President Twitter Fingers had the Center for Disease Control send a mailer to promote himself of course. It showed up in my mailbox yesterday touting his “coronavirus guidelines for America.” But we know what he really means. The caricature is by Donkey Hotey.
Modern Life
This 13-second video has been making the rounds. I nearly fell down laughing.
Coping with the Shitstorm #1
A friend writes: “At the clinic some of the people asked after me, and the doc said, ‘Well his routine hasn’t altered one minute. Or one millimeter.’ All of them in stitches—and of course it is true. I have been in self-isolation since age 15— so lots of fun seeing the rest deal with it. […]
In a Time of Crisis . . .
. . . here’s a tune to calm the nerves. It’s called “My Fate Is in Your Hands,” composed by Fats Waller and played by Dick Hyman. An anecdote goes with it. But first the tune.
Out of Stock
President Twitter Fingers and his cabinet officials. Questions have come in asking if those beak masks are real or a made-up joke. The answer is they are real. The headline and caption are the joke of course.
Artaud for Our Time
“And I told you: no works of art, no language, no words, no thought, nothing. Nothing except a sort of incomprehensible and totally erect stance in the midst of everything in the mind. And don’t expect me to tell you what all this is called, and how many parts it can be divided into; don’t expect me to tell you its weight; or to get back in step and start discussing all this so that I may, without even realizing it, start THINKING.”
‘Where the Press Is Free . . .
. . . and every man able to read, all is safe.’ — Thomas Jefferson
‘Would that it were so.’ — Straight Up | Staff of Thousands
What . ? . No Patti Smith?
Just kidding . . .
Last Breath, Memorialized
Cold Turkey Press has printed a card of this photo and poem in a limited edition.
Trump Centaur, Redux
An insult to pigs . . . and a liar to the marrow of his bones. “The Republican Party has become the most dangerous organization in world history.” — Noam Chomsky
Last Breath
There are things / closer than rain / that keep hope alive— /
tenement flowers / seasoned with heartbreak, / chattering weeds / and the silence of fireflies— / things that may not be / more brilliant / than a wine-stained shirt / and crow’s-feet eyes. / But they will do …
‘I Do Not Think. I Am Thought. I Am Thought in Action.’
I am that I am that I happen. /
I am a resultant. /
—a coincidence of fields. /
Am is my here. /
That is I there. /
What am I here for? . . . /
I am here to go. /
When the magnetic fields shift / There / is no here. / I am gone.
King’s Dream Deferred
Whatever the blowhard president of Trumpistan says in his official proclamation to honor Martin Luther King Jr., rest assured it is phony to the last pixel and not worth the time to read it. (To save you the trouble, here’s a sample: “My Administration works each day to ensure that all Americans have every opportunity to realize a better life for themselves and their families regardless of race, class, gender, or any other barriers that have arbitrarily stood in their way.”) And for the record let’s not forget that when King made his historic “I have a dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, it was hardly noticed by the nation’s most widely circulated newspapers. Have a look at King delivering that speech and be reminded of what they missed.
Kurt Wold: ‘Stradoferous’
“I dreamt I could play the bicycle. This performance artwork plays with a number of themes, not the least of which is the continual contemporary pressure to present oneself as larger-than-life, in the hope that one might be noticed in a distracted culture. Of course the work also revels in those distractions.” — Kurt Wold
If This Was an Actual Real-Time Photo . . .
. . . which it was . . . You have to wonder what floor can I get out? [Insert punchline, pls.]
A Poem and Its Genesis: Malcolm Ritchie’s ‘Writing It’
… and my hand held up against the sky / as if a naked bird singing in sign language / to an empty page lying somewhere / in an uninhabited house where / only dust is moving / from room to room … — from “Writing It”
And From the Outlaw End of the Writing Spectrum
“At age 84, Plymell continues to write, publish and perform—“doing nuttin”, as he says—from his home in Cherry Valley, New York. His activities keep Plymell in steady correspondence with a crowd of like-minded hellions, including rockabilly’s Bloodshot Bill, Sonic Youth founders Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, bassist Mike Watt, filmmaker Mark Hanlon, guitarist Bill Nace, photographer Philip Scalia and musicologist Byron Coley. Plymell and his wife, Pam, first happened upon Cherry Valley in late 1969 in coming to visit Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky at their East Hill farm. Moving there for good in early 1970, the Plymells have set into adding to their immense creative legacy.” – Benito Vila