unintentionally as I discovered the gruff, bare, and unsparing Visotsky with my hero of the sardonic and decadent, Marina Vlady, and his unwitting Oksana.
[Link] [Karma: -3 (+/-)] [147 Comments] Thursday, February 7, 2002
the time is just an unendurably abstract reminder of your existence 10:31 PM EST 
In the defiantly palpable, rapturously fantastical, and the regularly dismissed, I indulge in my emotionally honest sense of self... but only if the progenitor is perceptible...
Instinctual senses force us to confront symbolic elements of our past which we've otherwise forgotten, or the ideas which we no longer derive from our present-day convictions. We experience something inherently believable to ourselves in the audible, visual, tangible "presence" of those symbols, like music, photos, touch, aroma. Introspection in the absence shrivels me up into an escapist and incredulous scruple.
Code Unknown; Read Jonathan Rosenbaum on What Time Is It There?
[Link] [Karma: 8 (+/-)] [135 Comments] Tuesday, February 5, 2002
through the looking glass, she only saw him, and he only saw himself 07:56 PM EST 
[Link] [Karma: 2 (+/-)] [240 Comments]
lugubrious confessions 07:12 PM EST 1) I'm an academic craven.
2) I like girls.
3) I'm irritable when I'm hungry.
4) Conquer lust and Buddha will arise in me.
5) And now that I've achieved superhuman perfection of compassion and knowledge, naturally I've lost human talents of writing--temporarily. Nowhere to go. All's been done. Dry up your tears, me.Chorus 1, by (secret)
Winter, too cold to write, on the bolts of the beams in the bridge steel. High, overlooking whole auroras of Sangsara sun dusk down by the Statue of Liberals, holding soon to be lighted torch to the dim dank Atlantic famous sky, where Greek ships plow through sullen waves of iron, bringing tons of rusty junk! To be pressed into bales and left on waterfronts of splinter.... I would I were a wave! And had vanished now than bawl and blot with pencils in screaming rooms here on earth, so fool stupid blind.[Link] [Karma: 7 (+/-)] [193 Comments]
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